When I was in eighth grade, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why came out. As an avid reader, I basically burned up my library card but never bought books. I asked a friend to borrow her copy, and I read it overnight. Before I returned it to her, I read it twice. Asher’s novel was unlike any book I had ever read, and the “beyond the grave” narrative really resonated with me.
When I saw that Netflix was turning Thirteen Reasons Why into a show, I was so pumped. I kind of wish I had re-read the book before I dove into the show, but here we are, and here are my thoughts on the show.
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I wish that it was a movie and not a show. There are things that the show focuses on that are pretty irrelevant and drawn out that definitely weren’t in the book and don’t seem relevant to Hannah’s story.
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Clay’s mom is the worst. Her son’s classmate committed suicide, and her son is having very public mental breakdowns, and she thinks that having breakfast as a family every day is going to fix things.
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Everyone except Clay and Hannah look like they’re 30. When the show starts, they’re supposed to be high school sophomores. When I was a high school sophomore, I definitely didn’t know anyone who had a tattoo, but the kids in this show each have like, four huge tattoos.
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The school administration…yikes. If someone at my school was being bullied this badly, my high school administration would know and would be all over it. The teachers at this school seem to think it’s okay to read anonymous poems out loud while the whole class giggles.
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All the guys look the same. When they’re trying to talk about different guys in the show on sports teams, I’ve gotten so confused because all the white boys (except pasty Clay) look the same. I love that there are black people on the show and that it hasn’t been totally whitewashed, but obviously more could be done if all the guys look the same.
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Clay pisses me off. He idolized Hannah so much when she was alive—she was his manic pixie dream girl. But he couldn’t just be honest with her about it, and he couldn’t be there for her, and she clearly just needed a friend, and he couldn’t just be her friend.
- It’s just not realistic. My high school experience was not like this at all. No one really messed with each other. No one’s nudes were ever mass messaged to the whole school. We weren’t huge duffel bags to each other. Maybe my high school experience was unique, but it sure wasn’t like this.
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