Of course, looking back at any high school show now, the problems that stemmed from being among people (all unavoidable assholes, especially with the strange simultaneous hubris and insecurity of youth) seem farther away somehow, as though it was all part of some anachronistic form of the educational system that required students to learn “in concert” within a tactile setting. Yet the fourth and final (thank God or whoever) season of 13 Reasons Why particularly seems to underscore all the benefits that come with not having to “interface” with anyone “in real life.” “Realness” being evermore a subjective term, for never has anybody prior to this generation lived in a time where reality is so shaped by those “in control” and the things they want us to see on the various screen platforms we’re all forced to use daily.
In the third season, which also probably shouldn’t have happened, the plot diverged even further away from the entire point of the series, which was to unpack the, as the title suggests, thirteen reasons why Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) decided to kill herself after one too many “small incidents” crested into a gigantic and insurmountable wave of emotional trauma. For yes, if the show seeks to prove anything, it’s that even the seemingly littlest of things can combine to make an adolescent feel othered, as though they don’t belong and never can. The envelope-pushing first season (in terms of graphic content) in 2017 caused so much of an uproar that the creators put a warning label before every episode, and eventually edited out season one’s extremely gruesome suicide scene in July of 2019.
With the “problem” of Hannah out of the way, as well as the reconciliation of the twelve people (for Justin Foley [Brandon Flynn] counts as two of the tapes she records) responsible for propelling her final decision to end it all, season two was left with a focus on the lawsuit against the school on Mrs. Baker’s (Kate Walsh) part, as well as Clay’s (Dylan Minnette) own attempts to try moving on despite having hallucinations of Hannah’s ghost (something, obviously that will presage the symptoms of his breakdown in season four). Concluding with the now notorious rape of yearbook geek/stalker freak Tyler Down (Devin Druid) by Bryce Walker’s (Justin Prentice) right-hand man, Monty De La Cruz (Timothy Granaderos), the trajectory of season three then segued into some kind of attempt at humanizing the Brett Kavanaugh-esque nature of Bryce and his crimes. Again, the already too additional narrative after just one season reiterated that a cutoff point after thirteen episodes a.k.a. being deemed as a “limited series” would not have been the worst choice for this particular finite story with such a specific concept to it.
Stretching it out longer than it should have gone already with season three’s conclusion, developer Brian Yorkey takes even more liberties with Jay Asher’s YA novel (which one imagines Asher wasn’t too upset about considering the financial payoff) in season four. Which is why Clay is now being billed as a Donnie Darko/Edward Norton a.k.a. The Narrator in Fight Club sort of figure with his hallucinatory free-for-alls that begin with episode one, “Winter Break.” With Justin returning from rehab, the attention from Clay’s parents (who’ve adopted the former), Lainie (Amy Hargreaves) and Matt Jensen (Josh Hamilton), continues to remain divided as their biological son falls further and further down a psychological rabbit hole. His suppression of so many secrets (though surely not as many as Gretchen Wieners) is the driving force for causing such a, let’s say, bifurcation of his mind.
As if that wasn’t enough, the implementation of metal detectors at the school, as well as “school resource officers” (SROs), has put everyone further on edge. An edge that Clay practically jumps right off during an active shooter drill that is made to feel deliberately real so as to test the true extent of student and teacher preparedness for such an incident. This commences the trend in episodes ending with a gunshot and blackness to make us wonder what’s happened next, whose fate might have been tampered with thanks to the perfect storm of repressed rage and easy access to guns pretty much anywhere in America, no matter how many “incidents” (read: murders) occur.
In this regard, one of the outcomes of COVID-19 being to put schools online has had a major positive effect in spite of the fallout: no potential for school shootings. On the one hand, sure, it’s “sad” that children can no longer socialize with one another tangibly, therefore becoming prone to an altogether different kind of sociopathy, yet on the other, who can deny the benefits that have come with not needing to interact with garden variety dickheads and the generally unstable–the sort who bully, the sort who decide to shoot up a school? Without a physical institution with which to take these rages out upon, the statistics of such violence have altogether vanished, making it seem as though the alternate emotional warfare of an occasional Zoom bomber is worth the tradeoff.
Clay’s graduation speech (because yes, him giving a “pep talk” is just one of the many ways in which he fits into the white savior mold) offers the now non-applicable statement, “For this generation, high school actually is life or death. We show up every day not knowing if this is the day we die. If this is the day someone shows up with a gun and tries to kill us all” (now, if being there is required again, it’s COVID-19 that will make the scenario life or death). Well, without having to show up anywhere, that fear is taken out of the equation. And maybe it should stay out… even if it drives the parents stuck at home with their children insane. Clay finds it within himself to add that, despite all that’s happened to him and his friends, “Even on the worst day, life is a pretty spectacular thing” (the unspoken asterisk being, “…when you’re a white male”).
And yet the flipside to this–the compensation for being terrified every day of what might happen next at one’s school–is something that is key to the show, the “high school experience”: the Spice Girls-level belief that “friendship never ends,” and that this sort of devotion can only come from the shared trauma of attending the same horrific space with the same people every day. Take that space out of students’ lives, and the bond doesn’t feel quite as intense. So it leads one to ask, in the post-coronavirus era will all high school dramas feel like relics of a past unrelatable to the generations of the future present? An archaic practice gone horribly wrong for the sake of “socialization” and employing a large portion of people who were apparently glorified babysitters?
What 13 Reasons Why has perhaps further unwittingly highlighted is that the entire education system needs to be majorly overhauled–perhaps completely obliterated and built from scratch again. Otherwise, it’s looking like a return to the days of yore when only those from the upper classes had the means and leisure time to further their education, whereas the more populous “peasant class” had to go to work to support the family. No one got shot then either, but they surely didn’t live as long for that evasion as a result of the grueling grind endured at such a young age. Ergo, just another game of roulette called: would you like shit cereal or shit sandwich?
