It’s been approximately one year & a month since I actually sat to my computer to write a blog post. & here I am, at 8:35am, Wednesday morning, writing about got damn 13 Reasons Why: Season 2. There’s so much more to which I should be lending my writing attention–like Bill Cosby, illiteracy, & Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon. However, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why: Season 2 kept me up all night. I was literally tossing & turning into disturbing scenes I wish my memory had not captured. You see, 13 Reasons Why isn’t about high school bullying; it’s a show about sexual terrorism, down to the ASS class intended to reform student behavior & perception.

As a former high school teacher & current university instructor, 13 Reasons Why got me feelin a way, particularly re: how screenwriters, producers, & actors/tress portray academic institutions, students (especially those of color), faculty members, & parents. Clearly, despite its closing “call for help” offering that appears at the end of each episode, 13 Reasons Why fails to make me believe that its creators are concerned w/student welfare. Instead, they–in Tyler Perry fashion–have inflated an American crisis, & in white male patriarchy décor, have assured the reigning terrorist unscathed freedom.

SPOILER ALERT: What follows are 13 criticisms–in no particular order or fashion–I have of 13 Reasons Why: Season 2. (I do have more, but IJS.) If you have not watched it yet, & plan to, stop reading now, cause I’m about to “spoil” this joint.

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1. So these high school kids are testifying re: their relationship w/Hannah, the main character who commits suicide & leaves behind 13 audio recordings that detail her interactions w/her classmates–which she claims led to her suicide. (However, we find out this season, that Hannah, herself, was a bully in her former school. Really?)Anyway, in all of these kids’ storytelling & lying, they admit to throwing & attending unmonitored parties, having ALOT of casual (unprotected) sex, & consuming drugs & alcohol, yet none of the parents address these behaviors, at all. I don’t get it. But, the school & its “colored” employees are put on trial?
2. Each of the students of color is so got damn stereotypically casted, & they each–w/the exception of Tony Padilla, the stereotypical Puerto Rican who fights his way thru the system–& happens to be a Fonzie homosexual–is absolutely voiceless & attached to the fear that prohibits them from being their independent selves. How does Black Marcus, the student body president & son of a preacher & rising politician become subservient to a spoiled white boy he knows rapes women? & why is Zach Dempsey the cowardly Asian afraid to speak up to his mother, especially since his father’s passing has deemed him “the man of the household,” which is culturally relevant? He’s so afraid to speak up in the world, he can’t even have a peer conversation w/Clay about the baseball team’s Clubhouse shenanigans, so instead, anonymously leaves pictures of their crimes for Clay to discover. & got damn Black (or mixed) Nina Jones–a track star, of course–who can’t keep it real w/mixed race Jessica, who relates more to being a White girl than she does to her Black self–w/the exception of her attempts at kinky, curly hair. Why does Nina have to be the chick who destroys the only evidence that could’ve prosecuted raping ass Bryce, & why is Jess the mixed race girl who accompanies Alex to the Spring Dance, but publicly fucks Justin in the boy’s locker room (during the Spring Dance)?! Oh, & the shy, timid Courtney Crimsen, another cowardly Asian who’s so afraid to be a lesbian–altho her two White dads are gay–she throws Hannah under the bus versus outing herself in a 21st century that rarely gives a shit. Of course, by the season’s end, Courtney’s happily & boldly dating a Black girl. I can’t take it (altho I watched each episode). Those students of color have lost themselves in a white patriarchy that makes them sleepwalk toward an American Dream. #staywoke is absolutely lost on their asses.
3. Um, so Kevin Porter, (aka Antwone Fisher) had to be the Black Mammy figure, huh? The fall guy? The slave driven by the White head coach and White principal–both of whom never stood trial? He had to be the one who carried the burdens, broke down in court, & blamed himself for a White girl’s suicide? Stop it, already.
4. Are there really high school coaches in this world who give their teenage players access to on-campus sex hubs? Who give their student players permission to abuse girls?
