13 Reasons Why Netflix Series Review

****SPOILER ALERT- if you haven't watched this already- do it. right now. then come back and read my interpretation of the series as a whole.

Here is my view on the definitely unsettling visual genius of what is '13 reasons why', the Netflix series, not the book.

“I hope you're ready, because I'm about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why.” 

I watched this series personally according to the mood that I was in when watching the trailer advertise. You can probably tell something about a person's state of mind at the moment by observing what they're currently watching (this is something I relate too hard being a media student). And as you can guess, I was a pretty dahm sad state of mind when choosing to watch this. Long story short: I was (have been) feeling like I was getting nowhere with my life and I felt trapped with no way out and I'm constantly falling short of my own expectations (this is what a levels will do to you). 

The series itself is just as I expected: dark, heartbreaking and extremely suspenseful. For someone who has to get up everyday and experience educational life, binge watching to cover procrastination is pure loyalty. And what do you think it says about a series when that someone, instead of collapsing in bed or revising for her A levels, sacrifices some more hours to finish that series? Yup, that series must be good.

And it is. Thirteen Reasons Why, while not exactly a mystery series, works the mysterious charms so well. From the first scene where the main character Clay Jensen receives a shoe box full of 13 cassette tapes from a dead girl whom he previously had a crush on, we can’t help but wonder what exactly that he’s done to make him deserve such a torturous punishment. The fact that he keeps wondering the same thing and that he’s oh-so-sweet add even more to the suspense. And what are her 13 reasons? How are they so horrible as to drive a girl to kill herself? Starting this series is like opening a box of questions that can’t demand answers immediately enough, and I love that about this series. It avoids each answer by placing another one in front of it.

I think in theory, this series is easy to be angered by. Angered by the characters, angered by the family members or even the situation's Hannah placed herself within (out of choice). This series is one of very few that broke me down, I fully sat and had a good old cry at school and at home. Unlike any other series I have previously watched, this series breaks down a teenage life within our generation that family members that are older, will not be able to understand or even see, despite it being right in front of your face.

The narration switches between Hannah Baker’s recordings and Clay's view upon what he hears. The interaction between Clay’s narrations, interspersed into Hannah’s, gives the series a sense of real-time urgency, which in my opinion is better than keeping them in big, separate chunks. Sometimes, it doesn’t work so well, as his responses tend to be too frequent, thus interrupting the flow and keeping me from fully immersing myself into her story. When that happened, I would be like: will you just calm yourself and let her finish, Clay? This would be followed by an unhealthy amount of exasperated eye-rolling and shouting at an imac screen. But then again, this didn’t happen often. Most of the time I would be too engrossed within each detail to notice. 

Personally, I believe that feelings and pain are always real, and the magnitude of suffering may vary from person to person. Have you ever had someone tell you the pain you feel isn’t a real pain because what causes that pain doesn’t seem like a legit pain causer? 'Its pathetic', 'everyone goes through it'? I’ve had that shoved in my face one too many times. They would sometimes say they fail to sympathize with me because my problems are so small that it’s rather impossible to be suffering as greatly as I am; I must be overreacting and need to quit being such a drama queen already. How about people feel differently about different things? And how about some people feel more intensely than others? Sure, it might just be a spur-of-the-moment-thing, but that doesn’t make them overly dramatic and their feelings any less real. I never doubt the “realness” of the pain suffered before a person chooses to commit suicide. It’s unfair to judge unless you’re in their shoes, but the thing is you can never pretend to be in anyone’s shoes and understand them, because no two pairs of shoes have been through the exact same shit and taken the exact same roads leading up to that spot where suicide is decided. I’m in no way glorifying it; I’m just trying to point out that since we can never know to what extent a person must be suffering, it’s not our business to judge the legitimacy of their motives and call them cowardly or selfish or stupid or whatever. And I feel like as I can relate to this, from past experiences, this is why I loved this series so much.

With that being said, I wish Hannah would’ve reached out to her parents. It’s like they’re not even a part of her life. All her decisions are made without taking her parents into consideration. Because they’re not a part of her problems, I think it’s a bit unfair for her to actually be bothered to meticulously make maps (and secretly drop the maps into lockers weeks before she kills herself—such a planner, huh?), tapes and a second set of tapes for those who make her life miserable, and leave not a single word for her clueless parents. Hannah fails to see all the beauty in what her parents do for her, whether that be buying her a new car just so she can have friends, or constantly calling her 'beautiful' and 'babe'. While these people get explanations they might not even care to know about, the parents might be asking themselves “why” for the rest of their lives and getting no answer. This is the one and only part that angers me about the series, the distress that the parents are left in. 

For those who don’t like books or can't binge watch series quickly, be warned that there are didactic messages like: 

"You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything. . . affects everything."

And 

"No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same."

I’m am recommending this series for its story, rather than the lesson. Explore how pretty amazingly one event leads to another to another like a "snowball effect" (turns out Sociology did teach me one thing haha). This series is such game changer. And is one of the reasons I am known for being 'too kind' from many people (still don't get why but lets just go with it), I understand what words does to a person. I've felt it. I've seen it in front of me. It changes perspective of everyday life and if you do not watch this and feel shame or guilt (even if you haven't done anything as bad as Hannah's bullying story) after finishing episode 13, I am very shamed with the human you are.