Personal Opinion: 13 Reasons Why shouldn’t have gotten a second season let alone a first season at all.
The well-loved show romanticizes suicide, depression, and mental illness.
Yes, the show brings up important messages but halfway through the first season, it only focuses on the romance story between Hannah and Clay, refocused and then threw in a rape scene at the end just toshow how Hannah’s life really sucked. This isn’t reality. That's more of a trigger than reality.
Bojack Horseman is an animated show where the main character, Bojack, a once upon a time tv show star of ‘Horsin’ Around’, struggles with 30 years of depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and still never kills himself.
Yes, he’s a horse, and a lot of the characters are animals, but that’s more of a metaphor than fiction.
Horses are meant to be majestic creatures while Bojack is old, mean, and fat. His love interest for a few seasons, Diane, was human and in an unhappy relationship that looked perfect. She slowly falls into a depressive state as the seasons go by. And yes, she had everything. The perfect guy, perfect house, loads of money and opportunities. She was still depressed.
Bojack had everything, but still couldn’t find steady ground. He was always getting high or drunk and pushing anyone who got close to him away.
"13 Reasons Why" depicts mental illness as something that one can only have if they are going through a shitty experience, then that gives them excuse to off themselves and blame it on everyone. Hannah gave up too early and she also pushed everyone away. She couldn’t get it together and face reality. She went through things that no one should go through.
The whole “why didn’t you tell me this while I was alive” scene is what really threw me into a rage. LOVE WILL NOT CURE MENTAL ILLNESSES.
Love is a temporary fix. Mental illness, depression, and suicide are not something to toy with. 14-year-olds are now thinking it’s okay to kill themselves because their crush will realize they were the love of their life and regret everything. Hannah thought it would be okay to ruin the lives of her friends, excluding Bryce who is pure scum, just because they hurt her feelings or did things that most 16, 17-year-olds do, like I said before, excluding the rape scenes.
Yes, Bojack Horseman is a comedic cartoon but I understand Bojack’s and Diane’s depression more than Hannah’s.
Bojack shows reality more than a live action TV show and that should say something
