13 Reasons Why has many examples of flawed characters doing detestable things to each other. Some are still intended to be sympathised with but when it comes to these examples, most audiences didn't agree.
- One of the many complaints about the show is how unsympathetic many found the main character, Hannah Baker. The premise of the show is that Hannah was Bullied into Depression to the point she commits suicide, and prior to her death she created thirteen tapes each directed at a person she believed were responsible for her fatal choice. Many viewers took issue with this for several reasons:
- One issue is that the tapes slowly reveal that Hannah could have avoided most of the problems herself, takes minor things way too seriously, and can't seem to learn from her mistakes and take accountability for her own actions. She has several moments where she makes poor choices, in particular constantly trying to befriend and party with the popular kids even though she's well aware they don't like her and are responsible for ruining her reputation at her high school, while pushing away people like Clay who do genuinely care about and try to connect with her. A related issue is that she keeps going to the parties of popular teens, even though every time she does so bad things happen to her, resulting in her eventually getting raped by Bryce at his house, which completely breaks her. And this is after she witnessed Bryce raping Jessica during another party at his house and knowing how dangerous he is. While most viewers feel bad for Hannah being bullied, slut-shamed and sexually assaulted and agree that she wasn’t to blame for this, they tend to get frustrated by her habit of continually putting herself into bad situations or not seeking out better company.
- While she had perfect reasons to have people like Bryce and Marcus on her tapes, her reasons for everyone else having tapes were seen as questionable or downright petty to some viewers. When it comes to Justin's tape she had the gall to blame him for Jessica being raped and not helping her instead of Bryce who actually raped her even though she was in the same room as them and did nothing to help Jess afterwards nor did she report it, whereas Justin at least attempted to stop Bryce. Not to mention that later that night she was involved in the accident that killed Jeff, which she doesn't report either. Many viewers also felt it was extremely messed up that Hannah used the tapes to reveal that Jessica was raped, something that Jessica herself was unsure happened (as she'd been drunk and people kept gaslighting her about it). By Hannah's own admission, her best friend and crush Clay, doesn't belong on the tapes at all because he was always kind to her, but she included him anyway just to tie everything together, which severely damaged his mental health due to his belief he'd driven her to suicide. Viewers have noted that Hannah treated Clay poorly prior to this too, coming across as verbally abusive given every other conversation has her criticizing things about him like his social skills, and being passive aggressive if he misunderstands or inadvertently offends her.
- Clay Jensen, the other main protagonist, increasingly came off as unsympathetic to viewers as the series went on.
- Season 1 saw a small niche of critics and bloggers who found Clay a bit problematic at times. While he was definitely suffering from Sanity Slippage throughout the season and was grieving the loss of two friends, he engaged in some pretty terrible behavior, not limited to circulating actual child pornography with his revenge photo of Tyler and deeply disturbing Courtney by taking her to Hannah's grave and essentially telling her she caused Hannah's death. Instead of asking Courtney questions and inviting her to talk, he accuses her and condescendingly tells her, an Asian lesbian with two gay dads, that she has no reason to be afraid of coming out because it's the 21st century.
- This view of Clay really ramped up in Season 2, practically bordering on hatedom among older viewers and online critics. Many saw Clay's likeability drop significantly in this season, from the very first episode. When he began having visions of Hannah, rather than be even partially honest with Skye, he flat-out lied and told her he "never thought about" Hannah. He spent most of the season badgering Jessica into going forward about her assault, not because it would help her but because it would help Hannah's case, although it would also have been vital for bringing Bryce to justice. He didn't even grasp basic concepts – like the fact that Hannah was allowed to be interested in (and have sex with) guys who weren't him. Much of Clay's torment that season was caused by himself. Even in the very first episode, he becomes upset simply because Tyler told a story about Hannah he refused to believe. As the season goes on, Clay also lashes out at Justin while in recovery (even implies that he hates him right after Justin has saved his life), tries to pressure Sherri into going back to the clubhouse despite being clearly disturbed by it, and treats his own incredibly supportive parents like dirt (he flat-out tells them to get him a car). Hell, he's even a jerk to Hannah's ghost.
- Clay becomes this again in Season 4. He's going through some serious mental health problems, so a lot of it isn't his fault, but he's a danger to himself and others and pretty much faces no negative consequences or even gets the help he needs. He pulls an officer's gun off him and taunts it with him, lights a car on fire, escapes from a psychiatric ward, psychologically tortures his friends, beats the shit out of a stranger almost completely unprovoked, crashes Zach's car and leaves him for dead. The most help he gets is a higher amount of weekly therapy sessions. Him being admitted to a psych ward is seen as an injustice of some sort. Even at the end, he tries to hold up a police precinct with a fake gun and is just talked down with no charge. Despite all that Clay has gone through, it still feels like the end of the series rewards him as though he's much more of a hero than he is. He gets into an Ivy League school despite slipping grades and a terrible interview, he is picked as his graduating class speaker despite inciting a riot and lighting Bolan's car on fire, his friends never stop talking about what a great guy he is and he even meets a cute girl at the end of it all.
