Farewell, Adam West

This weekend saw the passing of Adam West, famed actor known for his starring role on the cult TV series Lookwell.

(Okay, I know very few people know Adam West from Lookwell. I just wanted to give him ONE obituary that didn't start the way he knew it always would: "Holy Tragedy Batman! TV's Caped Crusader hangs up his cape for the final time!")

I summed up my history with Adam West's Batman just a few months ago in this Film School Rejects review of the recent animated movie BATMAN: RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS:

My first encounter with the 1966 Adam West Batman TV series came at the age of either six or seven. A local low-power station was running twice-nightly reruns and as my family did not have cable, I recall the frustration of having to orient the rabbit ears just so in an effort to reduce the “snow” obscuring the weakly-transmitted picture.

It occurs to me that a good chunk of that paragraph is completely unrelatable to anyone under the age of 25. And this was just two years or so before the Tim Burton Batman came onto the scene.

As a first-grader, the “camp” of the show completely flew over my head. A kid accepts Batman for what he is, so there’s nothing ridiculous about a man running around in tights with an underage boy sidekick. When a villain threatened to turn them into snow cones, or trapped them with a giant man-eating clam, a 7 year-old’s reaction is not “What were the writers smoking when they came up with this?” but rather “Oh man, how are Batman and Robin going to escape this serious peril!”

The genius of the ’66 Batman is that the creators knew they were always aiming for two audiences – the youths who saw it as an adventure series, and the adults, who understood the deliberate humor that turned this semi-faithful adaptation of Batman into a parody. It’s an incredibly difficult needle to thread – the kids shouldn’t be able to perceive any mocking of their cherished characters, while the adults need to be able to tell the show isn’t accidentally “so bad it’s good.”

Virtually every adult I've had a conversation with about BATMAN '66 - whether they saw it first-run or discovered it in reruns. Loved it as a young kid, embarrassed by it as a teen and pre-teen, rediscovered it sometime in our twenties and found it hilarious. The first part of that cycle is pretty common for most shows we watched at the ages of 5-9. Have you ever tried to rewatch Transformers? That shit does NOT hold up.

But West's BATMAN does, and that's because it was always smart enough to play on two levels. Both the adventure seeking preteen and the savvy adult were being catered to. The series wasn't a hit with older viewers because it was "so bad it's good." It was legitimately funny, and it's not easy to write something that straddles two different worlds without collapsing on itself. And while the writing is a huge part of the equation, it's merely the tightrope. The actor is the one who has to walk it.

Adam West was brilliant at being in on the joke while playing it like he was oblivious to the same. In the pilot, he visits a restaurant. The Maitre'd offers to seat him, but he declines saying "I'll just take a seat at the bar. I shouldn't wish to attract attention." In a cape and cowl. Right. West plays the line dead series, with zero awareness on Batman's part that he's being absurd.

Alas, West's perfect characterization was mistaken for bad acting and he spent much of the next two decades trying to escape typecasting. It seems he needed to wait for his audience to grow up, so that the kids who were thrilled by his Batman could become the TV showrunners and writers who were eager to work with their Batman. When West's renaissance came, it was at the hands of Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane and The Simpsons's Conan O'Brien.

Just last year I was remarking how wonderful it was that Adam lived long enough to see BATMAN '66 reach its fiftieth anniversary, just one year after the series finally was released for the first time on beautifully restored bluray. (I have the set - it's stunning and you should make every effort to view these colorful and gorgeous episodes.) Complicated rights issues had blocked an official release of the show for decades, but I'm certain that an aggravating issue was that the show's humor and silliness made it a red-headed step-child in the "grim and gritty era."

Even at the time I discovered the show, it didn't reflect the Batman I was reading in the comics. This was the era of The Killing Joke and A Lonely Place of Dying, a dark tale of how losing one Robin sends Batman over the edge, and how a young man named Tim Drake tries to get the original Robin, Dick Grayson, to save Batman from himself by becoming Robin again - a task made more complicated by the strained relationship between Bruce and Dick. There was no room for camp and silliness in these stories, and BATMAN '66 became something to reject if you wanted to be taken seriously as a comic reader.

BATMAN '66 cast a long shadow at a time when comics as an art form in general and Batman specifically struggled to be taken seriously. When I was growing up, readers resented that this over-the-top relic made them look immature for liking Batman. But as time moved on and other, more serious interpretations from Tim Burton, Bruce Timm and Christopher Nolan showcased the full depth of the character, West's Batman was less of a threat. It was acceptable to enjoy it on its own merits again and not burden it with representing 75+ years of mythology.

The blurays coincided with a marketing effort that gave BATMAN '66 a second life in comic books, action figures, and merchandising. The animated BATMAN: RETURN OF THE CAPED CRUSADERS soon followed and another animated film, featuring West, Burt Ward and William Shatner as Two-Face is set for release later this year.

I'm glad Adam West lived to see his Batman's resurgence, and I'm glad his late career gave him so many opportunities beyond Batman. He left this world at the age of 88 and no one can say he didn't live a full life. His work made a lot of people happy and he continued to delight fans on the convention circuit for years. By all accounts he was a kind and gracious man, witty and fun until the end.

