recap/thoughts (**lots of spoilers**)

After hearing rave reviews on season 1, went ahead and watched it. Found it very tedious (how many times did Clay listen to 15min of tape and ream other people without even knowing all the story?), but finished it. Generally disliked how Hannah put complete responsibility & blame on other people for their actions/inactions while she was completely fatalistic about her own actions/inactions.

Not expecting much, but liking to see things through, I watched season 2. My issues with season 1 were amplified though mostly all shifted into Hannah's mom (she blamed the school for every single action/inaction, but refused any personal responsibility her herself or her daughter).

Past these annoyances, I was disturbed by reckless vigilantism and secrecy. Amidst this huge case about the school and police needing to do more, characters go out of their way to make sure that can't happen, taking things into their own hands, but doing so as incompetently as possible. A litany of misdemeanors and felonies either don't get reported or characters try to prevent it from being reported (maybe dozen attempts at witness tampering, attempted vehicular assault, destroying a car, multiple physical assaults, another rape [broomstick sodomy], and even attempted murder [dance shooting]).

So many just stupid things. People lie pretty much all the time, for no apparent reason. And usually get outraged at each other's choices while acting like they had no other choice regarding their own actions (like when the case of damning evidence was left in plain view in the backseat of a car...Clay even at one point says "those could be evidence" but makes copies and submits to any kind of authority? No, just passes the originals around and leaves them vulnerable). Then when the group of people confront Monty, for some idiotic reason they send 1 crippled person to go with him. Like, is there a limit on seating? Just such contrived drama.

Most frightening though is they present these characters' response to a school shooting threat as if its noble. We won't call the cops, we will lock all the doors (like that's even possible), and risk everyone's lives because we want to save him. Also we will aid a felon by helping him escape.

Another frustrating piece was the attempted claims that 100% of women are at least sexually assaulted if not worse. Rape to me is one of the most evil, violating acts there is. Since this show is presumably about starting helpful conversations, it seems like they should work off more factual basis. It also heavily implies that this entire problem is due to (evil) boys taking advantage of (innocent) girls. Why would they go out of their way to ignore the other major areas of rape (female on female, female on male, male on male)? And yes they presented a male on male rape, but there was no commentary on it of any sort. It seemed to be more thrown in for shock and as the trigger to the shooting.

And then in talking down the shooter, Clay had to make that editorial comment that adults would only care about it for a week and then move on (even though this whole season is about showing how many adults have spent months and months agonized over one student's suicide). Doesn't seem remotely helpful to continue building this antagonism between youth and adults when the youth do everything they can do exclude adults from their problems.

All in all, lots of different thoughts but the show just came off as a lot of self-righteous, inconsistent characters who make impossible demands on others and heavy handed preaching about certain things in ways that aren't necessarily factual or helpful.

/rant