13 Reasons Why‘s third season finale did not actually make me vomit, but to say that it made me so angry that I could vomit doesn’t feel like hyperbole.
In writing about such a reprehensible thing as the third season finale of this reprehensible show, even if I’m not going to physically vomit, to bring up the act of vomiting almost feels like a moral necessity. Whatever physical reaction one does (or, in this case, doesn’t) have to this thing, one must use the proper textual might to call it out.
I initially said “all their textual might”, but that didn’t seem right. It would be grotesque to compare this garbage to, say, the holocaust or an atomic bomb. 13 Reasons Why is neither the very important work of art it claims to strive to be, nor is it “worthy” to be compared to genocide.
It’s a rotten fast food burger whose only notability comes from its own insistence that it could solve world hunger.
But Why?
Of course, why did I even watch this show?
I had mixed feelings about the first two seasons. The very premise of the first season was…questionable, and the showing of the suicide despite being explicitly told not to was vile. The repetitive shifts in color grading between the two time periods were also annoying.
But….I don’t know. I was compelled. I liked the cast. I recall some of it resonating. I was willing to keep watching the show to appreciate the parts that resonated while I criticized the negative elements.
I don’t remember much of the second season beyond what I thought was a clever use of Hannah Baker’s presence. She’s like Gusteau for Remy in Ratatouille; a figment of the protagonist’s imagination that’s treated like the real thing. Like a ghost. But unlike Gusteau, whose true nature as a figment of Remy’s imagination is used for the occasional joke, Hannah’s lack of knowledge on certain things that Clay doesn’t know about comes across as though the real Hannah Baker is withholding a secret, rather than a reflection of Clay’s own ignorance on certain things. When Clay finally begs Hannah to answer his question towards the end of the season, she eventually just reiterates things Clay heard on one of her tapes. Hannah’s true nature as a figment of Clay’s imagination, as the result of only Clay’s knowledge of Hannah rather than the real thing, finally comes through, and the figment falls apart.
It’s good stuff.
But it’s the second season finale that helped me reach an initial epiphany about the show. There’s a moment that resonated with me. I’m not going to risk giving this show anymore credit than it deserves by citing which moment, but I will at least acknowledge that said moment exists, and it was a nice moment that hit close to home.
And then came the almost-school-shooting cliffhanger.
I’m not going to say that this almost-school-shooting cliffhanger was when I gave up on the show per se. It was more when I finally, fully accepted the show for the garbage it was.
That nice moment that I resonated with? Out the window. I had found this show’s calling in my life (or so I thought); as the dumb, guilty pleasure junk food it was.
The trailer for the third season only cemented this. “Who murdered Bryce Walker?” was the mystery intended to draw us in, and draw me in it did. Was I interested in whatever “commentary” the show would have about murder? Of course not; I didn’t care about the “yes, rape bad, but killing also bad” musings the show would be sure to espouse. I just wanted a murder mystery.
No Pleasure, Only Guilt
And a murder mystery I got. But unfortunately, I forgot I was dealing with 13 Reasons Why, and so with the murder mystery elements came the atrocious “important drama” elements. After all, a show that uses a school shooting for a cliffhanger isn’t going to touch on these elements with finesse.
And so my rightful punishment for my “guilty pleasure” epiphany was fully realized with the third season finale.
You see, they find out who killed Bryce Walker.
But, you see, they like the guy who killed him. They feel sorry for him because he feels bad and is sad.
So they frame it on one of Bryce’s friends because he violated one of their friends with a broken broomstick.
But we’re also supposed to feel sorry for the guy they framed because he’s a closeted gay man and he’s internalized it all and this leads to toxic masculinity and blah blah blah.
Was my “blah blah blah” a dismissal of these concepts in and of themselves? Not in the least. But it is a dismissal of the handling of them, of the horrific nature that this show exploits these things and just throws whatever topic it wants in the pot to stir up drama and writes off this intent by professing that it comes from a place of “moral complexity.”
Because that’s what the show does. It just does whatever it wants to make some juicy drama and tries to moralize it with its ham-fisted tone.
I particularly can’t get over the characters literally letting a murderer get away with murder. He did it because his victim was a rapist, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for him during his violent outbursts post-murder because he’s sad about the murder, but we’re also supposed to feel sorry for the rapist he murdered.
No doubt the show will touch on this, of course. Season 4 will probably serve as a “cautionary tale” for letting a murderer get away with murder. And this “cautionary tale” will probably serve as the ultimate showcase of the problem with “cautionary tales”: that, more often than not, they celebrate the thing they’re “cautioning” us about and slapping on punishment at the end of the story.
See? They weren’t really celebrating that bad thing for the entire runtime! They learned a lesson! Now you’ve been cautioned.
I think it was G.K. Chesterton that said “we need dragons so that knights may slay them”, or something of that nature. There’s some truth to this, but we forget that the inverse is also true: that we need knights to slay dragons so that we may have dragons. Just because the Bard eventually shoots down Smaug doesn’t mean we’re not entertained by the hour or so we get of Smaug.
13 Reasons Why is a relentless onslaught of dragons slaying each other. We get a cautionary tale, then a cautionary tale about how they handled that cautionary tale, then a cautionary tale about they handled that cautionary tale, all while it’s not-so-secretly relishing in the drama that emerges from what it’s supposedly cautioning us from.
Since the upcoming season is the final season, no doubt one of these dragons will emerge as a supposed knight, or just slay themself. (I truly would not put it past this show to do something as grotesque as ending the series with another suicide.)
But hey, maybe this last season will be good. And then I can use this angry writing as a cautionary tale about criticizing something before it’s finished.
But if it’s the same as the last three seasons, then not posting it would have taken me to a different cautionary tale. We’ve been told since childhood “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
I find the first of those two cautionary tales preferable.
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