We should all be so lucky to have a life like Adam West's. Tonight, this is how I think I'll choose to remember him.


So long, old chum.

Free screenwriting e-books from Go Into The Story!

I realized this week that while I've tweeted about this, I have yet to put up a post dedicated to Go Into The Story's year-long plan to release a new free e-book about screenwriting each month.

Scott Myers, the architect of Go Into The Story, should need no introduction in the screenwriting blogosphere. He's a professional screenwriter, with his credits including K-9 and TROJAN WAR. He's been blogging about screenwriting for the better part of a decade while teaching the craft at UNC and currently, at DePaul University in Chicago.

You'll find few better resources for screenwriting online than Scott and his blog. The books are sort of a "greatest hits" compilation series from the best of his blog. They're all worth a read and they're FREE. Yes, the same sorts of material you'll pay $15 for at Barnes & Noble is available at no charge here - and it's the work of someone who's been both a Hollywood writer and a teacher. It's the best of both worlds!

In a post several months ago, Scott said:

As always, I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest expert. Everything in these eBooks and on this blog is what I guess one could best call ‘informed opinions’. I’m not an A-list Hollywood writer, but I have written 30 projects for every major movie studio and TV broadcast network, have had 4 movies produced, I have created and produced TV series, and I have taught about the craft and business of screenwriting for 15 years, so I have my own unique perspective on things. If you connect with anything I write, great. If not, feel free to ignore. Each writer needs to figure out their own approach to the craft and as I always say: Every writer is different. Every story is different. There is no one way to write.

My vision in hosting the blog and with this eBook series is simply to contribute to the conversation and hopefully provide writers with some insights and inspiration along the way.

Vol 1: 30 Things About Screenwriting

Vol 2: So-Called Screenwriting Rules

Vol 3: Writing a Screenplay

Vol 4: Rewriting a Screenplay

Vol 5: A Screenwriter's Guide to Aristotle's Poetics

Vol 6: A Screenwriter's Guide to Reading a Screenplay.

Enjoy the books! There are six more volumes to go!

WONDER WOMAN takes its place among the best comic book movies ever

WONDER WOMAN is the best film in the current DC comics film universe.

It occurs to me that this statement could be taken as a backhanded compliment. I really enjoyed MAN OF STEEL, but I know many did not. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN was a disappointment in both its theatrical and Ultimate Cuts, and SUICIDE SQUAD was almost unwatchable. So to fully express how good WONDER WOMAN is, I'll put it this way: Patty Jenkins's feature is up there with Richard Donner's 1978 SUPERMAN, and Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT and BATMAN BEGINS as some of the best that the DC canon has to offer.

Wonder Woman herself is a hard character to get right even if you discount any extra hurdle in getting an audience to the theater. At various times in the comics, she's treated as a warrior, an ambassador, a naive innocent new to the ways of Man's World, and a female Superman. She's part-Little Mermaid, part-Xena, and if you lean too hard in one direction it utterly shatters the balance.

Patty Jenkins, star Gal Gadot and screenwriters Allen Heinberg, Jason Fuchs, and Zack Snyder make it look effortless. Having grown up in isolation with the Amazons on their secluded island, Diana is naive about many aspects of the outside world, but she's never played too child-like in that regard. She's curious about babies and ice cream, but fully capable of standing up for herself in a room full of men ready to disregard her opinion. The script wisely doesn't turn her into ENCHANTED's Princess Giselle, wide-eyed at everything that doesn't match her view of the world. It's a perfect example of pointing not just that Diana would come into conflict with the world around her, but the tone of that reaction as well.

Diana's first encounter with a man comes when Chris Pine's Steve Trevor crashes near the island and draws the attention of the German army. After an awesome action sequence where the Amazons completely annihilate their attackers (the only way this could be more awesome is if it were Nazis that the warriors devastated,) Trevor reveals he's a spy who has to get critical information to London in order to end "the war to end all wars."

Diana helps him escape back to the outside world, convinced that the war has been masterminded by Ares, the last of the Gods left after a battle that sent the Amazons into seclusion with "the God Killer," a weapon forged by Zeus before his own untimely passing. Convinced that the war will end when she kills Ares and frees man from his influence, Diana is determined to get to the front. Steve, takes a darker view of the situation, believing that the war is entirely of man's making. However, their goals align and soon they're headed behind enemy lines to stop German weapons and poison development.

WONDER WOMAN is aided by a fairly straightforward plot. Frankly, it's a model of efficiency. We know what Steve's trying to accomplish, we know what Diana's out to do, and the script puts obstacles in front of those paths rather than trying to throw in a 90 degree twist every fifteen minutes. A lot of superhero movies of late have come off as over-plotted, but WONDER WOMAN shows the value of simplicity - particularly when it allows character interaction to take center stage.

The Gal Gadot/Chris Pine love story is what propels the film, and it proves to be one of the best romances in modern superhero films. The actors have great chemistry together and it's supported by a script that makes their affection credible and developing throughout. It never feels like they fall in love just because she's "the girl" and he's "the guy." We see them earning the respect and admiration of the other throughout.

