WARNING: Spoilers Ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

Trigger Warning(s): suicide, sexual assault, rape

Since season one of the Netflix drama “13 Reasons Why” was released two weeks ago, it’s all anyone’s been able to talk about. Most love it, many hate it, and I’m sure even more are completely indifferent to it. I’ve seen a lot of good points raised as to the value of the show as a social commentary, but when a show deals with such sensitive subject matter, a lot of us are too quick to overlook where it might be going wrong, or what it might be missing. So, at the risk of being redundant (the horse is dead, Olivia – put down the bat), I thought I should offer my two cents on the issues I have with both “13 Reasons Why” and with society’s reception of it. I know a lot of these subjects are touchy, but bear with me.

1. Hannah recorded her suicide note on cassette tapes.

I’m sorry, this show is supposed to be set in the 21st century, right? Where on earth would she even find cassette tapes? Where would she get a device to record anything on said cassette tapes? Wouldn’t it be easier to just record thirteen individual audio files onto a USB drive? Is it really necessary to be so non-conformist, even in death?

2. What is the deal with Tony?

How does he conveniently appear every time Clay has a crisis over Hannah’s tapes? Why is his relationship with Hannah still unclear even after he explains it? Why do we rarely see him interact with anyone other than Clay? Why do they climb a mountain? Why is he at least a decade older than everyone else in his class? Is he just Clay’s spirit guide through Hannah’s guilt trip? Does he really even exist in the first place? WHAT?!

3. The idea that “The List” would ever be that big of a deal is kind of a stretch.

The conceit is supposed to be that “The List” reinforced everyone’s impression of Hannah as The Class Slut, but I’m not buying that for two reasons. Reason number one is that, because of the clothes she wears, no one would realistically have a good enough idea of what her ass looks like to make any reliable assessment of it.

In order to be listed as “Best Ass,” people would need to know what her ass looks like, which they can’t if she’s always wearing long shirts and/or flannels that cover it. The second reason is that her supposed sluthood and the quality of her ass are two completely separate issues. No one in their right mind would think that by having a nice ass, Hannah was even more of a slut than she was believed to be previously. It just doesn’t make sense.

And, on a completely separate note, I don’t get how everyone seemed to know that Alex made the list. What did he do, write “XOXO Alex Standall” in bold in the upper right-hand corner of the page? Somehow I doubt it.

4. Zach’s tape.

The idea that Hannah had enough grievances against Zach to warrant an entire tape is absurd. He tried to tell her that he liked her, and she ripped him a new one in front of the entire cafeteria. Given that he’s a teenage boy, it makes perfect sense that he would respond immaturely to being publicly humiliated, taking Hannah’s stupid “compliments” to give her a taste of her own medicine.

She responds to this by writing him a letter totally incongruent with the actual severity of what he did, and it scares the living whey protein out of him (might I remind you again that he’s a teenage boy), so he literally runs away from her in the hallway. I don’t know about you, but that all makes perfect sense to me.

5. She completely tunes out Mrs. Bradley’s spiel about the resources available to those in pain so that she can stare accusingly at Zach.

Not satisfied with Zach’s reaction to her letter, she writes another disturbing, morbid letter (this time anonymously) to be read aloud to her communications class in an attempt to bait him into… what, exactly? What does she want from this boy? Moreover, what does she expect from him? She writes him a letter that’s completely out of his depth, when the two of them aren’t even friends, and then wants him to 1) know that she also wrote the anonymous letter, and 2) tell Mrs. Bradley that she wrote the anonymous letter.

But does she want him to stand up in the middle of class, point to her like it’s the inquisition, and shout, “it is Hannah! Hannah is the author of the worrisome text! We must heal her!”? Then, when he fails to live up to her unclear expectations, she completely ignores Mrs. Bradley as she lists the several resources available to those who need help, just so that she can burst Zach into flames with her mind. Perhaps Zach heard their teacher, and figured that Hannah would demonstrate some agency for once and take the initiative in getting herself the care she needed. How foolish was he.

6. Clay’s tape.

Clay, to his credit, does everything he's supposed to. He asks Hannah if what he's doing is okay, she says yes, and then without warning breaks into hysteria over something that has nothing to do with him. He immediately backs off and asks her what's wrong, and she curses at him and yells at him to go, so he goes.

Then Hannah makes a tape for him because he left when she secretly wanted him to stay. “Why did you leave?” she asks him. WHY DID HE LEAVE?! You told him to, several times, and with gusto! That could have had something to do with it, I don’t know, just a guess.

7. Clay, just as a person in general.

Upon receipt of these tapes, Clay makes it his personal mission to serve as the high school’s vigilante in Hannah’s absence, insisting with righteous indignation that all of his peers own up to the various wrongs they’ve committed.

Methinks this is because Clay is one of the only people on those tapes whose “crime” wasn’t incriminating in the slightest. Justin could be charged with obstruction of justice. Sheri could have her license revoked, and be held responsible for the accident (and death) that occurred after she fled from the knocked-over stop sign. Mr. Porter could lose his job and become liable for Hannah’s death. Jessica could come forward about her assault and have to face the possibility that Bryce might walk free anyway. Bryce could go to jail (not that anyone cares, but still, there’s something on the line for him as well).

