13 Reasons Why (Season 4)
Cast: Dylan Minnette, Alisha Boe, Brandon Flynn, Christian Navarro, Grace Saif
Created by: Brian Yorkey
13 Reasons Why has had its journey. What started as a teenage story touching on bullying, rape culture and suicide turned into a court-room drama (season 2) and murder mystery (season 3) and finally became a psychological thriller in the final season, which is now streaming on Netflix.
In season 4, the story picks right from where season 3 left off. Students at Liberty High are dealing with Monty de da Cruz’s death and how they used it to cover-up Bryce Walker’s murder. They are in their graduation year and have little time left on their hands and many more lies to cover up. As they prepare for college they’re trying their best to not get involved in a new fuss. But guess what, they have enough on their plates from the past two years to deal with.
The focus is entirely on the original cast and the narrative forcibly progresses so as to give them a good closure. There are multiple new characters, who appear to make some substantial addition to the story but they get lost without really doing anything.
This season, after Hanna Baker (Katherine Langford) and Ani Achola (Grace Saif), finally Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) becomes the narrator and the story is told from his perspective.
It is definitely more comfortable to listen to the story from him than Ani, but it becomes confusing sometimes. You cannot conclude what is real and what is not because your prime character, who holds the show together has anxiety issues and he himself cannot at times differentiate reality from hallucinations. However, there's no denying the fact that Minnette is a saving grace. He pushes you to look through him and empathise with his character. It's his excellent performance that makes you sail through this desirous and forced finale.
Creator Brian Yorkey had cut the season short by 3 episodes and gave the viewers 9 tedious episodes and a really really long finale which has a runtime of one-hour-38-minutes. The show should have been ideally fast-paced and gritty but somehow it ends up looking even more dragged.
The only good that the season does is that it desperately wants you to talk about teens, their deteriorating mental health and how important it is to approach it at the primary stage. It tries best to stir a conversation about one's sexuality and normalises it as much as possible.
13 Reasons Why has always been on point in terms of representation and it does it well in this season too. Nowhere does it try to sugar coat white supremacy. Like the last season, Jessica Davis (Alisha Boe) and Tony Padilla (Christian Navarro) outrightly question the authorities and the discrimination the people of colour go through on a daily basis. Episode 8, when Jessica leads the way to stand against the abuse of power and chaos breaks out between raged students and policemen will remind you of the ongoing George Floyd protests in the US.
Apart from this, the soundtrack of the show is a winner. Right from Elton John to Beach House to Vampire Weekend to St Vincent, the concluding season has a good mix.
The best that 13 Reasons Why has done so far is bringing uncomfortable topics to the discussion table. You can give season four some advantage for that but plot-wise, it is stagnant. The last season doesn’t really add any value to the narrative and adds almost nothing new to what we have seen in the previous three seasons. You might not want to pick this one as one of best as far as concluding seasons go, but you can watch it to understand the reality of anxiety as an issue among teens.
The first season and its impact is still irreplaceable.
Rating: 2/5
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