Pine is really good at playing shock and bemusement every thing Diana does something beyond mortal abilities. In the comics of various eras, I've often seen Steve Trevor as something of a boring stiff. Pine's version seems to owe a little bit to Nathan Fillion's Trevor from the WONDER WOMAN animated movie, with perhaps a little less overt swagger. He's positioned as the straight man against Diana and Pine's comic timing is able to get some sparks flying we wouldn't see if this role was filled with a charisma vacuum like Jai Courtney.

Outside of BvS, I've seen Gadot in the FAST & FURIOUS movies and KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES. For the most part, those films didn't demand much of her than handling action/stunt training and looking great. In WONDER WOMAN, Gadot gives Diana so many more dimensions than her previous roles have allowed and there's never a moment where we don't look at her and aren't believing in Wonder Woman.

It's impossible to give too much praise to Jenkins's action scenes. All of the combat is staged so well that we're completely convinced that it's Gadot we're seeing with every punch and spin-kick. There are none of the obvious digital doubles that Zack Snyder's films favor. (I'm sure they're there, but they don't announce themselves as they do in the Snyder films. The effect that we're seeing Gadot (or a well-concealed fight double) pull off everything with the aid of wirework and good blocking is entirely convincing.

I have to think that a lot of this is helped by the fact Jenkins doesn't use many shots that feel physically impossible to obtain. The camera obeys real physics and is treated like it's moving through real space with the help of rigs and cranes. There's nothing to pull us out and remind us that we're seeing an illusion. The No Man's Land sequence is one of the best superhero action sequences of the last ten years. It's kinetic, crowd-pleasing and not a moment of it is lost in a flurry of cuts or CGI orgy.

Ares proves to be a less interesting villain than The Joker, or even either iteration of Zod. That said, he's miles ahead of The Enchantress because he has an actual motivation and a characterization that goes beyond one-dimensional evil. The backstory is that after Zeus created man, Ares, the God of War, was convinced that man would be the ruin of earth. He used his power to set mankind against each other and was only defeated after a clash that claimed the lives of all the other gods.

[Spoilers for the climax ahead. Last chance to bail now]

When Ares is revealed, it's exposed that he did NOT control the men involved in this war. His influence was limited to essentially whispering weapons and poison designs in their ears. They were the ones who decided to escalate their conflicts to a global level. His plan: Basically let the humans destroy each other and then he can remake Earth as the paradise it once was.

He confesses this while under the influence of the golden lasso, so we know he's totally sincere in it - including the part where he sees his actions as righteous. In a bit of a Darth Vader moment, he invites Diana to join him, and the offer is extended at a time where she might credibly take it. Through the entire film, Diana's insisted that the war happens only because Ares is controlling the armies. When she's confronted with the fact that it's in man's nature to do horrible things to each other all on their own, it shatters her faith.

But she finds the strength to oppose Ares, and that gives their battle actual resonance because it's a clash of ideals as much as it's a clash of titans. Ares represents the ideology that all men are evil and should be wiped out, whereas Diana's optimism wants to believe in the capacity of mankind to choose peace. BATMAN V. SUPERMAN came close to using its heroes as avatars for different world views, but thematically it falls apart because of how they're manipulated into that fight. It's not perfectly executed here either, but emotionally it feels right because Diana's participation in the battle is linked to her emotional arc and beliefs.

Or to put it another way, she needs something to fight FOR.

At this point, I'm more hyped for any WONDER WOMAN sequel than I am for JUSTICE LEAGUE, which is only about six months away. Among the many things I love about this film is that it puts character first. Hopefully future DC films will learn from this example and this had better not be the last DC movie directed by Patty Jenkins.

I understand MAN OF STEEL 2 needs a director, for one.

13 Reasons Why - Side 13: Thoughts on Season 2

Side 1: The Setting
Side 2: An overly contrived premise can present a challenge
Side 3: Hannah Baker, from joy to despair
Side 4: Clay, an outsider who isn't an outcast
Side 5: Clay's tape leads to one of this year's most heartbreaking episodes
Side 6: Mr. Porter - Terrible Counselor or Worst Counselor?
Side 7: Do depictions of suicide provoke imitation?
Side 8: Generating tension that stokes viewer intensity
Side 9: Keeping storytelling clarity in non-linear structure
Side 10: Alex's storyline hides parallels in plain sight
Side 11: Fleshed out parents help deepen the other characters
Side 12: Episodic structure makes a comeback

I understand the original concept for 13 Reasons Why would have been as an anthology series like American Horror Story or True Detective, where the cast and storyline would be reset each season. This would have made sense, as the series uses up all the material from the novel on which the story is based. However, with the announcement of the renewal came confirmation that the cast and characters will return.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Brian Yorkey discussed some of his plans for season 2. The creators did such an incredible job with season 1 that I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that season 2 won't have a sophomore slump. That said, some of his ideas are not the direction I would have taken.

