In the third season finale, it’s revealed that disaffected football player Zach Dempsey (Ross Butler) had severely beaten Bryce as revenge for several misdeeds - and then minutes later, self-loathing Alex Standall (Miles Heizer) pushed an injured Bryce off the dock in a fit of rage while another one of Bryce’s sexual assault victims, Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe), looked on.
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(Bryce had raped Hannah before her death and been merely slapped on the wrist after his season two trial conviction.)
Season three desperately tried to recapture the nonlinear whodunit structure of its original outing, pairing explosive antihero Clay Jensen ( Dylan Minnette) and new girl femme fatale Ani Achola (Grace Saif) as amateur gumshoes trying to solve the disappearance and subsequent murder of affluent athlete Bryce Walker (Justin Prentice). And just when you think the show couldn’t get stupider … it does. Indeed, 13 Reasons Why has always had impeccable timing when it came to its irresponsible depictions of violence, but it truly outdoes itself this season with a group of fed-up middle-class suburban kids who literally got away with murder leading an anti-police riot and blowing up an authority figure’s car.Įven worse, the very same entitled/enraged white boy who threw the Molotov cocktail eventually storms into a police station screeching that he has a gun, then a few minutes later ends up crying in the arms of a de-escalating police officer without getting tackled or shot. Especially when they cry about getting “justice for all the hurt kids” (paraphrasing) after straight-up slaying their bully in season three and never getting caught. Sure, I definitely want to spend 10 more episodes with a group of “friends” who care more about loyalty than actually liking each other. Season four is the sloggiest of them all, begging the audience to love and sympathize with a nightmare clique of high school students, who are, yes, traumatized by all the kitchen-sink realism creator Brian Yorkey has thrown at them, but are also arrogant and self-righteous coldblooded killers.
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And, in turn, the series shapeshifted from a teen drama to a courtroom saga to a noirish murder mystery to, finally, a psychological thriller in its final season. Like Peyton Place and Twin Peaks before it, 13 Reasons Why reveled in the seediness of suburbia - who (or what social structures) led to Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) ending her own life? Told via flashbacks based on a series of accusatory cassette tapes Hannah left behind, the original season seemed to both embrace and sidestep the contrived conventions of its genre, with hokey dialogue and outlandish plots that actually felt like the hormonally dumb things real teenagers would say or do.īased on a 2007 YA novel by Jay Asher, 13 Reasons Why was likely intended as a one-off, but its popularity led to three additional and regrettable chapters, which slowly evolved from disappointing (season two) to laughable (season three) to miserable (season four) as it seemingly tried to compete with CW’s pulpy Riverdale. When it debuted in 2017, Netflix’s addictive teen drama 13 Reasons Why was an open-hearted, and controversial, exploration of bullying, rape culture and the tragedy of suicide, showing how the death of an ordinary girl could rip open the secrets of an innocuous small town. There is no betrayal like a powerful piece of art that ultimately curdles from its own hubris.