In one chilling, Lynchian scene, her mouth opens, only to reveal the canned sound of her voice on a dinky cassette tape. The surviving teenagers are left with nothing but Hannah’s memory, and even her ghost begins to reveal the limitations of death. Though Hannah’s suicide is cheapened in the retelling, the story of grief underlying the season is heartrending Walsh and Brian d’Arcy James, as Hannah’s parents, anchor everything while the younger performers get caught up in their own drama. That said, 13 Reasons Why can also be wonderful. But most of those shows aren’t about teen suicide and sexual assault-and while the second season of 13 Reasons Why swears it’s even more aware of its sensitive material, it’s also even more exploitative than the first. We knew, in all likelihood, that this would happen so many breakout shows struggle to land their second seasons. In a way, it works.Īs the second season careens toward a conclusion that was already heavily hinted at in the first season finale, it becomes increasingly clear that 13 Reasons Why isn’t about uncovering trauma, but perpetuating provocation. Their testimony provides a narration, of sorts, for the second season, placing the audience in the role of de facto jury. As her mother, Olivia ( Kate Walsh, in a committed, heartbreaking performance), takes the high school’s administration to court over their role in Hannah’s death, everyone Hannah implicated before she died is called to the stand.
13 reasons why season 2 episodes tv#
Season 2-which exists largely because the Peak TV business model seemingly privileges quantity, not quality-begins five or six months after the events of the first season, in which the cassette tapes Hannah made before her suicide were distributed to the community around her. So the first season’s story of a girl (Hannah Baker, played by Katherine Langford) who is humiliated to the point of self-destruction did have value, even if some of the parental hand-wringing was also warranted. Teen suicide rates are on the rise, and high-school social dynamics now take place on phones and Facebook profiles, hidden from less tech-savvy adults. In its place was a radical exposure of the building trauma that can lead to suicide, which the show rendered graphically and without flinching.
In its first year, the show knew how unappealing an after-school-special tone sounded, and went out of its way to avoid using one. The problem is that 13 Reasons Why was initially appealing to young viewers precisely because Season 1 was so cynical about standard adult efforts to prevent teenagers from engaging in destructive or abusive behavior. The show scrambled to address those concerns in its second season, available now, resources and information are promised in the P.S.A.s that accompany the opening credits and close out each episode. Its sensitive suicide story line dropped into family Netflix queues without warning, prompting fears of triggering copycat behavior in vulnerable audiences. The first season of 13 Reasons Why, adapted for television by playwright Brian Yorkey, created exquisitely painful emotional landscapes that landed almost too well.
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