Yorkey confirms that we WILL see Hannah again. "I think one of the things that is still hanging out there is this question of is someone responsible for Hannah’s death? Is the school responsible? Who is responsible, if anyone is? One way we’ll explore that question is through the trial and also through all of these kids reflecting on where they are a few months down the road and what other secrets are being uncovered. That’s going to take us into the past, into Hannah’s story. We’re going to get some new context for events we already know about and we’re going to see a lot of things we hadn’t even heard about yet that fill in some really interesting gaps in our understanding of who Hannah Baker was and what her life was."

I think I've been pretty clear in early posts about my utter admiration for Katherine Langford's performance as Hannah and how I've found her to be one of the most compelling female protagonists of late. So it's not a reflection on the actress or the character when I say that I feel incredibly strongly that we should never see Hannah again. To resurrect her, even via flashbacks, would compromise the integrity of her storyline.

In season one, the very last time we see Katherine Langford on screen is Hannah's suicide scene. That's no accident. Other shows might have given us a Hannah appearance later, just as a way of getting a slightly happier or wistful final scene. But there's no comforting voiceover from Hannah. Clay doesn't have any adorable flashbacks to good times with Hannah, so that we can end the show with a sad smile. We don't even get a silent hallucination of Hannah waving goodbye to Clay or some other way to let us feel she would have been happy for what he did.

No, the last we see of Hannah is a girl in immense pain, slashing her own wrists and dying before our eyes. There's real power in that moment and the show doesn't diminish that with anything to soften that statement.

As Hannah herself says on the tape at the start of the first episode: "No return engagements, no encore and this time absolutely no requests."

The second pass through the series plays very differently. We've already discovered everything there is to know about Hannah. The tapes hold no surprises for us and so it really sets in at that point that Hannah's story is both literally complete and emotionally complete. Having experienced Hannah's deepest lows, there's an even greater sadness to the moments of joy in her life. I'm not sure if there's a good way to explain this, but there's a real sense of loss that hangs over the series after we have the full context for anything. She's as dead to us in those moments as she is to Clay.

I hope that when she turns up in Season 2, Hannah's used sparingly. There's real power in that character's reappearance. We shouldn't see Langford on-screen again unless the story demands that specific emotional sucker punch. It needs to mean something to revisit Hannah, and the worst thing the show could do would be to use her in a scene where she's merely a continuity checkpoint. Even though flashbacks are going to take us to other pivotal moments in the characters' lives, I feel Hannah can easily be kept an off-screen presence.

The other concern is that in using Hannah again, the show will reveal something about her that will compromise her arc from the first season. By the time she died, most of the main characters considered Hannah a drama queen, and it's a label that was somewhat understandable when you consider their limited point of view. We've seen through the tapes that a lot more was going on with Hannah and it was a very sympathetic and empathetic portrayal.

But once we're telling the story from, say, Jess's perspective, we're back to dealing with "drama queen Hannah." That feels like a lot less interesting use of the actress and the character, and again, it would only mar our memories from season one.

A year from now, I hope I'm eating my words and saying I can't imagine season two without Hannah, or Hannah's story without season two. For now, put me down as concerned.

I'm almost as wary of Clay's storyline continuing as I am of seeing Hannah again. There's always the risk that continuation will ruin what felt like an appropriate ending to season one. On the plus side, there's a lot of fertile ground to work with. Surely Clay's relationship with his parents could stand some development, as well as whatever happens between him and Skye. It also wouldn't be a surprise to see him dealing with some kind of survivor's guilt, especially considering what he learned on Hannah's tapes. The poor kid got a lot dumped on him that he shouldn't have to deal with at his age. Alex's suicide attempt can only aggravate that.

As far as the other cliffhangers, I feel like Alex probably shouldn't survive his suicide attempt. If I was writing it, I'd probably have him brain dead on life support with the deadline looming for when his parents are planning on pulling the plug. Through Alex, the show could address the issue of suicide contagion and perhaps give voice to some of the issues that have risen in the wake of the show's release.

I think we all agree that Bryce needs to go down. With his confession on tape, maybe the storyline would deal more with the ramifications of the popular kid being revealed as a rapist. I have a hard time seeing the show turn into "The Trial of Bryce Walker."

Yorkey says, "a different sort of analog technology that plays a hugely important role in season 2. So the cassette tapes aren’t at the center of it — those two boxes of tapes are still hanging around and matter to people — but there will be a new piece of technology for 13-year-olds to Google and try to understand what it was." That feels like a reference to Tyler's photographs. The finale showed that Tyler had a number of pictures of the main characters hanging in his dark room. (13 pictures, 13 reasons why, perhaps?) It certainly felt like a hit list, considering he took down Alex's photo after recalling Alex stood up for him against a bully.

In the same episode, we also saw that Tyler was stockpiling guns. If that's foreshadowing a school shooting story, I'm gonna get nervous. Part of the appeal of season one is how universal many of the traumas felt. If we get to school shootings and rape trials in season two, a little bit of that verisimilitude gets lost and this could become just another teen drama. As a writer, I get the appeal of "13 Reasons Why... I shot up my school" though.