- Jessica becomes this in Season 3 when she gets back together with Justin instead of Alex purely because of how he understands her body and does sex better than Alex does (even though she now knows that Justin was involved in her being sexually assaulted). She also proves to be a hypocrite by dismissing Alex's suicide attempt trauma until he received a threatening poster, criticizing Chloe for not testifying against Bryce, and attempting to ban male aggressive sports because she claims it promotes sexism and rape culture, despite the fact that she's with a jock who let her get raped and said nothing about it for months. Many people called her out on this (including Alex and even Justin himself) and even she calls herself out on it but she ultimately does nothing about it. Lastly, she was never called out on keeping the secret that Alex killed Bryce even though Clay was about to go to jail for it.
- Alex falls into this by Season 3 due to him being Bryce's killer. While Bryce is far from a saint and Alex does show some regret when listening to his tape, Bryce was trying to become a better person. Also, murdering him by pushing him into a river and watching him drown after he was beaten to a bloody pulp and had both of his legs broken by Zach was utterly cruel. Lastly, he was initially willing to let Clay and Zach take the fall for said murder, and ultimately lets Ani and the others pin it on Monty. His murder of Bryce also means that he can never be truly brought to justice legally for his crimes, especially considering he was finally grasping the gravity of his crimes and had actually confessed on tape to raping Jessica and several other girls.
- The show attempts to make the audience sympathize with Bryce Walker of all people in the third season. While he does seem to feel some remorse and attempts to make amends for his actions, many viewers felt it was far too little, too late. For the first two seasons, Bryce has been portrayed as nothing but a selfish, arrogant, and entitled Serial Rapist, who left Jessica traumatized and was the catalyst for Hannah killing herself, on top of being a violent bully as well, who never expresses any remorse for the lives he's ruined. Due to being a privileged rich kid and he got off with what was effectively a mild slap on the wrist for the heinous crimes he committed. As a result, a lot of viewers had a very hard time sympathizing with him in any way; many people doubted the sincerity of his remorse seeing as he continues to act in scummy ways such as traumatizing a young boy, and breaking Zach's leg out of spite, or felt that he had long since passed the Moral Event Horizon to warrant any pity. Hell, even Justin Prentice himself thought that Bryce was beyond redemption.
- In addition to Bryce, Season 3 tries to make us feel bad for Monty, too, who is about on par with Bryce in terms of loathsomeness. He's yet another sadistic Jerk Jock and bully, who actually witnessed Bryce raping Hannah but did nothing to intervene, later wages a campaign of terror on Bryce's many victims to try and silence them and becomes a rapist himself, brutally assaulting Tyler with a mop pole...because he inadvertently got the championship season cancelled (to the point where even Bryce himself was disgusted when he found out about it and warned him to stay away from Tyler). Season 3 gives him a Freudian Excuse by showing more scenes with his abusive father and revealing that he is deep in the closet, but many viewers felt this wasn't enough to make us pity such a vile character, especially considering he still does crappy things throughout the third season such as beating up a person he slept with because he thinks people will realize he's gay purely from Winston talking to him. Also, while Bryce starts showing remorse for his actions and at least tries to become a better man, Monty only apologizes to Winston for beating him up and doesn't show any remorse for any of his other horrible actions, nor does he make any attempt to change.
- Ani, who was introduced into the show in Season 3. Although she doesn't do anything remotely as horrible as Bryce or Monty, she does take some actions that many viewers found rather morally questionable. She's not only very sympathetic towards Bryce Walker, she's even happy to have sex with him despite knowing he's raped multiple girls (among other nasty things) and that one of his victims was Jessica, who is supposed to be her best friend. For the same reason, viewers also found her to be a bit of a hypocrite in that she's fine hanging around with Bryce — a violent and repeat sex offender — but says she's afraid to be around Clay, her other supposed best friend, because he's suspected (wrongly) of killing Bryce. Ani is also viewed as unsympathetic for continually defending Bryce, insisting he was trying to become a better person (with very mixed results) and even suggesting that Clay and the others are wrong for judging Bryce solely for "the worst thing [he] did"; the fact that she's making these arguments to Clay and co makes her seem particularly insensitive and delusional, seeing as they all knew Bryce much longer than she has and suffered greatly at his hands either directly or indirectly. It's also revealed she's spent the whole season lying to the police to protect Alex after she finds out he murdered Bryce and helps set up Monty for it.