No such fate awaits Clay, though! Regardless of who hears the tapes, he’ll be perfectly fine, his only crime being his abandonment of Hannah when she needed him most after she repeatedly told him to go.

8. She just stood there while Jessica was being assaulted.

There is nothing – nothing – acceptable about the way Hannah handles Jessica’s rape. Rather than intervening, she watches it happen from the closet like a peeping Tom, claiming that she “couldn’t get [her] feet to move.”

I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough, especially if you’re going to turn around and implicate someone else (I’ll get to that next). Her presence alone could have stopped the rape from happening. She could’ve run downstairs and told someone to call 9-1-1.

She could have refrained from hiding in the closet in the first place, and sat on the bed next to her friend, who was drunkenly unconscious and in need of supervision (especially because Justin didn’t turn her on her side – rookie mistake). Hannah, however, does none of these things.

9. She thought it would be fitting to blame Justin for Jessica’s assault.

Justin, though he was far from innocent in this situation, was on the other side of a locked door when the rape occurred. Hannah, however, was hiding in the closet just steps away, well within range of the incident that she could’ve added value, though she chose not to.

And still, despite all this, she sees no harm in playing the blame game with Justin, and so tape nine becomes Justin’s second tape – not Bryce’s first, or even Hannah’s own tape (which would’ve been more fair, considering that she was capable of doing more to prevent the rape than was Justin).

10. She sets a trap for Mr. Porter.

Hannah had every intention of committing suicide before she entered the guidance counselor’s office, which is apparent when she refers to the visit as being the “one last try” she was going to take at life. She fully expected her attempt (if you can call it that) to fail, as evidenced by her decision to record the meeting.

Granted, after that exchange, Mr. Porter should have promptly called her parents and the police, but we need to acknowledge how little she gave him to work with. Only ever vaguely alluding to what happened to her, she gets angry with him for trying to guess, which is all he can reasonably be expected to do.

She pushes him away time and time again, and then feels justified enough in her resentment of his failure to chase her down the hall, that she doesn’t see a problem with implicating him in her death, which brings me to my next point…

11. She sets unreasonable expectations for everyone but herself.

I’ve already touched upon this in several of my other points, but it merits reiteration. She expects Zach to save her from herself. She expects Clay to know that she subconsciously wants him to stay (when you don’t want me to move, but you tell me to go, what do you mean…). She expects Mr. Porter to magically divine what’s happened to her, and to transcend God and everybody by expelling and incarcerating the anonymous perpetrator, despite having neither his name nor any solid evidence whatsoever as to the validity of Hannah’s claim. She expects Clay to forgive and forget what happened between them at the party, regardless of how hurtful her words were to him. Overall, she expects all those around her to put her first, without ever acknowledging that she is pathologically self-centered.

12. The scene where her parents find her in the bathtub is horrible.

Sure, the two rape scenes and the wrist-slitting scene are graphic and difficult to watch, but they weren’t nearly as disturbing to me as was the scene where her mother discovers her bled out in their bathroom. I suppose you could give it props for being “honest” or “realistic,” but that’s a hell of a thing to do to your audience. I could’ve gone my whole life without seeing that, and I don't think I'd be missing out on much.

13. The way the show portrays suicide is, contrary to popular belief, not so great.

I’ve heard many people sing this series’ praises for being such an honest, no-holds-barred depiction of teen suicide, but that really doesn’t ring true for me. The majority of those who’ve seen it seem to think that it doesn’t “glamorize” suicide (as do most of Hollywood’s gems), but if having everyone’s lives become about Hannah immediately after she kills herself doesn’t count as “glamorizing suicide,” I don’t know what does.

Further, the show reinforces the unfortunate misconception that suicide is a selfish act by having the character who commits suicide be the most selfish character in the show. The character who made a series of Blame Tapes right before she took her own life to make sure that everyone will feel sufficiently horrible for having mistreated her. Lastly, it condones the idea that it’s appropriate to blame other people for someone’s suicide, largely failing to highlight that suicide is the responsibility (NOT fault) of the person who commits it, and that person alone.

Everyone has been treated like crap at some point in their lives, but not everyone commits suicide; the common denominator is the suicide victim. And Hannah IS a victim, not so much of her life circumstances, but mostly of the mental illness that causes her to react to situations the way she does.

Suicide, while tragic, is no one’s fault, and it’s dangerous and irresponsible to imply that it is.

One message this show sends that everyone seems to be able to agree on: we should all work harder to be nice to one another. That’s a wonderful message, and I have no problem with it whatsoever, but I think a piece of this message has gotten lost. I read a review of the show somewhere that described Hannah Baker as being “likable,” and I almost fell out of my seat. Relatable? Maybe. Easy to identify with? Sure. But likable? To me, absolutely not.

But I think that was kind of the point. Choosing to see Hannah as a blameless victim of circumstance (which one must, in order to find her “likable”), deflects responsibility for her choices from her onto everyone else. We lose out not only on the other big theme that is the importance of personal responsibility but also on the message that it’s still important to treat people well, even if you don’t like them.

None of the characters took responsibility for their own actions, which is a big part of the reason why they were all so miserable, and if they’d all been nicer (in spite of any wrongdoings on each other’s parts), many of the unfortunate occurrences that define every episode of the show might never have happened.