Th1rteen R3asons Why season 2 Review

Not going to lie, I am a little reluctant to review the second season of the Netflix original series 13 Reasons Why based on the novel by Jay Asher of the same name. Mostly because I didn’t review season one of the series or the novel it is based on, I’m going to get onto my reasons now.

Why Didn’t you Review the First Season and the Book?

So there are things called art, censorship, and shoving my foot in my mouth. Last year I had seen trailers for the show 13 Reasons Why and thought it was genuinely interesting and sat down to watch the first season. While I do admit it has its flaws, it was something I enjoyed watching and thought was worth watching.

Then came the controversy of how the series (probably poorly) handled the portrayal of mental health and was accused of “romanticizing suicide.” while in a sense I do agree the writers of the series cold have handled things better, I thought the idea of ‘getting creative with ideas about suicide from a tv show’ was moronic and only a complete idiot would copycat the audiotape suicide note There were indeed morons who copied the idea and sadly took their own lives.

I took the side of the writers and the tv series because I don’t like censorship of art, even if I don’t like or agree with what was presented (I didn’t like the approach they took to Hannah taking her own life, or an unnecessary rape scene from season two I’ll get to in a bit.)

In short I couldn’t review season one because at the time I was in a mental bias for the show and would have claimed it’s a work of art despite content of the story.

Okay Let’s Talk About Season Two and How Much I Hated the Ending, spoilers from this point on.

When season one of Thirteen Reasons Why aired it was hard for me to believe they would be able to adapt a second season from a stand alone book. My friend and I guessed that season two would be from the perspective of Hanna’s peers on the tapes and their sides of the story. We were mostly right; season two is more like an episode of Law and Order SVU, except Olivia Benson doesn’t come out victorious by the end of the episode.

Alongside the courtroom drama there is also the continued school life of the cast from the previous season; Clay is trying to move on from Hannah, Tyler is making new friends and doing his best to keep them despite the clashing personalities, Tony is questioning his morals and trades in his white boyfriend for a black boyfriend, Justin having even more internal conflicts, Jessica and other girls raped by Bryce struggling to come forward about their rapes in order to get him arrested, and many other things. Also before the start of season two, there is a PSA from the cast of 13 Reasons Why talking of mental health and suicide and encouraging viewers feeling thoughts of depression and suicide to seek help and discouraging them viewing the series.

To continue with the usage of old tech in a modern world, polaroid pictures were the nostalgic item used for evil this season as evidence that Bryce and many generations of the baseball team used as “trophies” in their sexual conquests.

To be honest I felt this season (like season one) dragged on and aside from a few select episodes (Courtney deciding to come clean about her true relationship with Hannah and come out as a lesbian at the same time is my favorite episode of the season). I do like that along with characters telling their sides of the story of the tapes, many characters who were seen as antagonists previously (the above mentioned Courtney, Ryan, and kind of Tyler) chose to do a heel face turn and aid in the courtroom battle against the school telling the truth of what happened on the tapes and admitting they were in the wrong.

The main character Clay struggles with his feelings towards Hannah, and as a result is seeing Hannah in front of him either as a hallucination or as Hannah’s soul aiding him in his journey (I see it as the later and I’ll explain why). Clay starts off the season dating Skye and suddenly having abs and trying to function without thinking of Hannah, but he can’t bring himself to do so. His character arc is learning new facts about Hannah that he didn’t previously know and questioning if his feelings for her were authentic.

We are also given some revelations about Hannah’s life and how she wasn’t the as unguilty as she claimed. She had been a bully at her previous school, but upon realizing what she was doing tried to stop and changed schools for the sake of a fresh start. I like that it gave more depth to her character, showing that she was trying to change herself for the better and still had flaws as a person and didn’t know how to handle it.

Poor, Poor Tyler

A Lot of my hatred for this season comes from the treatment of Tyler; throughout season one the character Tyler is treated like shit. While some of it is deserved from select characters (Courtney had every right to hate and mistreat him due to him outing her as gay when she wasn’t ready), the escalation gave the impression he was going to shoot up the school.

And he didn’t. Instead Tyler starts a questionable friendship with an individual named Cyrus, who although is ‘punk’ is a pretty cool guy who isn’t crazy enough to shoot up the school. Tyler goes through ups and downs, but it seems he nearly gains forgiveness from most of the cast. Then fucks it up because he didn’t want to be embarrassed for ejaculating in public from a kiss.

This all escalates to a horrifying and unnecessary moment in the show where Tyler is raped in the boys restroom.

It’s a disgusting scene, very unnecessary like Hannah’s suicide from the previous season and I strongly suspect the scene was only thrown in for the sake of possibly having a third season to the show just to resolve the Tyler conflict when it could have easily been resolved this season (I mean they solved the primary conflict of Hannah Baker’s suicide, no point in continuing the show after).