It feels like the writers have proven a number of times that they're capable of handling sensitive subjects. I'm here for the character drama. The two biggest assess of season one - Katherine Langford and the Hannah/Clay relationship - can't be deployed in the same fashion in season two.

The next season will ultimately live or die on the strength of its character arcs. It feels like there's a lot more to be said with some of these characters. As I see it, the real challenge is figuring out which kid gets to be the emotional anchor for season two in the way that Clay and Hannah were in season one. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall for a few days in THAT writers room.

13 Reasons Why - Side 12: Episodic structure makes a comeback

Side 1: The Setting
Side 2: An overly contrived premise can present a challenge
Side 3: Hannah Baker, from joy to despair
Side 4: Clay, an outsider who isn't an outcast
Side 5: Clay's tape leads to one of this year's most heartbreaking episodes
Side 6: Mr. Porter - Terrible Counselor or Worst Counselor?
Side 7: Do depictions of suicide provoke imitation?
Side 8: Generating tension that stokes viewer intensity
Side 9: Keeping storytelling clarity in non-linear structure
Side 10: Alex's storyline hides parallels in plain sight
Side 11: Fleshed out parents help deepen the other characters

13 Reasons Why is the rare Netflix show that feels like it might have been just as strong had it aired week-to-week rather than being dropped all at once. We've talked before about some of my dissatisfaction with the binge model, and Netflix shows like House of Cards and Jessica Jones both have fallen into habits I'd like to see less of. With House of Cards especially, the show has been prone to following the "10-hour movie" model of breaking their episodes. The show takes advantage of the belief that viewers will start watching and keep watching. Thus, there's less of a need to make individual episodes self-contained or even as distinct components of a larger whole. That would be like making sure that minutes 45 to 62 in a film should have their own identity even as they fit into the larger whole.

The result of this is that a lot of House of Cards episodes fall into a trap of continuing the action from the prior ep, and moving around plot points to get to the next ep. At its worst (season two springs to mind), each chapter feels less like a story unto itself and more like a collection of subplots. When I think about certain seasons of House of Cards, the episodes all blend together for me. There's no bending to an operational model that is designed to make week-to-week serialized stories a satisfying experience on their own.

I want to make it clear I'm not pining for a purely episodic model, where everything is reset each week. There's a middle ground between the L&O and NCIS procedurals that dodge ongoing storylines and the House of Cards series that are so tightly linked that you can't dip in for an episode here and there. I've gone on before about the lost art of the standalone episode, so I won't repeat that here, but for a while, that felt like it was going to be a casualty of streaming services. JESSICA JONES might have benefited from an ep or two less closely tied to the show's mythology in favor of a standalone case-of-the-week that could have built out that part of Jessica's world more. I get frustrated with episodes that play as a montage of subplots, with characters making a lot of moves that don't ultimately feel like there's weight behind them.

13 Reasons Why isn't an episodic series, and yes, it has a running storyline about everything that led to Hannah's suicide and all the fallout that comes from that. Structurally, it works beautifully for an episode-by-episode model that gives each chapter its own identity. Clay has been given 13 tapes Hannah recorded before she killed herself, and each tape tells a different story about a person who pushed her to it. Obviously there's a structure to the stories on the tape, so that each one leads into the next, but by design, each one HAS to tell a complete story: "This is what Jess did to Hannah, this is what Marcus did, etc." The present day has serialized elements that advance at their own pace each episode, but there are usually enough connections between the tape-of-the-day and the present storyline that a satisfying story is told in both timeframes.

You can describe episodes with shorthand like "Sheri's Tape" or "Clay's Tape," and the action of that hour is instantly memorable. Try talking about House of Cards and doing the same with "that hour where Kevin Spacey and Major Dad get ticked at each other." There can also be a greater tonal variance among the episodes because the flashbacks leap around in time. It means that something traumatic can happen in a Hannah flashback last episode, but if the next flashback is months later, there's enough of an emotional reset that this emotional agony doesn't have to feel fresh. (Hannah clearly is on a downward trajectory, though one with peaks and valleys rather than a straight slope.) Mostly, it means there's a good chunk of the episode that isn't forced to occur just minutes after the previous show's fade out.

Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and end, and the serialized streaming model pushes every episode to be mostly "middle." In the past, I've pointed to Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 3 as the platonic ideal of how to tell standalone stories while still advancing an uber plot. I recognize how for a number of reasons, that might not be as viable as it once was.

The 13 Reasons Why approach feels like it CAN be embraced though. It shows a series need not sacrifice greater connectivity in the name of individuality. It's episodic structure at its best - smaller stories that feed into a larger whole. It takes effort to make that work. When breaking a larger story it can be easier to treat it all like one A story and construct every beat relative to that. There's greater reward in construction more complex pieces that work on their own and fit into the larger picture at the same time.

