13 Reasons Why - Episode 1

Boy am I late to this party...

13 Reasons Why
Episode 1: Tape 1, side A.

I understand I'm very late to jumping onto this trend but that's because I didn't want to. I saw all the hype and thought no, I'm probably not going to get into it, forget it. But then I started seeing extremely opposing opinions on it and people threatening to delete each other from Facebook if they thought the show was good or bad. Some people thought it was boring or ok but that was a very small group of people in comparison, and the number of memes that flooding my feed was unbelievable so I decided to just watch the first episode and see what there is and whether it's worth talking about. Let me tell you something now, the first episode of any series is usually kind of boring to a lot of people, that's because they need to establish characters, connections and personalities. That's how it always goes, it's also there to give the rest of the story a base to start from, whether it's something that has nothing to do with the end or if it's a key part, it's always the most important episode, regardless of whether it's a bit boring or not, you have to at least get to the third episode to see if there's anything of substance. So with that in mind, I'm only going to talk about the plot to the series, this episode and the character we see and hear a lot of, Hannah (Katherine Langford).

Opening: The best thing about the show is that before the credits start which...why do Netflix do opening credits? I know they're there to get the viewer interested in what they're watching but like, it's Netflix, you got us hooked already and you know that we're gonna binge watch and you know for a fact that we're not going to forget that we're watching the same series. There's just no need guys.

As I was saying before the credits start there's a notice telling the viewer that if you've been affected by the issues tackled in the show to contact the Samaritans. The notice also gives information about how to do that and also tells you that the calls to the Samaritans helplines do not show up on phone bills. This is such a helpful notice because even though the show is about a girl who could have done this, she decides to be petty as shit.

Series plot: A girl has killed herself and as a part of her plan, she decides not to seek out help for her mental health or reach out to talk to anyone, she instead opts to record herself pushing blame onto the people around her via cassette tape. She knows that this method will take time for people get through and maybe even cost them a hell of a lot of money because cassette players are fairly expensive and not everyone has one at their disposal but does she care? No, she just wants to be unique.

At least, that's my opinion on the plot. This is probably the most attention seeking way I've seen blame get shifted onto others. The fact that she could have helped herself rather than carry out this petty plan is baffling. Why would you do that? Do you want people to suffer as you did? Maybe even leading them to end their lives the same way you did? How horrible a person do you have to be to do that? I'll admit I can be quite petty but I would never go this far as to be so horrible to those around me in my life.

Episode plot: This first episode is about Hannah's first kiss with her friend's ex, Justin (Brandon Flynn). More specifically, this episode is about Clay (Dylan Minnette) being sent the tapes that Hannah took the time to get a hold of and record onto, and he listens to them, wondering what the hell he did to her because she says that if you're listening to the tapes, you have some of her blood on your hands.

Clay, throughout this episode, is a lovely guy to Hannah, and he makes one stupid comment about "waiting for the right time" which she mistakes for him calling her a slut and storms out on him. When he gets the tapes and hears that he may have some blame on his shoulders he's understandably freaked out because he has no idea what he's done, and if the worst thing he did was accidentally call her a slut because he wasn't thinking about his choice of words then Hannah is an idiot. Boys don't think about what they're saying, they just say the words that come into their brains and spit it out, only realising afterwards when someone is visibly upset by them. Actually, it's not even just boys, girls do it. Point being, if this is the worst that Clay has done then he definitely shouldn't have received these tapes.

Hannah: I am not a fan of this character. When you first hear her voice she sounds so smug, like she's won the jackpot and is rubbing the lottery ticket in a homeless person's face. She is talking to the listener of the tapes like this was their fault. The way this character holds herself on screen is horrible, she acts as if she is Queen Bee of those around her and everybody is below her. Her attitude stinks, even for a teenager. She has such a condescending tone to her voice and when she speaks to Clay, telling him he hurt her feelings, she acts like he just hit her or something. I understand she was upset but there was just no need to do that. Just tell him what happened rather than let him think what he wants, treat him like you want to be his friend rather than walk over him.

Bathroom graffiti: I almost forgot about this but at the first part of the episode Clay is hiding out in the men's bathroom in a stall to just get away from everything for a little bit. I paused the episode and saw some wall writing that definitely wouldn't be written in the men's room, probably not even in the women's. There were only two that I could see clearly which were:
Quote: "No means NO"
Quote: "Don't let the world bring you down"
I asked a couple of guys whether this would be seen in the men's room and they both said no 'cause, as a female, I can only go off assumptions of what the men's room must be like. However, I will assume it's cleaner than the women's because trust me, I can share some horror stories about the ladies school and public bathrooms. I've heard some things about later in the series which these quotes could tie into but I'm gonna have to wait and see.

Anyway, that's it for that episode. It was ok, kind of boring and I don't like Hannah at all. Clay seems nice enough though and I'm glad that he's the character we get to follow throughout the series. I don't know what days I'll be posting these and I thought it would be better to post episodes separately so I can talk more in depth about it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this, I've got 12 more episodes to get through and it's gonna be fun to try something new.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this episode/series. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this series then go and support its creators by watching it again on it's platform.