An alternative to the scene to wrap up his arc (and the series) would be that upon returning from rehab, Tyler would discover although he won’t gain back some of the friends he alienated, he could still have Clay and maybe get punched in the boys restroom rather than sodomized with a mop (why are so many adults useless in this show?)

God

So originally I was typing this review after I had finished viewing season two (about two weeks after it premiered on Netflix), but due to life events at the time I couldn’t devote my time and attentions to this little blog I do.

Last year when I was watching Thirteen Reasons Why my dad would join me because he thought the show was fairly interesting. He told me two things; the first was a reminder to always listen to someone when they’re calling for help regardless of how trivial it seems, the second I’m shocked was approached in the show itself.

My dad had asked me ‘what did you notice about all those kids on that show?’ I replied with ‘it’s a racially diverse cast.’ He responded with, ‘they don’t have God in their life.’ And while I wanted to argue that even if one of those kids was religious, that wouldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t be part of this problem (I’d still make the argument), I was shocked to see that the Olivia Baker asked a priest “could all of this have been avoided if we were had ‘something’?” in terms of a belief system.  My thoughts were ‘holy crap, religion in a modern YA show portrayed in a positive light.’ Complete with a priest stating that he didn’t believe Hannah went to hell despite dying from suicide.

My reasoning for believing during the season that Clay was speaking with Hannah’s soul rather than a hallucination created from his guilt is maybe the wanting to believe that Hannah didn’t go to hell for dying from suicide. Maybe it is from the observation my dad made and his feelings that “if those kids had been taught about God and how to be good people, none of what they were going through would have happened.”

I’ll end this blog post by thinking that as Hannah’s soul left the church, she went to heaven, just as the show should have ended at that point (I’m not watching season three, this show is going on longer than necessary).

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Your Name Movie Review

Your Name is the story of a Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu, two teenage students in Japan who for unknown reasons switch bodies at random points in the week. What seems like a unique happy go lucky romantic comedy takes a striking turn in terms of genre and tone to science fiction and time travel.

Spoilers from this point on, something tells me your memories may or may not be erased from this experience.

As mentioned above Taki and Mitsuha are two teenagers who switch bodies. While the initial concept of a boy and girl switching bodies is already fairly entertaining with obvious physical differences between boys and girls (gotta love boobs and peeing with a penis for the first time), the personality differences between the two adds more to the story.

Mitsuha comes from the near rural town of Itomori and feels isolated from the rest of the world with no bookstores, no malls, and her go to ‘cafe’ being a outdoor vending machine. Mitsuha is a shy girl who feels trapped in her town and in the traditions of her family longing to escape the simple life shouting ‘in my next life I want to be born as a boy in Tokyo’.

Taki is a loud boy with typical boy ways of being into older women and each time he woke up would take time to grope and appreciate Mitsuha’s breasts. Despite these typical traits of a teenage boy Taki does have depth; on the days that he is in Mitsuha’s body he stands up for her own sake calling out bullies who normally pick on Mitsuha and her friends and genuinely growing to love Mitsuha’s family and friends (he even builds a table and chairs for Mitsuha’s go to cafe).

On the other side of things Mitsuha enjoys time in Taki’s body, but is still fairly respectful to Taki’s life (outside of spending a large amount of his earnings on giant pastries). It’s actually pretty humorous to see how the friends and family of Taki and Mitsuha slowly begin to piece things together on their own concerning the two switching bodies.

I was actually a little disappointed to see that Mitsuha’s sexuality wasn’t really explored. It’s very brief, but there is a scene where she sets up a date for Taki with an older woman hoping she would be the one going on the date rather than him. Taki still has a strong attraction for girls in Mitsuha’s body gaining Mitsuha large amounts of attention from female classmates.

The twist halfway through the movie actually did shock me significantly with the revelation that Mitsuha’s life was happening in the past while Taki’s life was taking place three years in the future. Taki then discovers that Mitsuha and most of the population of Itomori were killed in a accident via a piece of a meteorite falling off and hitting the town.

In an effort to change the future Taki drinks sake from a shrine (I don’t know the Japanese religion of Shinto well enough to go into depth about it, forgive me). Contrary to what one would expect, instead of choosing to save just Mitsuha, Taki takes time to formulate a plan with Mitsuha’s friends to prevent the catastrophic event from taking so many lives and getting the town to evacuate in time.

I really did like the film and feel the hype surrounding Your Name is well deserved. The film takes time to explore both big and small elements of life like the relationships among friends and family are still important to each person while in the grand scheme of things are very miniscule in the grander scheme of things and life would easily continue on for the rest of the world while a whole city were to be destroyed. It’s also very heartwarming to see that although Taki seems like a generic guy who’s more interested in girls, keeping his part time job, and saving money, grew to genuinely love the people in Mitsuha’s life putting the effort to save her town rather than being selfish and choosing to just take Mitsuha to a safe area area from disaster.