Side 13: Thoughts on Season 2

13 Reasons Why - Side 11: Fleshed out parents help deepen the other characters

Side 1: The Setting
Side 2: An overly contrived premise can present a challenge
Side 3: Hannah Baker, from joy to despair
Side 4: Clay, an outsider who isn't an outcast
Side 5: Clay's tape leads to one of this year's most heartbreaking episodes
Side 6: Mr. Porter - Terrible Counselor or Worst Counselor?
Side 7: Do depictions of suicide provoke imitation?
Side 8: Generating tension that stokes viewer intensity
Side 9: Keeping storytelling clarity in non-linear structure
Side 10: Alex's storyline hides parallels in plain sight


Teen dramas don't tend to have a lot of great material for parent characters. For the most part, the adult authority figures present an obstacle to wish-fulfillment stories of teenage rebellion. Also, these shows are aimed at teens and the assumption is that that audience is rarely compelled by drama around adult characters. (And if you take a look at most of the adult storylines in, say, the first two seasons of Dawson's Creek, you start to understand why. I'm not sure why the writers thought we'd be interested in the Leery's open marriage, but there you have it.) Of course, as soon as you sideline the parents in a series like that, it really feels like the show's centered on college kids rather than high school students. The fact that most performers on those shows tend to be in their early twenties or older tends to reinforce that. (RIVERDALE is an exception to this, a show where the adults are fully integrated into the storylines.)

13 Reasons Why doesn't try to shuffle the parents off-screen. In fact, over the course of the 13-episode run, we meet most of the main characters' parents. In each case, the home life helps inform what we know about the characters. There's a pretty broad spectrum of parenting types, from disciplinarian, to well-meaning but ineffectual, to negligent, to absentee and so on. In every case, who these kids are is reinforced and explained by the parental forces in their lives. It speaks to a real depth in the writing and it's a big part of why all the teens, down to the second tier, feel fleshed out.

Hannah's parents get some of the most wrenching material, as of course, they're blindsided by the suicide of their daughter. In the present, they're trying to make sense of how she got to that point while also seeking some measure of justice. They blame the school for not stopping the bullying or stepping in to protect her, which motivates a lot of the conflict through the back half of the episode run when they file a lawsuit. Hannah's friends and the school employees are going to be deposed, which is the LAST thing they want to cooperate with after Hannah's tapes have demonstrated there's evidence that she blames all of them for her death.

Putting aside their significance to the plot, it's their relationship to Hannah that explores how easy it is to miss the suicide warning signs. The easy way out would have been to make Hannah's parents disinterested or negligent in some fashion. Yet in their scenes with Hannah, we get the sense that they are involved in their daughter's life - or at least have no reason on their end to THINK she's hiding things from them. I can't think of too many real bonding moments between Hannah and her father, but she and her mother have a number of conversations about her aspirations and interests. Mrs. Baker never is put in the position of having to pull teeth to get Hannah to talk, and it's hard to castigate her for not being a mind reader.

Which is not to say there aren't clues to Hannah's state-of-mind to be found. She mentions more than once that her mother can't relate to her experience in high school because her mother was popular. It's a telling observation because it makes us wonder if she feels inadequate and even embarrassed by that fact. Equally telling - her parents were high school sweethearts, which seems to have made her both envious of that kind of connection and depressed to not have something like it. Perhaps she feels high school shouldn't be this hard and there's something wrong with her if she doesn't have the same good fortune as her parents. A lot of movies focus on teens trying to live up to pressure their parents place on them overtly, but this feels like the case of Hannah being intimidated by the shadow her parents cast. It's a burden she's placed on herself, but there is the possibility she's twisted this into feeling like a disappointment with them.

That probably also feeds into her guilt after she loses a bank deposit carrying $700 from the family store. It's no small screw-up, but she feels terrible about it and she cares enough about her parents that their (not unreasonable) disappointment really guts her. It nails her insecurities and makes her even less likely to open up to them in crisis because she already feels like a disappointment. A lot of thought clearly went into this, with the intent of making their dynamic as un-black-and-white as possible.

Again and again, I was struck how Hannah still seemed to have a closer relationship with her parents than Clay had with his, at least outwardly. Clay feels rather disconnected from them, especially his father. There's no simmering conflict (at least not any that isn't provoked by Clay's frequent disappearances), but there's also very little warmth. Clay's mother tries hard to force a connection - mandating family breakfasts, not letting Clay close the door to his room - but it's all done in such a straight-on manner that Clay calls her a helicopter parent and usually shuts down in reaction. She's trying, but she's going about it in completely the wrong way.

This is a hard relationship to evaluate fairly because we don't get many scenes of Clay with his parents in the past. Honestly, the only one that stands out to me is when Clay's getting ready to go to Jess's party and his mom offers to drive him. Knowing how he related to them before Hannah's death rocked his world might provide more context to how deep the divide is between Clay and them. But if you were to go just by the parent-child interactions we see, you might peg Clay's homelife to be the one that more likely foreshadowed a depressed, alienated teen who needs help.

