I recently watched the popular series 13 reasons why on Netflix, as I wondered what all the fuss was about. I had heard great things about the show, and it was so popular, I figured this has got to be good. But no way.
As if meant to make fun of depressed people, the show makes crude attempts at showing reality (with very, very little success) by making the main character an overdramatic drama queen, who overreacts to almost everything.
Showing some very sensitive content, the show sometimes has a warning at the beginning of the episodes. As it features both self harm, suicide, and a ton of other things people may find to be hard to discuss, I found myself wondering if this is good or bad. I feel like it could be both. On one hand, the show actually shines some light on depression and the actual signs and what actually happens after someone’s suicide and how many people’s lives you actually touch, but on the other hand it does desensitize the audience for all things related to depression.
In short, I didn’t like the show. Having many people close to me who struggles with depression, and people who have struggled with self harm I found the show to be a very unrealistic portrait of depression and everything close to the disease. I think no one’s disease should be shown in such a way, and there are things that are just downright offensive in the show.
I know that depression, anxiety and other things close to these are very individual, believe me, that’s nothing new to me. Still, taking something as important and close to as many people as a mental issue, blowing it up into an overreacting dramaqueen- stereotype and showing it to all kinds of audiences is in my opinion a really bad decision and should not be done.
The idea of the show was good, but I feel like it would definitely have been a lot better if the main character hadn’t been such a negative stereotype and it would have been a little bit more realistic, with a little less drama and more lifelike feelings and reactions to things happening around the characters on the show.
Still, this tv show wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, not making me feel “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve wasted this much time on this garbage” but not feeling too grateful about the fact that I watched the entire thing. However, the characters beside the main one were terrific, mostly well written.
As most people (mostly SJW's) seem to fail to understand is that this is just a show and not an accurate representation of all cases of depression/suicide. If one would use their mind, they would figure that out and not feel offended by something made by a company that is clearly only making it about a topic that they know they can make money from. That is all.
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