10 TV Shows That SUCKED After The First Season
4. 13 Reasons Why
13 Reasons Why was a touching, gripping and altogether bold look at teenage depression as told by Hannah Baker who, via 13 discovered tapes, chronicles the reasons why she chose to commit suicide. Season one of the show was a beautiful, self-contained story and anything that followed was doomed to try and exist in it's shadow.
Whilst many shows find themselves jumping off a cliff, 13 Reasons Why went for the gold as if it was a competitive dive. Scarcely have shows imploded quite like this one did. Just to put a very fine point on it: season one of 13 Reasons Why garnered a 76% Metacritic score that dropped to a 49% in the following year, and a shockingly low 26% in its third season.
The first season of 13 Reasons Why came under fire for covering and dramatizing mental health and suicide but it also had plenty of people defending it as an important and realistic portrayal of the struggles of teenage life. Season 2 however lost most of its supporters when it became less of a study of the effects of depression and more just became an angsty show itself, culminating in an attempted school-shooting and a shocking scene of sexual abuse.
Essentially, the show stopped being about the reality of trauma and instead just went for easy shock value. The writers persisted on, morphing the show’s tone into a teenage drama murder mystery that completely got away from its original message and began to romanticise the futility of it all.