On the subject of Clay's mother... it's really hard not to judge her for agreeing to represent the school in the lawsuit against Hannah's parents. First, I'm shocked her firm would assign her that case given that connection alone. Second, yes, Clay doesn't tell his mom that he knew Hannah very well, but her taking that at face value requires her to take leave of a lot of her senses. No matter how much Clay's been hiding his grief, his mother should be able to pick up on something that's up with him since his school got hit with a suicide (and an accidental death, we learn much later.) She knows from the start that this is going to entail attacking a teenage girl's character - a girl who took her own life. Let's say she has every reason to accept Clay at his word when he says he didn't know Hannah - why doesn't it ever occur to her in the abstract that tearing down a troubled teen might do more harm than good to her relationship with her son?

The familial relationships of the other kids prove to be equally important in defining their character.

- Jess's father is in the Navy and she clearly looks up to him. In a revealing moment that's passed off as a joke, she expresses a fondness for "a man in uniform," not realizing the obvious until Hannah points out that her father "wears a uniform." Over the course of the series we learn that Jess was raped and is in DEEP denial about it, with a good portion of that resistance being driven by her fear of disappointing her father. It forms the backbone of her motivation throughout the series. (In contrast, we only see her mother once and learn next to nothing about her.)

- Justin has the worst homelife of any of the kids. His mother's shacked up with a meth dealer who's abusive to him. It forces Justin to take refuge at Bryce's pool house. Through this we learn of Bryce's generosity - he'd give Justin new shoes, saying he had an extra pair rather than embarrass Justin by making a specific gift of them. Bryce's parents have fed Justin, bought him clothes and looked after him in ways his own family never has. This gives Justin a more complicated loyalty to Bryce than just "bro-code" when Bryce forces himself on Justin's girlfriend, an intoxicated Jess. It's a smart move on the writers' part to make this dynamic as complex as possible. Justin feels he owes Bryce and can't betray him by turning him in. He's also been the recipient of a lot of kindness from Bryce so he's determined to rationalize the rape as an out-of-character moment he shouldn't be judged for.

- Interesting, during the timeframe the series covers, Bryce's parents are never seen. They're absent the entire time, which gives Bryce ample opportunity to host parties and gatherings at his place sans supervision. He doesn't have any visible authority figures, no one to set boundaries. If anything, he's surrounded by enablers. He's popular enough and well-liked in school that no one really can stand up to him. When Hannah is sexually assaulted by him, her fear is the same as likely any girl in her position: "Who would believe me over him?"

- Alex's dad is another authority figure, a local deputy. Alex is deferential to his face, calling him "sir," and it's possible that the rigid morality his dad represents is also what causes Alex to take his own culpability in Hannah's death so hard. And again, we know next to nothing of his mother, beyond the fact she works at the hospital.

Seeing how all of these character backgrounds end up feeding the main story arcs, you can understand why it's usually sound writing advice to know as much about your characters as possible. You could simplify any or possibly even all of these backgrounds and still tell the same story, but the characters and the emotion are so much richer for what these extra shadings add.

Side 12: Episodic structure makes a comeback
Side 13: Thoughts on Season 2

13 Reasons Why - Side 10: Alex's storyline hides parallels in plain sight

Side 1: The Setting
Side 2: An overly contrived premise can present a challenge
Side 3: Hannah Baker, from joy to despair
Side 4: Clay, an outsider who isn't an outcast
Side 5: Clay's tape leads to one of this year's most heartbreaking episodes
Side 6: Mr. Porter - Terrible Counselor or Worst Counselor?
Side 7: Do depictions of suicide provoke imitation?
Side 8: Generating tension that stokes viewer intensity
Side 9: Keeping storytelling clarity in non-linear structure

There's a storyline in 13 Reasons Why that might be described as meta-commentary on the whole narrative. It's pretty well-hidden on the first pass through the series, but on a second run, it announces its presence loudly in any scene it appears. Throughout all 13 hours, the characters are left grappling with Hannah's suicide. Many of them are blindsided by it, and those who have access to Hannah's tapes are no less confused.

Of course, the audience is passing judgment on all of them as we take a tour of their worst behavior they inflicted on Hannah. Through every additional indignity heaped on Hannah, every cruel behavior, every public humiliation, we watch a little more of her spirit dim. To us, it seems obvious and inevitable that she was displaying warning signs of suicide, and we might be inclined to indict her friends and family for missing what was right in front of their faces.

Then, in the finale, a guilt-ridden Alex shoots himself in the head, leaving the audience reeling that he too had been suicidal. The first time you saw it, were you surprised things took the turn they did? I was.

Then I rewatched the series. (Remember, I binged it in the space of a week, then watched it AGAIN the week after that. I never have had that reaction to a TV show before.) Let me tell you, once you know how it ends, every scene with Alex might as well have him carrying around a neon sign saying "I'm probably going to kill myself! Ask me how!"

Alex's crime against Hannah was a little less overtly evil than some of the other guys, who groped her and sexually assaulted her. Alex was good friends with Hannah and dated her best friend Jess. Jess wouldn't have sex with him, so he lashed out and created a list that rated the girls of the school by their best and worst features. Because he knew it would hurt Jess, He rated her "Worst Ass" and gave the title of "Best Ass" to Hannah.

