Because there seems to be a certain expiration date on how long women can act “uppity” about being treated like second class citizens (this perhaps being why feminism comes in waves–suffrage, the 60s, etc.), the patriarchy can only “allow” for such rage for a finite period of time before the pendulum swings back away from all this “female unpleasantness.” This “overwrought angst.” Whether the third season of 13 Reasons Why realizes this not so subconscious shift it’s making in giving such unabashed “reasons why” its requisite villain–a privileged white rapist with sociopathic charm–is irrelevant. The point is, one of the primary cruxes of the narrative aims to show why Bryce Walker (Justin Prentice) deserves redemption. And that for him to be cut down in his prime a.k.a. murdered before he could achieve that redemption is almost as much of a crime as his own (apparently many instances of the same crime, as it were, for he admits to raping seven or eight girls by season’s end).
Once again trying to recapture its whodunit mystery cachet from season one when Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) played j’accuse! with everyone for her own suicide, it is the viewer’s job once more to stick with the season for the sake of figuring out who and what was really responsible for Bryce’s death. As the episodes painstakingly unfold, we’re soon made to understand that everyone is a suspect. This is why we have proverbial “new girl” ergo “objective outsider” Ani Achola (Grace Saif) to narrate from her unique “I see everything” perspective as she starts from the beginning of it all in a police interrogation room that immediately establishes just what a key witness she is. Of course, it also helps that she herself was sleeping with Bryce on the regular despite being well-aware of his controversial history, and how much it would upset her new friends at Liberty if they ever found out. Clay (Dylan Minnette) being the most obvious person to be affronted. For not only will he remain forever protective of Hannah, her memory and the justice she deserved, but he also has feelings for Ani despite absolutely zero chemistry between the two other than a shared love of the same comic book. But hey, maybe 13 Reasons Why also figured why not throw some interracial relationship plotline in for good measure if we’re truly going to cover all the hotbed issues? And yes, there’s no question that this is precisely what the Brian Yorkey-developed show relishes doing. Yorkey, who adapted the series from Jay Asher’s 2007 novel of the same name, has chosen to go well beyond the original storyline of the book, which ended when Hannah’s tapes did. As such, the show has meanered off into territory that leaves it open to draw all manner of unnecessary conclusions regarding what might have happened in the fallout. Case in point, the Bryce Atonement plotline.
In a climate where men are naturally given the benefit of the doubt and a voice with which to champion their “explanations” for wrongdoing, that 13 Reasons Why not only devotes so much of season three to Bryce being positioned as a pitiable character, someone worth the compassion that he could never seem to muster, but also attempts to make the viewer root for him, is a telling sign of the #MeToo fizzle out. As mentioned before, “women’s movements” are only allotted a certain amount of time to flourish before being ultimately kiboshed by a patriarchal media and government.
Hence, we have a two-dimensional militant lesbian character like Casey (Bex Taylor-Klaus) to showcase that when women are allowed “too much” of a voice, things get out of control. Dangerously, violently and disrespectfully out of control. Thus, she is pitted as the quintessential “bad feminist” when she goes against the more docile and reverent Jessica Davis’ (Alisha Boe) wishes not to protest Bryce and his actions at his funeral. Which, yes, is in poor taste, to be sure. But that the writers of the show decided to make the angry lesbian provide the example of how not to partake of feminist activism is telling of the stereotypes even people in an industry as “liberal” and “free-thinking” as entertainment can’t seem to shake their prejudices and continue to indoctrinate them into their viewers. One other such prejudice pertains to Tyler Down (Devin Druid), the customary “weird introvert” who, as such, is damned to become the school shooter. No matter that such a reaction to what happened to him is not exactly common. In truth, he likely would have gone the Hannah Baker route and simply committed self-harm as opposed to attempting to wreak it upon others. Also in the realm of letting the #MeToo movement collapse on itself is the strong emphasis on Tyler’s story, for let us not forget that men get sexually assaulted too. Let us not have the dominant trend of it being women who are subjugated and abused take precedence over the sliver of a percentage of men that do. Because to give women the whole narrative would be a study in handing them all the power. The power that has never been relinquished to them in the age-old battle of the sexes granting that a man’s place is always at the top. Whether figuratively or from a literal raping standpoint.
The victim porn that 13 Reasons Why also provides can’t even fully deliver on that. Veers off most palpably when Jessica starts quoting the words of her own rapist (something we retrospectively find out) at an assembly that turns out to be a space for survivors to stand up and admit who they are. At this juncture, it becomes all too telling that the writers of this season have lost all sense of any female perspective. And sure we can buy into the “you can’t choose who you love” adage, but Jessica choosing to go back to Justin (Brandon Flynn), the boy who facilitated her rape, also doesn’t exactly jive either. But it’s all part of the design to humanize Bryce and his actions, culminating in his self-pitying final monologue that includes, “I’m trying to be better but this fucking world won’t let me.” As though it owes him the right to because of his congenital male privilege. And as he screams, “Please! Please! I don’t wanna die out here,” the writers of the show achieve their strange goal: the martyrdom of a rapist. And whether it wants to be admitted or not, this opens a floodgate that allows room for sexual assaulters to “take back the narrative,” to shine a lot on their “stories” instead of those of their victims, already so horrified to take that light and put it on themselves as it is. Thus, in a strange twist of irony, 13 Reasons Why undoes all the work it achieved with the first season, which arguably should have been its only one, billed instead as a “limited series” as opposed to this strange Bryce-like monster it has become.
