13 Reasons Why - Episode 5

I wrote the notes for this a week ago and fully forgot to write about it then.

13 Reasons Why
Episode 5: Tape 3, side A.

I'm getting so sick of Hannah, I really am. I get that teenagers make small things extra dramatic and exaggerated but I feel like this episode is just stating the obvious. Girls are evil. Yes, we are, we're manipulative, nasty and fake as fuck, especially in school. Girls are fucking horrible, we will pick apart anything we find fault in, we grow out of it enough to be tolerable in society but there is always that underlying thing of us being nasty and most of the time, it'll take something big to unleash that beast. This episode seems to think that nobody knows how nasty girls are and seems to want to hammer home that girls are evil and that this is important to know.

Episode plot: Courtney Crimson is a backstabber and a liar, this is her tape for being a scared girl who is also a bit of a bitch.

Courtney: First of all, what sort of fucking name is Courtney Crimson? It's like Jupiter Jones or Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey or some other stupid shit like that. It's a really painfully unimaginative and I feel like this name would be way more at home in a DC movie. The shitty thing that Courtney does here is telling a guy (I don't remember which one and I'm not watching the whole episode again just for a name) that Hannah get fingered and sucked dick on a park. Very typical weekend behaviour among teenagers in England but apparently not so much in America so of course this upset's Hannah. In Courtney's defence, if the positions were reversed, Hannah would probably do the exact same thing or worse.

Clay: Clay seems to be falling down the rabbit hole of depression and that's worrying me. If this series ends with him in a grave next to Hannah's I'm gonna be so pissed off, it's going to be because of these tapes that he did that and that's not going to be very productive to this narrative the show is trying to push. Actually, I don't know what narrative this show is trying to push...

Clay also has a bit of a dick moment, taking Courtney to Hannah's grave. Courtney is very clearly distressed by this which...who wouldn't be? Things like this have to be done in a person's own time and you shouldn't force them to confront this sort of thing until they're ready to do it themselves. This could have some sort of traumatic effect on Courtney, I mean, she's listened to her tape and knows what she did and now she's having to look at the consequence of her actions? She may not have dealt with what she's done yet and like I said, this could have really screwed her up emotionally.

I'm kind of not loving Clay so much but I can sort of see where he's coming with this shit. He can't stand what these people have done to Hannah because obviously he really liked her and because he's not gotten to his tape yet, he doesn't want to deal with his own consequence yet and therefore is going overboard on punishing others.

The Crimson men: These guys are hilarious, I can't deal with it. They are the gay couple who are parents to Courtney, again I don't remember names but if they come up in future episodes I'll credit them. In this episode, they only have one scene in the coffee shop with Courtney and they're discussing having a dinner with another family. One of them suggests she brings Zach (Ross Butler), the other agrees and adds that they would have beautiful babies, to which his husband tells him that he can't say that because Quote: "it's racist and sexist."

How is saying a couple would have beautiful babies be interpreted as racist and sexist? Is it because both of them are Asian and the two of them would have beautiful babies because of that? Is it sexist because he's saying she'd have a baby? Fuck, I don't get it at all but it's hilarious nonetheless.

The tapes:  It seems that Tony is responsible for this method of torture. After he fixes Hannah's car at the Winter Formal, Hannah tells him that she thinks it's cool that he still listens to tapes. At the very least we know that her parents sell blank cassette tapes and that's where she got them from to be able to record them. One mystery down I guess.

The dream: There's a really well-done dream sequence to open up the episode, that's not even a spoiler, you can tell by the way Clay is behaving around Hannah. It's really nice and shows more or less what Clay is going through in his subconscious and the way that Hannah yells at him to do something could be showing that he feels some sort of guilt for not doing anything when he didn't know anything was wrong. I don't know but it's good to be able to use what I learned about semiotics in first year. Always good to use your education.

Hannah: Hannah, once again, barely does anything in this episode besides kick off with her friend for stabbing her in the back which is understandable but at the same time, I still don't like her because her attitude still fucking stinks.

That's it for this one, I really don't know how I can even carry on watching this series because it's just boring and repetitive and I almost don't really want to watch the emotional downfall of a generally sweet character that has, so far, done nothing wrong to this girl other than be a bit of an idiot. Thing is, I'm 5 episodes in, I'm committed to this, I'm not giving up I might take a break because I don't have the energy but I'm gonna get through it. Fucking watch me. That's it for today though, I'm out.

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 its platform.