Following the murder of Monty in prison the friends must stick together more than ever to keep everything covered up about Bryce's death and who really was responsible for that.
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Number of episodes: 10
***SPOILERS***
13 Reasons Why has been a rather groundbreaking series from Netflix willing to take on important issues and themes not only for teenagers in High School but for everyone throughout life. How your teenage years can really shape your adult life and moments that will stay with your forever. Which makes it more of a shame that now into season four so much of the good work from the previous three seasons has been dramatically undone.
This review will contain spoilers as some moments were rather shocking and must be mentioned. Plus if you Google anything season four the spoilers are in the headlines, which I obviously have not done. Also if you have not seen the previous three seasons details from those will also be mentioned.
It seems a very long time since Hannah Baker's suicide due to being raped and leaving the tapes for her "friends" to listen to, as usual our main character is Clay and that is something we get back more in this season compared to season three with Ani doing the voice over for that season.
A continuation of the story of the guns and Tyler has a rather interesting twist but with the high school quite frankly sick of all the different things happening with the students they add cameras (which in all honesty schools in the UK have everywhere now so I didn't see that as much of a push really) then metal detectors. Secret meetings with parents who downloaded apps onto the kids phones so they could read emails and messages. Then to top it all off doing a very extreme lockdown drill that even as a viewer we were never quite sure if a real shooter was in the school or not. This episode was extremely intense to witness and I just found it so sadistic to find out that schools have done this before. Giving them the same fears and terror as if it were real. Like can you really think of anything worse than believing your going to die and hearing gun shots in the hall? After this Clay who had been having very bad mental health issues has a complete breakdown and is taken away to a mental hospital, his psychiatrist scenes were actually interesting throughout this season.
In terms of new characters we are given Diego Torres who was apparently part of the football team because of Monty and he wants to know who really killed Bryce as did not believe it was Monty. Then we have Winston conveniently moving to the school after Monty's death and knowing he did not kill Bryce as they were together, he wants to cause chaos not understanding the type of person he really was.
I have so many issues with different things in this series that I am not overly sure where to start as so many things were shocking. Having already mentioned the sadistic lockdown scenario. The constant "ghosts" of Bryce and now Monty were tiring and over the top, as if we were supposed to feel sorry for the pair who were evil monsters. Attempting to validate what they did was seriously sick, trying to in death make Monty out to be innocent. Nothing could ever make me feel anything but hate towards him after what he did to poor Tyler! Then Bryce raping which ever girl he wanted, horrible characters. I mean I am not saying that they deserved to die, they deserved to pay for the crimes they committed. I just truly hated the attempt at creating empathy towards them especially Monty.
Then it seems as though the writers and everyone got towards the final episode which is 1 hour and 37 minutes in length I must add and thought oh wow we haven't mentioned HIV and AIDS lets add that in and kill of Justin after his development and beating his drug problems and even got accepted to a college. Like seriously, this is the part that has angered a lot of people. I can fully understand why it is not like the 80s and different treatment is available now, while it is stated that Justin might have refused a test in the past hence how his HIV turned to AIDS but given his age was that not all too quick?
Anyway those are the issues and crammed between these different things are the college interviews, along with Zack going off the rails in the worst possible way considering he was pretty much one of the nicest characters throughout. Clay and his depression, anxiety and grief which was blowing up then suddenly seemed to disappear and could have been done in a much better and more powerful manner. Although I did like the addition of Dr. Robert Ellman (Gary Sinise was probably the only positive). Tony using his boxing to create options for his future was quite nice as well. Then we have the graduation scene where everything appears rather normal.
The whole season is just quite frankly bonkers and considering it should have really finished after season one which was based on a novel after that it has often been done for shock value. Considering I didn't hate season three either I almost gave up on season four a few times but for whatever reason was curious to how they were going to wrap it all up and end it. The answer to that is totally all over the place!