I give the film four sharpie messages on a hand out of five.

Your Name is produced by CoMix Wave Films and is distributed by Toho.

The Day of the Doctor and Rose Novelization Review

Doctor Who is a long lasting british science fiction television show I’m a pretty big fan of (enough to have five different costumes of the Doctor) and in celebration of the fifty fifth year of the program and thirteenth year of the rebooted show on television we have been presented with two episodes of the reboot series written by Russell T. Davies (Rose) and Steven Moffat (The Day of the Doctor).

Spoilers from this point onwards, I think with psychic paper or Silence, or maybe a crack in the universe the memory of said spoilers can be taken care of.

The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat

The first of these two adventures I listened to was The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat; in comparison to the televised fiftieth anniversary special, the novelization gives a little more backstory to events happening and some clarification to questions some fans had been wondering. We get some more depth on just how dire the Time War really is/was with many species and entities blinking in and out of existence on a regular basis and a plethora of split timelines being created and destroyed in the battle between the time lords and the daleks.

While I did enjoy the novelization, I couldn’t help but get annoyed at the emphasis on the ‘timey wimey’ attitude of the narrator of the novel (The Curator), but this may be because I’ve moved on from the Eleventh Doctor, embraced and mourned the Twelfth Doctor and look forward to the Thirteenth Doctor.

What I did enjoy were the perspective of the Zygone characters and how they felt about the situation as victims of the Time War losing their home planet and being forced to go to earth as refugees of war and even though they would rather not invade the earth under such circumstances, they have no choice, so this allowed more sympathy for me to feel for the Zygone’s than I originally did.

There’s also an explanation for why the Osgoods are so close to each other, but I won’t go into that since I feel that was one of the stronger points of the novel. Speaking of strong points, oh my goodness chapter nine! I just couldn’t believe any of it! There was laughter, tears, and moments where i couldn’t help but blush in embarrassment of what I was reading and the intimacy printed (well in my case with the audiobook, being read out loud).

Also I was very satisfied to see what each incarnation of the Doctor was up to during the final battle between the daleks and the Time Lords and seeing each incarnation going off to save countless citizens of Galifrey in its moment of extreme crisis. We also see what the Twelfth Doctor was up to in all his badass glory during this time as well.

There is finally a small sneak peek to the Thirteenth Doctor that I’d rather readers (and listeners) go explore on their own rather than yap on about it.

Rose

Something I’ve talked about with friends lately is how much I enjoyed the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who (Ninth and Tenth Doctor). While I have nothing against Steven Moffat (Twelfth Doctor dethroned Tenth Doctor as my favorite Doctor), there was just something I liked more about the RTD era of Doctor Who, and listening to this novel allowed me to pinpoint it fairly well.

The background of Rose, her mother Jackie, and boyfriend Mickey are given more detail in this novel. We learn that it was Rose’s own fault that her life was mediocre rather than her mother’s influence and that Mickey wasn’t the pathetic person that the Doctor unintentionally made him out to be and is actually a very kind young man who finds ways to cope with his life despite some of the more depressing aspects of it. Jackie Tyler is essentially the same as she was in the tv series, but has a little more heart.

Rose, though shorter than The Day of the Doctor, was the story I found myself enjoying more. The expanded upon backstories of Rose, Mickey, and Jackie are just a portion of what made the book enjoyable. We also see characters that were unheard of and even more backstory to minor characters from the episode and their perspective of things like Clive (the man who was gathering data on the Doctor via the internet) lost his dad in Remembrance of the Daleks and desired to go on one adventure with the Doctor (even sacrificing his life for his family by gaining courage from the stories he had read about the Doctor).

What I really liked about the novelization of Rose and the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who was the humanity in it. The moments where the novel steps away from Rose and focuses on minor characters reminded me that despite the big bad things happening in the universe that the Doctor and his companions faced there was still the ordinary life of ordinary people.

There were good and innocent people who lost their lives in the chaos of the Auton attack along with people who weren’t good, or kind, and were just really bad people. There are also characters who weren’t even named, but filled with joy over surviving the impending doom of the situation and that when all the chaos was over and the day was saved got over their fear immediately and started aiding those injured in the attack.

It isn’t necessary to read these two novels to enjoy the episodes of Doctor Who, but I found myself really enjoying them and will probably buy and read the hard copy editions as soon as they are available.

I give The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat three out of five Fez’s (is that how you do the plural to fez?) and Rose by Russell T. Davies four out of five Tardises (Tardi?).