13 Reasons Why

Assalamualaykum wbt. I just felt like a strong urge to do a review about this English Teen Drama, out in 2017. Few days ago, I came across a video from MLstudios that was about Sexual Assault/Joke (Lawak Lucah) shared by @akhifairuz. As I was reading the comments below the video, one of the comments said that this video reminded her about a poor girl named Hannah in the Drama 13 Reasons Why. Hence, with this uncontrollable curiosity in myself, without further a do I started to watch the drama.

Allow me to tell you a little bit about this drama. It has 3 seasons by far and they are planning to come up with the forth and final season. This drama is basically about a girl named Hannah Baker, who committed suicide. Before she died, she recorded a voice diary in tapes (13) venting about how her life began to become deadly awful and who were the people that caused her to take her own life. Each tape tells about each individual that killed her and all of them received these tapes after she died. She made sure that those people heard her tapes and that included the person she admired the most, Clay Jensen. Clay is the protagonist of this drama and a school nerd. Every minute of him listening to the tapes drove him crazy. He became angry and did felt like killing those people who did such awful things to his one and only crush. But at the same time, Clay was also terrified because sooner or later he will have to listen to his tape. He had no idea what he might have done to Hannah to become one of the reasons she killed her self. So, season one tells the story on how Clay get to understand why Hannah died, who caused her to take her own life, and what was wrong with the whole system of their school.

Through out this drama, as the truth was unfolding, I actually cried a lot. The truth of the things going on between those high school kids was seriously disgusting, terrible, dreadful and all the nasty words you can think of. Hannah was bullied, left alone by her friends repeatedly, unheard, ignored, and worse of all, was raped. Yet, no one knew until she died and she released the tapes to the 13 people according to the order (of when they started to mess with her life). I have to warn you, this drama sure had a lot of sexual assault scenes. Even though I turned my head away at the 1st second of every sexual assault scene, that 1-2 seconds scenes are still bothering me and I am still feeling so.... sinful. *Dizzy

Although knowing the lifestyle of the westerners, I still hate the culture they show in the drama where these kids were too free to have sex whenever and wherever they want. Literally. Basically, they potrayed that boys only want one thing from girls and that is sex.

I actually like the plot of this mystery-genred drama. It amazes me the way Hannah revealed her truth not to the whole people but only to those who killed her and letting them to make the decision of what they have to do next, whether they should just live their life attempting to forget everything and slowly go crazy or tell the truth to the police. Since the mess was big, it affected not just themselves and the school but also their families. Clay's parents started to think that their son might be having depression, suicidal thoughts or for a second they thought Clay might be a bully. I love the way his parents dealt with the stressful situation and kept on telling their son that they are here for him.

On the other hand, Hannah's parents, whom obviously were so affected by this tragedy were trying their best to understand what actually made their daughter killed herself. To them, their daughter seemed happy and cheerful as always, they never have suspect Hannah having a crisis at school. They searched day in and day out for clues and they had no idea about the existence of the tapes. Other than the parents, Mr.Potter, the school counselor was also struggling to calm the kids down and to get to the bottom of Hannah's case. It was sure difficult to deal with these kids especially when each of them were telling lies, rude and traumatized.

One of the sad scenes for me was when Hannah met the counselor as a 'calling for help'. When she was asked how was she feeling, she said she felt nothing. There's nothing in her. It's all dark and blank. Before this, she would always try to have hope each day, hoping for a better day until they killed all the hopes she ever had. Each day, everything just gets worse. She felt like if she take her own life, everything would probably be better, everyone including her parents would be better off without her. While on the other side, Clay is still pathetically trying his best to confess his love to her. He was afraid and so he never could. It was too late. If only Clay did tell her that he loves her. She would probably still be alive because even one person that cares matters to her.

Character wise, honestly, all of them played their roles very well. Especially Clay and Hannah. Clay and Hannah succeeded in delivering the right emotions to the audience (well, atleast I did felt it because I cried, felt their anger and also their love). The other casts was as good too although all of them had very very sick characters!

I don't want to leave you hanging, so allow me to tell you what happened at the end of the drama. The last few episodes end with Clay finished listening to all the tapes, especially the one dedicated to him that was the 11th tape. Clay added the 14th tape to the collection and that tape contains the confession of the rapist without him knowing. He passed it over to the 13th person in the order and Nop, I will not tell you who was the 13th person. Go watch it yourself. Find out whether Clay and Hannah's parents get to seek justice for her death or not. Make sure you don't have a faint heart and unhealthy thoughts because the contents of the drama were sure disturbing.

The lessons I learn from this drama are that if we are suffering from something terrible, we NEED to talk about it to someone. It will do NOTHING if keep it to ourselves. What we are dealing with may be embarrassing and we never want the world to know, but atleast talk to somebody, anybody that we trust especially our parents. If it's a crime, don't we want justice for ourselves? Don't we want the offender to get what he/she deserve after doing such to us? We won't get there unless we open our mouth. Also, I learn that even if there's no one beside us, we have ourselves, we are ourselves' savior. We are our biggest help. Love ourselves or else no one will. 

I would give 6/10 for this drama. -4 for the excessive sex scene.
Will I continue to watch Season 2 and Season 3? I don't think so. After reading some reviews and critics' comments, I decided not to continue watching. Season 1 were the best yet, they said. The other two seasons have already became irrelevant and a lot more disturbing.

So yeah, if you are like me and are curious about these terrible issues, the reality of it and the consequences, do watch. I am still trying to comprehend the mind of a person with suicidal urges though. Very much complicated!

That's all. Thank You for reading !