13 Reasons Why - Episode 10

I'm so super extra mad about this.

13 Reasons Why
Episode 10: Tape 9, Side B

At the time of writing, it is 4:02 am and I have barely slept this whole week, however, through my sleep deprived enlightenment I have worked out the formula to this episode. This episode has a specific formula to it. It's filler, then a bombshell then rinse and repeat. It's not a good formula, it's not even an ok formula. The bombshells were kind of hit and miss and one of them was just plain horrible. Let's enjoy this...whatever the hell I type out about it.

Episode plot: It's Sheri's turn on the tapes, I think, the episode is more about Jeff (Brandon Larracuuente)'s death...I think. Honestly, I don't know what the hell happened to this one.

Murder...kinda: After witnessing Jessica get raped Hannah stays at the party and is kind of zoned out of reality, to the point where Sheri offers to take her home. Hannah accepts as long as Sheri isn't drunk and to prove that, Sheri does a cartwheel. Fair enough. Hannah says she can't go home drunk because she'll get lynched by her parents so Sheri says she can stay at her dad's with her. Hannah goes to either call or text her parents but sees her phone is dead so asks Sheri if she can use hers, Sheri says go for it and starts looking for her phone, takes her eyes off the wheel for a second and knocks a stop sign over. This is probably responsible for the car collision which kills Jeff.

Neither girl reports the incident at the time, mostly because Sheri is driving her father's car and is scared she fucked it up and wants to just get home whereas Hannah's guilt from not doing anything about Jessica's rape and feels a sudden urge to do the right thing here and when she does get a chance to call in the incident, someone has already beaten her to it. Of course, she thinks it's just about the stop sign but, big shock, Jeff is dead.

Bombshell No.1: So remember when I said that someone had beaten Hannah to calling in the incident? Of course you do, you read about it like 10 seconds ago. Turns out, it wasn't the stop sign being knocked over, it was the car accident which killed Jeff. This is nowhere near as impactful as it should have been and let me tell you why. Hannah is, at first, devastated and understandably so. She couldn't stop a rape and then she indirectly caused the death of one of her schoolmates, hell if I went through that I probably wouldn't be able to drag myself out of bed. She tearfully goes to Clay, I'm guessing to try and tell him what went down, and he just tells her outright that she has no right to be this upset because she hardly knew him and she always has to make it a melodrama about her.

I kind of see where he's coming from with this I mean, one of his close friends died and a girl who seems to make a drama out of everything comes up to him in tears. He's clearly feeling a fair amount of grief and doesn't need another drama on top of what he's going through so from his perspective at the time, it's understandable. He wants to deal with the death of his friend before having to deal with what he think's is petty melodrama from Hannah.

Who called it in?: Clay. Clay was the one who called in the death of his friend which is probably one of the most panic-filled moments of this kids entire life. He's seen death and he's known that person. That shit stays with you for a long time, and it makes Clay's reaction to Hannah approaching him a little more understandable.

Jeff's death: What I don't understand about this is that...I should care, even with my own experience with death, I should care that Clay found his close friend dead in such horrible circumstances. I don't. Why? Becuase there was only a basic connection established between the Jeff and Clay and there was also nothing that gave me any sort of connection to Jeff as a character. This guy's death literally felt like it was just shoved into the story just to serve Hannah and her journey to her death. This should have been a scene where you can feel something with Clay rather than for him and it just doesn't come across that way.

Bombshell No2.: Breaking news. Clay killed Hannah!!! Now let me tell you why I'm mad about this. If Clay did kill Hannah, why wouldn't she just make him one tape, just for him to tell what a scumbag he is? No. She made all of us waste our damn time on these tapes. Add to that, if she really wanted to be the ultimate sadist (which she has proven herself to be so far) wouldn't she have made him the very last tape? I dunno, fishy as hell.

Padding: This episode's biggest problem is that it's nothing especially important aside from the end, it's just padding, and nobody likes padding. I've heard that the series is based on a book where the events take place in just one day so transferring it to a series with 13 episodes is gonna need some padding but still, it's like they took all the padding from every episode in this series and the upcoming second series and just threw it into this episode. That might be an exaggeration but I don't care.

Fun story: It took me over a month to finish this and I genuinely thought I only had about one or two paragraphs written but I was farther than I thought. Thinking about it, this may not have been a "fun story" more, a stupid anecdote but I'm exhausted and slightly dehydrated and I don't wanna take a bath or shower because I'm a girl and love my showers/baths scalding hot. Don't feel like landing myself in a metaphorical hell rather than a real life one.

That's it folks, see you in the next one. Peace out and stay hydrated x

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.