13 Reasons Why
Original novel by Jay Asher
Series created by Brian Yorkey
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BEWARE of spoilers! If you haven’t seen the series we might suggest you go off and watch it then come back to read the below, as there are spoilers contained here for Season One.
Whether you accept the premise that (1) others can be held responsible for a person committing suicide and (2) that suicide is morally justified and somehow an acceptable option in life – which I personally do not (unless a person has made the personal choice for assisted suicide due to medical reasons), its hard to argue that from a writing perspective “13 Reasons Why” is firing on all cylinders and is a remarkable achievement. Suicide is never an option. But why people chose that path, why Hannah chose that path as depicted in this series compels your engagement.
There are so many positive aspects to this drama – almost too many to relate. It’s a mix of themes: revenge, conspiracy, who-done-it, struggle for justice, with betrayal at the core. There are two plot-lines running in parallel and interwoven.
The past is guided by the narrative of the now deceased Hannah as she guides Clay who is listening to her tapes which provide a detailed explanation of the wrongs done to her by others responsible for her decision to end her life. And, there is the present narrative which follows Clay (Hannah’s love interest) as he listens to her accounts and attempts to unravel not only the truth about the past and the involvement of a host of characters around him, but grapples with his possible culpability and his own powerful and lethal regrets regarding Hannah’s fate.
Both plot lines are at once interdependent, interwoven but also independent of one another. The truth, which is not ambiguous, is a thread which runs through the two narratives like a trail of heightened awareness. Clay is the recipient of Hannah’s story but what he will do with the knowledge and how he will carry the huge risks and burden of his discoveries remains to be seen. It keeps us coming back for more episode after episode.
There are so many compelling and authentic aspects to this story that keep you glued to your chair. I was expecting, by the time episode 5 rolled around, that the story would be losing steam and I would be glancing around for a distraction, but no such thing. The drama and stakes for Clay and for other related characters, whether innocent or guilty simply ramps up incrementally making the drama more and more compelling to watch.
The nuances and technique are enthralling in and of themselves. As Clay listens to the tapes and goes to the places Hannah describes, he sees her account of the past play out in his mind including how he remembers it. Thus he relives not only what happened to her but also his own mistakes including his inability to express how he felt about her when she was alive. Ultimately he must witness his own culpability and cowardly disregard in his thoughtless acts which may have led to her demise. In a moment he returns to the present with a whole new perspective on not only what happened to Hannah but about what he did or did not do himself and it is not an easy pill to swallow.
All the 13 characters Hannah describes, who contributed to her decision to leave this world, are in some manner attempting to avoid the responsibility for their own actions in her tragic end. Clay is the only one whom we are unsure which way he will go. Will he seek to protect himself and join the league of liars who are trying to keep the truth contained? Or will he take a different path, for Hannah and for justice? That choice is subtext in his journey and it is ripping him apart, as scene after scene he learns more about what happened to Hannah and what he did and did not do to protect her. As scales fall away from his eyes the stakes for himself and the other 12 characters involved rise as they fear what Clay will do with the knowledge of their actions as told through Hannah’s own words.
The truth about the past makes Clay’s choices in the present incredibly powerful and his grappling with his own conscience all the more moving.
The escalating complications and relationships in the story and the masterful inclusion and ramping up of stakes are a wonder. Clay learns that his innocuous and annoying mother has been hired to represent the school against the suit launched by Hannah’s distraught parents. She must attempt to disprove Hannah was bullied proving the school was in no way responsible. His mother asks Clay if he knows anything about Hannah being bullied and Clay like Judas at the last supper tells his mother he barely knew Hannah and goes off to weep in the shower; unbelievably powerful and masterfully done, no other way to describe it.
Each of the 13 villains, if that is what they are, (13 Reasons Why reinvents traditional roles and norms concerning heroes and villains), have well drawn, unique characters and failings which have led to their abuse of Hannah. Their motivations and actions are utterly convincing. Although the accumulation of all these betrayals, attacks and slights against Hannah mounting up as they do so quickly is a little less than plausible it is forgivable. I found myself compelled to watch the first episodes but then once I’d seen the tenth where Clay’s involvement and responsibility in Hannah’s death, according to Hannah, is disclosed and that was finally explained, I found my interest dropping just a bit. I realized that that was the key element driving my engagement was finding out what Clay did or did not do to cause Hannah’s death. Those around him and Clay himself come to believe that he is in some way responsible for her suicide. Whether he is or not is a subject of debate.
Clay is on a journey of discovering the full measure of his blame in Hannah’s death and it’s a compelling story. At a party Hannah urges him into a tryst alone in one of the upstairs bedrooms, when he goes to her she forcefully pushes him away as it triggers a memory of the abuse by another character in the story. Clay reaches out to her confused and concerned by her sudden about-face but she tells him to leave her alone and get out of the room, while inwardly (as she reveals on the tape when she describes the event) she is hoping he will not leave her. But leave he does and that seems to be the full extent of Clay’s responsibility. The other aspect to me of Clay’s responsibility is more subtle and that I believe is his inability to express his love to Hannah, his passivity and unwillingness to simply tell her how he feels about her which might have saved her from her own despair. He allows his own timidity and fear to stand between them, and when he becomes her last chance her last hope between suicide and life, he lets her down and walks away without ever telling her. She tells him in the tapes that she loves him and he realizes what an opportunity he lost and how he let her down and himself by not being true to his own feelings.
Once Clay learns the truth the story pivots and is driven by the question of how the truth which is finally revealed to Clay will come out, who is really guilty and how the guilty will get their due.
The story is brilliantly written from Jay Asher’s novel and is an important social statement for our times. Hannah has many insights about life in this day and age which are wise beyond her years. The callous use of technology and social networking to destroy another human being, reducing them to pawns in some heartless pastime of sexual coercion and social shaming is blatantly depicted. The shame culture is alive and well in this society and the writers of the story brilliantly nail the inhumanity and lack of responsibility that has become part of the technology we use and abuse to relate to our fellow man, especially among the young. The dangers of bullying using social networking are never more authentically portrayed as they are in this story and that alone makes it an important contribution to our awareness. The young just simply aren’t as aware of the repercussions of such behaviors until someone dies in their midst. The parents of the young people involved are for the most part completely unaware of their children’s involvement and in fact their children’s true nature while they self-congratulate themselves for being plugged into their children’s lives. The depiction of these relationships transcends clichés and rings true like few other stories.
So, as a social statement of our times 13 Reasons Why couldn’t be more powerful. Two intertwined, independent and inter-dependent plot lines, visions of the past hitting the present like a sledgehammer in revelation after revelation and a story that only seems to gather steam and become more and more compelling in Season One. As the story unravels it pulls in other characters each with high stakes and something massive to lose they have huge moral decisions which will define the rest of their lives on their plates. It makes this series a must see and hats off to Netflix for producing it.
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