History Headscratchers / ThirteenReasonsWhy

* Did Cyrus take the fall for the school shooting 'false alarm'? It shows flashbacks to Zach, Justin and Cyrus being interviewed by the police and Cyrus is saying stuff like "it was just a joke". I don't think it's ever addressed after that but obviously the 'false alarm' came from somewhere and they covered up Tyler's involvement.

** That happens sometimes, high school athletes playing multiple sports. The baseball and basketball seasons don't overlap. The only tricky part is gridiron football--the season doesn't overlap, but highly competitive schools will train all summer, which would interfere with baseball.

* What is with Bryce, Zach and the other jocks being on like all the sport teams (American Football, baseball, basketball at least)?

* The show manages to subvert HollywoodLaw fairly well, although it's not perfect. So with that in mind, how in the hell was the trial in Season 2 not declared a mistrial? Almost every single episode featured at least one element of the trial that could lead to a mistrial. From testimony being leaked by a true crime blog to Jessica's sneaking in of non-admitted evidence and the release of the tapes ''from the very law firm representing the defense'' there were numerous things that objectively could have resulted in a mistrial. On a more subjective note, many of Sonya's in-court antics were easily construable as leading the witness, which could have given the Bakers a chance to appeal.

* Why is Tyler’s statement that Hannah was “sexting” someone taken as the gospel truth? Unless he somehow got a hold of or hacked her cellphone he would have absolutely no way of knowing what Hannah was going to do with the boob picture she was allegedly taking. Plenty of people take pictures (even nude ones) of themselves that they never intend to send to anybody. Yet it’s always just treated as a fact that she sent some mystery person that picture. Also, how could it even be known that she was taking a boob picture? She could have just happened to take a picture of something else after unbuttoning her blouse- unlikely, but it happens.

** Alex is the only one in the group who showed genuine remorse back in Season 1, and he wasn't quiet about it. I think inviting him to be part of the gang even after his fight with Monty was more of a pragmatic attempt to stop him from revealing the tapes - because that is where he looked like he was going. And he was MIA for six months, which is quite a long time in high school land. They're teenagers and prone to changing their attitudes.

* A weird {{retcon}} that gets lost amidst some of the other more obvious ones in Season 2: why does the entire "in crowd" suddenly hate Alex when he comes back to school? Alex was still good friends with everyone up until his suicide attempt. Even despite his fight with Monty, he was still invited to hang out, play cards with the guys, etc. So why did he suddenly come back such an outcast that even Zach helping him out was treated like some sort of big social risk? I know Liberty High has a disproportionate amount of Jerkass students, but is it really believable that a kid's attempted suicide would be met with outright mockery? That's most confounding is that the exclusion of Alex is led by Bryce, who wasn't even present for Alex's righteous crusade against some of the people on the tapes. They also, frankly, act like they barely knew him, usually referring to him as "that guy" or "your [Zach's] friend." It's like the writers forgot that Alex was a core part of their group for most of Season 1.

** As for Zach acting like he barely knew Hannah in Season 1, the summer they hooked up was also the summer his father died. It's shown that in his family, they don't talk about their feelings or anything. So Zach copes with the death by repressing anything tied to that time. His hook-up with Hannah is associated with that time, so he ignores it.

** Literally one of the most arguably [[Anvilicious]] points of the story is that just because you don't know at the time that what you're doing/saying hurts someone, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're not hurting someone. There are a lot of people on the list who did something most people would brush off as being trivial (just check out any level of criticism of Hannah and you'll see that there are a ''lot'' of people who don't get why the thirteen reasons pushed her to suicide) but through the tapes, Clay starts to understand how something as relatively stupid as a "Hot/Not" list or stealing a bunch of compliments from a bag or starting/embellishing a rumour can affect someone who's already not in a great place. It's actually a big point that most of the reasons are, at least on the surface, trivial and small things anyone can be guilty of without even really thinking about it. It makes a lot of sense that Clay would start being paranoid about his interactions with Hannah and whether he might have been guilty of just doing something thoughtless like Alex or Zach did and hurting Hannah unintentionally. (Fun fact, one of the biggest criticisms of the book (not so much with the series weirdly) was that Clay ''didn't'' do anything and his being included as the TokenGoodTeammate of the tape's subjects was a cop-out). Also yeah, Clay's not exactly in the best state of mind by the time he gets to his tape - and bear in mind that although the reasons themselves might not be getting worse, Hannah's situation ''is'' worsening as the tapes go on. If you're on, say, side 8 and your name ''still'' hasn't come up, you'd probably be forgiven for thinking you'd done something pretty damn serious (as far as Hannah's concerned) to warrant having to wait so long.

