“Have you ever wondered what it’d feel like to watch someone?”
Social media is scary. It’s given everyone a personality and an existence outside of their own, and it can easily be exploited and made menacing. In “Tape 2, Side B,” 13 Reasons Why explore stalking, and although it might be the series’ least successful episode so far, it’s still pretty well-done. What’s so unexpected about it is that the stalking is analog.
Hannah has a stalker. It won’t come as any surprise to anyone that it’s Tyler (Devin Druid), who has been constantly in the background, taking pictures. He says he’s the student life photographer, but I went to high school too, and, well, that’s not a thing. I’ll even go a step further: I was on the yearbook committee (ladies), and even we didn’t have a student life photographer. Clay finds out about Tyler by following Hannah’s map, which leads him to Tyler’s house.
Here we get more of 13 Reasons Why‘s excellent characterization, as Clay runs into Marcus while skulking in the bushes in front of Tyler’s house, the window pockmarked with cracks. “You’re not the first one to come looking in the famous window,” Marcus says. “We all took our shot.” Then Marcus says that he didn’t listen to the tapes, and that Hannah killed herself for attention, which is some really expedient character work. And we get our first hint of Hannah’s plan, and of Tyler’s ultimate comeuppance.
Tyler’s past with Hannah is complicated. There’s definitely some unrequited love at play, as he tells Clay, but at the end of the day he just comes off as a creep, which seems like a waste of an actor as talented and expressive as Druid (who, to be fair, does fine work with the role; it’s the writing that doesn’t serve him well). Druid’s darting eyes easily convey the paranoia felt by someone who spends a lot of time watching other people and fears the same happening to him. He’s creepy, sure, but nervous too, and that helps humanize him.
We never really get a satisfactory explanation for why Tyler is stalking Hannah – no classroom interactions, no potential for mixed signals. But it’s hard to get too mad at 13 Reasons for that, because it leads to an excellent scene of Hannah, home from work, lying in her bed and hearing a camera shutter outside, sounding like so many whispers.
What works best about the show’s story structure is its sense of escalation – the rumor with Justin led to the list from Alex led to Tyler hiding in her bushes. It all feels natural, and returning director Helen Shaver once again shows her affinity for directing Katherine Langford, whose expressive eyes and face continue to impress.
What bothered me most, though, about “Tape 2, Side B” is how self-contained it felt. Until now, every episode of the show has led seemingly effortlessly to the next, but this felt more, well, episodic than other installments. There was some development of the central mystery, but ultimately it all built to something like a punchline.
Courtney volunteers to help Hannah catch her stalker, which leads to them drinking during a sleepover and then making out a little bit. It feels honest and not exploitative, which makes it all the more upsetting when Tyler photographs them kissing, and Courtney acts cool towards Hannah the next day. This ends by Clay taking a picture of Tyler’s ass when he steps out of the shower, and texting it to everyone. Which I get, but it feels like a hollow victory.
I understand that Hannah is not perfect, and through threats has shown her vindictive side, but this feels like a bridge too far. On the other hand, should she just let Tyler go unpunished? On still another hand, he gets rocks thrown at his house on a regular basis and now the whole school has seen his ass. Where the episode fails is in its portrayal of Tyler; everyone else we’ve seen (Justin, Clay, Jessica, Alex, hell, even Bryce) has been afforded more dimensionality, but the only interactions Tyler has with Hannah are unpleasant.
With everyone else, it’s been a surprise to see how their actions led to Hannah’s suicide; with Tyler, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t. And not everyone is perfect – some people are fucking creeps. But this show has conditioned the viewer to expect more.
It’s not a bad episode, don’t get me wrong. 13 Reasons Why manages to balance plot and atmosphere incredibly successfully, and this episode doesn’t buck that trend. It remains a believable portrait of high school, down to the lame costume contests (Clay, sounding like a young me: “It’s Sid and Nancy, for fuck’s sake”). But the show has stakes its claim on realism, which is why it can’t help but be disappointing when it relies on out-and-out villainy.
A Few Thoughts
- Courtney is so cool. And did you see that leather jacket she had on? Awesome.
- Tony warns Clay against going to Bryce’s, and later is waiting for Clay when he comes downstairs, all of which adds credence to my “Tony is an angel” theory. Also, he gets the show’s best “fuck you,” when Clay says there probably isn’t a second set of tapes, and Tony responds by playing his copy of tape one in his car.
- Sorry for not having any pictures – like I said last time, this show is a bitch to find pictures for.
- The editing remains phenomenal here. My personal favorite shot was of Courtney running out of Hannah’s house, interspersed with Clay doing the same.
- Speaking of which, I love that Clay wasn’t, like, Hannah’s best friend. They were close, but Olivia had no idea who he was. Great way to play with audience expectations.
Finals Score:
3.5/5
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