5. Wayment. So, Bryce damn near admits to his mother that he raped Hannah, & all she does is tell him he is a stranger in their home? So this seemingly self-assured woman basically crumbles under her son’s aggression? So, she’s like a White matriarch who kinda believes in feminism & motherhood, but not for real for real; it’s a man’s world?
6. How come none of the parents ever communicate w/one another? This show gives high schoolers adult responsibility & leverage, which is why they fumble around, making a mess of their entire lives. The teenagers, albeit all messed up, have a more communal spirit than their parents.
7. In no 21st century America would a Clay Jensen be able to coerce a hopeless Tyler Down, strapped w/a machine gun & two glocks, from shooting up a student body whose members sodomized him w/a broomstick in the school’s boy’s bathroom. That, AFTER Clay Jensen himself distributed nude pictures of Tyler thruout the school house, & boys clowned him for orgasming all over himself after an arousing kiss in the movie theatre w/Mackenzie, Cyrus’s sister. So, White, self-reflective, ghost-seeing Clay gets to be the Saviour, huh?
8. But Clay also gets a Toyota Prius after reiterating to his parents that he will not openly communicate w/them. He is allowed to continue driving it after hiding heroine addicted Justin Foley in his bedroom aaaaaaand taking files from his mother’s computer & making them available online to the whole wide world. That. Shit. Cray.
9. What’s also crazy & absolutely unfathomable is Clay & the others’ discovering the box of photos that would criminalize Bryce & their failure to make copies of the pictures & to hand them over to the police–or at least to Clay’s lawyering mother! & of course the pictures get stolen, cause Clay does not have the wherewithal to not drive around w/the box of photos sitting on his back seat. Exactly how was he helping Hannah?
10. So, in what academic institution would athletes & other student body members get into a fight in the hallway & not only are there no security guards around–ever, actually–but the coach begins to fight the counselor? Then, the fighting students are placed together in ONE classroom, damn near sitting on top of each other, while a sleeping BLACK man!!!!!!! is assigned to watch them!?? WTF?!? This same sleeping BLACK teacher, allows Clay Christ to get up out of his seat, check his cell phone, make an oral declaration to his classmates, & then leave his supposed punishment w/two other fighting students. & none of those involved in the fight were suspended nor did parents who saw visible scratches & bruises on their children’s faces confer w/school officials. Yea. Okay.
11. How is Tony driving a classic red Mustang?
12. & what happened to Sherri Holland (the Black return student I purposely omit from #2)? Why isn’t she at the Spring Dance, belonging to/the community of “outcast” students she helped? She is the ride-or-die character who places herself in compromising situations for the cause. She does it #fortheculture, yet disappears.
13. Finally, & I have left this criticism for last because it was the most upsetting & disturbing, the sodomizing of Tyler Down (the proud ASShole) was absolutely unnecessary–& I mean that re: fictional characters & actual screenwriters. Why did the audience–much of whom are middle & teenaged high schoolers–have to witness such savagery & hatefulness? The bullying was brutal enuf–as was last season’s hot tub rape & Alex’s failed suicide attempt–but to write in sodomy as the sforzando of bullying was revolting & absolutely careless.

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Will I watch 13 Reasons Why: Season 3? Probably. The media frenzy, if you will, that 13 Reasons Why has conjured makes not tuning into it difficult. More so, while I can’t tune into every song, television show, or linguistic style w/which my students are consumed–& don’t want to–I think 13 Reasons Why is that one popular culture thing that I should be attuned to so that I am able to mindfully discuss w/my students (& nieces) bullying, gun violence, group think, & the like as portrayed in the Netflix series.

Ain’t no doubt, 13 Reasons Why inspires necessary conversations, which is why it–& any other artistic endeavor at conveying real life situations–should not be banned. But do I prefer artists avoid capitalizing upon students’ current crises? Of course. I hope, however, my watching & writing about 13 Reasons Why enables me to bring students into a more conscious viewing & understanding of themselves & others, which I trust 13 Reasons Why ultimately aimed to do.