** Potential explanation: Zach and Hannah did repeatedly hook up, but only as acquaintances-with-benefits for a very short period of time, with Zach's flashbacks comprising the entire span of their time together. Hannah's initial proposition of sex is phrased like someone who was just eager to lose their virginity, and perhaps that really ''was'' all that she valued at that point in her life after pursuing relationships with popular kids had already consistently let her down. Perhaps Zach viewed their interactions that way too, at least initially, and he only prescribed deeper feelings to their limited interaction after guilt toward not preventing her loss had time to compile. Their relationship being short and shallow would leave plenty of time and room for Hannah to feel lonely without the loss of it contributing greatly to her overall pain.

* Obvious {{Retcon}} aside, how are we supposed to make sense of Zach and Hannah's summer fling in regards to his inclusion on the tapes and his general behavior in Season 1? The photo on his phone seems to prove that he was not lying about them hanging out at least once that summer, and the show never reveals that Zach was lying like it does with all of the other false testimonies. Clay's Hallucination!Hannah implies that the real Hannah left out that large and important chunk of her life because she respected Zach's intense desire for privacy, which is just laughable considering Hannah's otherwise total disregard for the feelings of anyone who hurt her and that she had no problem whatsoever with including personal information about the also-very-private Clay (who didn't even do anything wrong) and, lest we forget, Zach ''himself'', just for the sake of telling the complete story of her downward spiral. Having her boyfriend choose his misogynist bully friends over her was somehow less hurtful than thinking he threw away a note she wrote him? Speaking of the note: If Zach apologized for being insensitive before they became friends/started dating, how did it never come up then or in the weeks they spent together, and why did he still guiltily keep it during and after that summer if he thought she'd forgiven him? But, beyond all that, Zach's attitude towards Hannah's memory and towards Bryce throughout the series simply doesn't line up with his claim to have cared for her beyond physical attraction; he acts throughout like he barely knew Hannah in Season 1, still seems hung up on the fact that she initially rejected him, and comfortably co-exists with Bryce for a long time after learning of his crimes toward someone he loved.

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** WritersCantDoMath.
** while the events are more closely packed towards the end, and take part during say about a week for example, the rest of the season takes place over several weeks. There were a few days where Clay refused to listen to the tapes, especially around the start, probably over the weekends, and they wouldn't have shown them since nothing plot relevant really happens. We aren't told exactly how long Clay has the tapes, just that he takes WEEKS to listen to them all, and that he really spaces them out because he has trouble hearing them, he can't bear them. Long story short: the story skips weekends/irrelevant days, and Clay keeps the tapes for weeks, but we just see the days when shit happens, which are usually weekdays.

