SPOILER ALERT (Season 2)
If perhaps you live under a rock and have not already binged watched the second season, then please do not read!
I am seeing so much negative talk about how this show goes too far but did it really? Is this show really too in appropriate for teenagers? Critics are claiming teenage suicide is contagious. As well as school shootings that it creates a domino effect. But I beg to differ. I think its really good to put into perspective these things and show them graphically because people need to see what drives teenagers to this point of either killing themselves or snapping one day and shooting up a school. The boy who almost shot up the school in this show was a good kid. Who tried to help everyone and loved people. He was a nerd and scrawny and bullied nearly every day of his life. Kids can only take so much abuse and after being sexually assaulted and nearly dying he just lost it.
(FYI the sexual assault scene for Tyler was by far the most graphic sexual assault scene I have ever seen. I was in tears as it was devastating and terrifying. Please take caution if sexual assault is a sensitive subject for you. Do not watch alone.)
In light of all the recent school shootings, while it's so easy to hate the shooter, remember at one point they were someone's baby. Someone's world and someone's child. No one was born to just one day kill people or take lives. It is a mixture of mental illness and abuse. Then you have the girl Hannah who kills her self after being bullied, shamed, called a slut, friendless, and accidentally being responsible for someone's death. I mean she was just a kid and someone's daughter who didn't know how to process everything that was thrown at her. And then she gets raped. Rape is not something to be taken lightly. Coming from someone who has been it screws you up in ways you didn't even know were possible. And having to face your rapist every single day and then get bullied after it, and try to reach out to your school guidance counselor only to be told to just let it go......I mean until you've been there you can't say to just let it go to someone. Watching the suicide was no doubt heart breaking. And I wish i could have grabbed this girl and told her to just hold on that it would get better one day. I wish I could have told any teenager who committed suicide that there is so much more to life than high school. And most importantly, that it GETS BETTER!
Teenagers and kids can be so cruel and evil! But they are just kids. They were someone's baby at one point in time. Some kids are mean because of what they go through, and some are struggling with who they are, some don't have great parents. They're just kids. I think all teenagers should have to watch this to see what these kids went through graphically that led them to these devastating events.. Put an end to bullying already. I don't think suicide is contagious like critics are claiming but i think teenager's really need to really think of how they treat other kid's and see what the consequences of bullying can do. I think Jay Asher the writer is brilliant and brave for putting this out there for people to see. We hear about bullying every day. But until you really see it and the damage it does it doesn't really effect you, until you actually see kids being just ruined. I think that most teenager's, parents of teenagers, and people really dont care as long as it doesn't effect them directly but maybe if they see what it's like it will encourage kids to be just a little nicer.
