“Maybe you didn’t even realize you were being cruel.”
The problem with having a premiere as good as that of 13 Reasons Why is that a followup episode is all but destined to disappoint in comparison. That’s not to say that “Tape 1, Side B” is a bad episode – it isn’t – but it’s certainly a slower one, which isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. But it’s hard to follow the breakneck revelations of “Side A.” That’s not a knock on the show, it’s just more or less a fact of life.
I think what threw me off in this episode is that it didn’t focus on a character we’ve already met. “Side A” had the benefit of focusing on Justin Foley, who was one of the first characters we met; “Side B” focuses instead on Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe), onetime best friend of Hannah Baker. We haven’t met Jessica before, so her introduction, and importance, is a bit jarring, but again, that’s not a bad thing.
If “Side A” had introduced the subjects of every single tape, well, I would have bitched about that in my last review. So this is my way of saying: I am aware of how petty and stupid this complaint is. Rest assured, it doesn’t affect the quality of the episode, probably because Boe and Katherine Langford (as Hannah) have such great chemistry.
They have an excellent meet-cute after their guidance counselor calls them to her office and basically tells them to be best friends. They call each other by the wrong names, playfully, and later lament that maybe the counselor was right after all. It’s a good way to quickly establish Jessica and Hannah’s friendship, and another way to show the characters’ emotional maturity – it’s not easy for teenagers to admit when an adult is right.
Their friendship falls apart, unfortunately, largely because of a boy, Alex (Miles Heizer). This was confusing to me at first because I thought Alex was coded as gay (and Heizer is dating Brandon Flynn, aka Justin, in real life, which is adorable), but the story moves along at a nice enough clip to move past any misconceptions on the part of narrow-minded reviewers. Plus, it’s good to move away from the “gay best friend” stereotype that we’re all sick of.
There’s a great scene when Jessica and Alex show up to the theater where Hannah works, evidently anxious at her presence (“I thought you didn’t work Wednesdays?” they both ask); Hannah give Jessica a free ticket but charges Alex ten dollars.
Beyond Boe and Langford playing off of each other, “Side B” was a pleasingly atmospheric episode. Returning director Tom McCarthy seems to be conducting Eskmo’s brilliant score as it accompanies lonely shots of Clay, newly distrustful of Tony, all of it propelled by Hannah’s sad, funny, eerie voiceover.
Elsewhere, the mystery deepens, and Jessica (in the present) searches frantically for Justin, who has gone AWOL from school. When she finds him, playing video games in a haze of pot smoke, 13 Reasons continues to challenge the preconceived notions of any viewer who hadn’t read the source material. Not only is Clay not the first person to get the tapes, as I’d assumed, he might actually be the last, as Jessica and Justin are noticeably nervous about his possession of them. “He’s not there yet,” Jessica tells Justin, which changes the plot from a mystery to something more like a conspiracy.
Some of the greatest fun to be had in this show is in the scenes where Clay is not present. That’s not a dig at Dylan Minnette, who is still doing terrific work, but any good mystery should have someone clueless at its center. The difference between 13 Reasons Why and, say, Brick, is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Brendan in that film was streetsmart and tough, whereas Clay Jensen is a believable high schooler.
That’s what I find myself loving most about 13 Reasons: its verisimilitude. The kids and adults are all believable, and the show achieves that through little traits and quirks, like Alex working his way through an entire coffee shop menu.
The other thing I love about this show is Tony. He seems like a character out of a book by Michael Chabon, which I offer as a compliment. He seems almost detached from the show and its proceedings, like an observant angel, or like Uatu, the Watcher. He just follows Clay around, occasionally offering sage advice, and at the end when he fiercely embraces Hannah’s mother, it shows us that he and Hannah were closer than anyone knew.
Normally a show that left me with more questions than answers would bug me, but 13 Reasons Why builds an entire premise on unanswerable questions. And it does a damn good job.
A Few Thoughts
- Am I wrong, or did that look like a snippet of a sex scene with Clay and Hannah?
- I really didn’t like Hannah, Jessica, and Alex saying “FML,” which was a saying that had run its course years before this show even started production.
- Hi, Steven Weber! That was him playing the principal.
Final Score:
4/5
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