This series about real teenage issues needed to be done.
But hell, I’m gonna hate myself for some stuff I’ll write here. Is it even fair to try to review a series as this? Well, yes, if you take pop culture critic seriously, but in such a way that you don't trivialize the message. Let's see if I succeed.
As always, beware of some mild and major spoilers.
I’ve been confused because of “13 Reasons Why” and that’s why it took me more than a week to write about it. Looking at it as a mere, regular TV series, I resented a lot of the cheap tricks used here (using “See a Little Light” –Bob Mould- for the last escene? Come on!) and definitely doesn’t deserve the 90% of freshness on Rotting Tomatoes that it currently has. There’s some pacing issues (which seems to be something shared by Netflix series longer than 10 episodes), and some elements are so obviously on display because of politically correct reasons (the diverse casting; a guy being beaten by latino brothers because “in our neighborhood there’s another justice”; those FREAKING advices warning for raping scenes and spoiling not one but two episodes) that sometimes it made me almost quit looking at it. And I AM latino, that awful that was. There’s too much preachyness in a series that already was gonna be preachy, based on a preachy novel.
Of course, it NEEDS to be preachy, since is the story of young Hannah Baker, who, after 13 events that wears her up and pushes her to suicide (events that, especially when provoked by men, often “objectifies” her). Problem is, it’s too imbedded into the series’ DNA that the first half or so of the series that it slows down the plot and makes it too predictable –I knew there were raping way too soon; I knew the counselor was somehow involved way too soon. That’s a writing problem, and what saves the series up to this point is the marvelous work of an mostly unknown cast. Seriously, why we didn't know most of this kids before? They're pure gold.
But when the series let the real story flows, it just doesn’t tell an important issue that has to be taken care of nowadays: it shines. It’s glowing, it’s glorious in its painful depictions of solitude, teenage angst, depression, social pressure, sexting, substance abuse, and the reasons behind those.
Yes. I said “glorious”. That much it confuses me. And that's a good point for "13 Reasons".
One of the best production decisions made for the series, was that the most extreme things that happened to Hannah (performed by an ASTOUNDING Katherine Langford – actually, the casting was a piece of art by itself, that good are the actors), her being raped and slicing her own veins, were not hidden; they were displayed in an uncomfortable, explicit and realistic way –kudos for the respective directors-, scenes made to have a lasting impact and transmit the message loud and clear. And loud and clear it will stay with me forever.
The latter half of the series takes things to such level that it lifts “13 Reasons Why” as a whole to a new level. That’s why the critical praise comes. Even then, the crimes the series has shouldn’t be ignored when taken as an artistic work that it’s open to criticism.
Obviously, this piece is aimed to be played on high school classrooms for times to come. And that is a good thing: something like this needed to be done.
In a way, it should be interesting to follow the characters’ stories from where we left them. Their journey isn’t over just because Hanna’s has.
hiveblocks