This had two major consequences. First, as Hannah put it - it made her ass a target for every boy in school. Coming on the heels of her being wrongly branded a slut and rumors that she "went to third" with Justin, it only fed the perception of her as easy and promiscuous. The second consequence is that Jess assumed there was a reason Alex ranked Hannah so high, and accused her of cheating with Alex. When she ends the friendship, she calls Hannah a "slut" for good measure.

It destroys two of Hannah's close friendships and isolates her even more from her classmates. After her suicide, Alex has deep regrets, saying, "So not only did everyone think Hannah gave it up for me I took away her best friend. And who knows? If she had a friend, maybe..." Clay tells him not to think like that and Alex snaps back, "You want to think whatever you did couldn't be why Hannah killed herself, but the truth is that I did. I killed Hannah Baker! And Justin killed Hannah Baker. And Jessica. And you. We all killed Hannah Baker!"

Suffice to say, he's taking it hard. Here are a couple other examples to watch for:

- In Episode 3, he's seen tearing suicide awareness posters off the walls at school. He mocks the slogan "'Suicide is not an option.' You know what? Clearly it is! Why don't they put up a poster saying 'Don't be a fucking dick?'"

- Later in that same episode, he quits jazz band, something he'd really enjoyed doing. One of the depression red flags is someone giving up something they once got joy from.

- When he provokes Montgomery into a fight, his unusually violent attitude is disconcerting enough. His glum and resigned behavior afterwards also should have alerted us that something was amiss. He seems to want the worse punishment possible - like he feels he deserves it.

- Throughout the flashbacks, there are scattered hints that Alex is going through a depressive time, most notably in any scene where his breakup with Jess is discussed. He's still taking that split hard almost a year later.

- Alex is frequently seen with a group of other kids whose transgressions are discussed on the tapes. Notably, guys like Justin and Marcus are motivated by a desire to keep the tapes and the information on them from becoming public knowledge. Most of them rationalize or even defend their behavior towards Hannah. Alex consistently doesn't. He fully buys into the notion that he's a legit reason why Hannah killed herself.

- At one point Jess says that "Clay doesn't know Hannah lied on the tapes!" Alex snaps back, "Did she? Because she told the truth about me!"

- In episode 9, Justin warns Alex, "Whatever happens to us, happens to you too." Alex responds, "So if I kill myself do you die too?"

The show doesn't hit this point too hard, but there is a scene where "suicide contagion" is discussed, which is when a classmate's suicide can provoke further suicide attempts from other students in the same school. It shouldn't come as a surprise that one of the main characters would fall victim to it, and yet, we're blindsided by the twist.

It's a savvy trick the show pulls. We might be congratulating ourselves on being better people than everyone who hurt Hannah, and secure in our belief that had we been there, we might have saved her - but we don't see it coming with Alex. It brings into sharp relief how it would have been easy for all the warning signs to have been dismissed.

By opening the door to a suicide contagion storyline, the series can address one of the biggest controversies from this first season - that viewers should be aware that exposing some people to Hannah's suicide risks provoking copycat behavior. I have concerns that a second series could dilute the power of this first season, but if it can pull off this balancing act, it might be worth it.

Skye's storyline is given less screentime, but is another case of the show hiding a mirror for another character in plain sight. Skye is the abrasive and... I'm not sure what the right word is.... "alternative"(?)- looking teen who's been a classmate of Clay's most of his time in school. In one of her early appearances she's blunt in insulting Clay for hanging out with a cheerleader, and then mocks him when he says that the girl is "nice." It feels like she's being mean and judgemental for no reason at all.

In another episode, she lashes out at him for ending their friendship when they got to high school. Drawing on a painful memory, she reminds him that he saw her in the hall that day and ignored her. He counters he didn't know what to say to her, since she looked so different. (The implication being that this was when she adopted her new darker and non-conformist look.) With an accusatory tone, she says that he could have just said hi.

Clay, of course, is reacting to this attack on a gut level, not even noticing what's behind this. If he was, he might realize that what Skye is saying to him isn't too dissimilar to the way he acted towards Hannah when he was jealous of other guys who had her attention. She's not being mean - she's been hurt by someone she considered a friend.

She probably goes over the line when she attacks Hannah's choice to kill herself. Clay says she doesn't know anything about it and she comes back with "I know she didn't go through anything different than any of us! We all get through it!" Clay cites the scars on her wrists and asks, "What's this then!" With maybe more venom than she intends, Skye says, "That's what you do instead of killing yourself."

It's a straight-up admission of a cry for help, and one that Clay finally answers in the show's final minutes. He - and we - have seen how so many of Hannah's friends abandoned her because they mistook her pain for her being a drama queen. Even her close friends found her to be a bit much to take, not unlike how Skye can be alienating. Clay recognizes the parallels early enough that it might spare Skye from Hannah's isolation.

Unfortunately, it might be too late for Alex in that regard.

Side 11: Fleshed out parents help deepen the other characters
Side 12: Episodic structure makes a comeback
Side 13: Thoughts on Season 2