* Hannah seems to be fishing for Mr. Porter to give her a response she doesn't like so that she'll have an excuse to walk out on him (she even recorded the first six tapes before bothering to go see him the first place, making it very clear that [[UnreliableNarrator despite her claims to the contrary, she doesn't actually want him to "succeed" in talking her down]]), while he's struggling to get enough details from her to even be able to respond in any meaningful way. But Porter is right when he responds to Hannah's question about what she can do about the party situation (even though she has misled him on what the situation ''is''): She can do ''something'' or she can do ''nothing''. He even offers her assistance in doing ''something'' before she cuts him off to get to the "fail" answer she wants.
** Exactly how much Hannah is an Unreliable Narrator is up to the individual reader to decide. But just because she'd already made six tapes does not mean she wasn't looking for a last chance when she went to see Mr. Porter. Had Mr. Porter convinced her to change her mind, she could have easily destroyed the tapes, hidden them, maybe even sent the ones about Bryce to the police. The fact that she made the previous tapes in no way, shape or form determines that she was going to kill herself regardless of what Mr. Porter said. She was definitely on the verge of making her decision but that doesn't mean she didn't completely make up her mind at the point she said she did (ie after seeing Mr. Porter). Whether you believe Hannah had already made her decision or not, there's no denying that, as a counselor (and therefore there to prevent this kind of thing), Mr. Porter failed spectacularly - and yes, this troper believes he should have seen through the hints despite Hannah never outright saying she was considering suicide because by that stage, Hannah seemed to be showing all the classic signs of feeling suicidal.
*** At least in the series adaptation, there is definitely denying that Mr. Porter "failed" completely, or at all. He gave her the only two reasonable options: she can either report what happened as a rape to him and he would do everything he possibly could to help, or she could do nothing. ''Those were the only two options available to her, no matter what anyone wished was the case.'' It was her decision to do nothing. She wanted a third option, which in her own words was for her rapist to disappear and never be seen again, which is, of course, literally impossible. Especially when the literal last decision for whether or not she committed suicide was to ''walk out of his office and see if he follows her after telling him she will just get over it'', which is absolutely absurd. We have no idea if he would have investigated her issues, called her into the office again later, tried to help her in another way, etc., because she immediately killed herself following what she deemed a failure on ''his'' part.
*** No. Just no. There are more than two options here. When watching it, my immediate thought was that an obvious third option could be to have her come in for regular treatment for PTSD and depression, as simply 'moving on' isn't an option for most. This would not require Hannah to report Bryce, and will make sure that she is getting the help she needs. In future sessions, maybe Hannah may wish to report him, or maybe she will be able to properly heal from the trauma of being raped. She may be able to tell her parents what is going on so that they can help her further. Lots of things could happen, which can't because Mr Porter did a textbook fail of 'what not to do when talking to a victim of rape'.
*** Yes. Again, Hannah didn't want to accept those as options. ''In her own words'', the only thing she was willing to accept was a magical fantasy realm in which Bryce "disappeared and she never had to see his face again" but ''without'' reporting a rape. That isn't physically possible. Mr. Porter recognized this, rightfully, as impossible, and offered another option. Hannah wasn't willing to accept this, and so we got the ending we did. There was '''no''' reason for her to not report what happened as a rape, and '''no''' reason to not see what Mr. Porter's solutions were.
*** To be clear, Hannah was not asking Porter if he could magically make Bryce disappear. She was asking if, assuming she reported what happened to her and named her attacker, Porter could assure that he would face consequences for his actions, and that she would never have to face him at school. Now, the fact that Porter cannot assure her that she would be protected from her rapist if she came forward may not be entirely his fault, but instead the result of a larger systemic issue concerning justice for rape victims. However, be that as it may, combined with the fact that Porter's automatic assumption to her saying "something bad happened to me at a party" was that she had consensual sex and later regretted it, it's quite understandable that she didn't want to come forward. And whether or not it's true, the response to rape victim who doesn't want to report her rapist is not "Then you need to find a way to move on." Ultimately, the reason Porter is on the tape is not because he doesn't give Hannah a satisfactory way to deal with her rape. It's because he was unfortunately very distracted (maybe not entirely his fault) during their session, victim-blamed her (perhaps accidentally) for her own rape, and did not recognize that she was obviously extremely depressed. This last one is the main one, and while Porter definitely means well and would have liked to help Hannah, he does ultimately fail to do so.
*** To be fair, Mr. Porter explicitly states he is not trained as a therapist. He can't treat Hannah for anything. He could have suggested Hannah see a therapist, but that's really the only thing he could have done differently. And Hannah's failure to reach out to her parents or to Clay isn't really something you can blame on Mr. Porter.
** By this point Hannah has become so traumatised that she's developed a massive victim complex and arguably paranoia as the result of the events that happened to her. She, at that point, believes that nearly everyone is out to get her or that everyone hates her for what she has done. So she simply can't bring herself to tell the truth. She mentions that Mr Porter was not a good replacement for Mrs Antilly, and from what we see of Mrs Antilly she seems like the kind of counsellor who would be able to get more out of her patients. She would not let Hannah leave without getting to the bottom of whatever's bothering her. So I get the feeling that Hannah wants him to essentially be Mrs Antilly. When he gives her a very clinical response, she feels like she has no one on her side.
*** He went about the whole thing all wrong. He carried out what appeared to be an interrogation on the victim, instead of taking her accusations at face value he victim-shamed her, asking her a million questions about consent and assumed-probably because of her reputation, or his internalized misogyny- that she consented in some way before changing her mind, not that it would matter, rape is rape, it doesn't matter if she says 'yes' at first, the moment she says 'no' you have to respect that and stop. Furthermore, he was all over the place, getting distracted by the phone and stuff. In fact when she left the room you could hear the first thing he did was answer the phone. Perhaps showing that he has 2 kids under 2 was their way of explaining that he was stretched too thin and that was his wife calling, maybe, but that just compounded to his egregious offenses at counseling. Apart from the rape, it was clear that Hannah needed help and that she had been acting out; the recent hair cut, the attitude she had been giving him, she was near tears, etc. and even if he didn't pick up on that, she had just told him she was assaulted and regardless of what course of action she would go on to choose, with regards to confronting her abuser, the least he could have done before she left was get her in contact with a real psychologist/psychiatrist for legit counseling that he was unable to provide and arrange follow up sessions with her to check in and see how she was going. She was clearly at risk. If he had paid her any attention he would've seen that, but he assumed that his old school with kids with guns was so much more serious and the people there had real problems whereas these privileged -in comparison- kids had nothing to complain about and no reason to feel sad, so when someone came in with a real problem he just glossed over it like it's nothing, because in his head it doesn't compare, it couldn't possibly be as real as the problems over there after all, so that's why he failed her: he didn't take her seriously.
*** Let's not forget, though, that Hannah is proven to be an UnreliableNarrator at times - not because she's intentionally lying but because if you ask two different people what happened in a situation between them you can get two separate answers, and both parties feel they are being truthful. Like with Jessica feeling that Hannah betrayed their friendship and Zach not throwing her letter away. What's to say that what we saw between Hannah and Mr. Porter is the objective truth of that situation? He might very well have said and done all the "right" things in that moment but she was so far gone in her depression, or even so determined at that point to take her own life, that she was (consciously or not) setting him up for failure no matter what he said or did, not acknowledging the ''right'' things he said and only focusing on the wrong ones. Until we see Mr. Porter's recollection of that conversation, or a truly objective flashback, we have no way of knowing. Mr. Porter surely didn't handle the situation perfectly, but how many among us wood? It seems unfair to judge him solely based on Hannah's version of the story when we know that it's canon (and realistic) that her experiences aren't necessarily the actual truth of what happened. That doesn't diminish how she felt, her experiences and feelings were what they were, but it is enough to give Mr. Porter the benefit of the doubt.

** WritersCantDoMath.

* The timeline of the series seems weird — the story seems to take place without a single day unseen by the audience, with most of the episodes representing a single day. And yet, almost every episode in the present takes place on a school day — there are no weekends in the universe. At least three days take place between episodes 6 and 10, since that is the length of Montgomery's suspension, but there are still seemingly no weekends.

* On top of Hannah letting Clay dangle and thinking he's done something wrong, why do the rest of the recipients seemingly tease Clay into thinking his reason for being on the tapes was something horrible? While perhaps they are doing this to intimidate him into dropping it (although this would be fairly stupid, since convincing a person that they're implicated would probably motivate them to listen more), they also discuss Clay's presence on the tapes when he isn't around, and act as though he will freak out when he gets to his tapes. The truth is, they've all heard Clay's tape and know that it essentially exonerates him.