My Contrarian Take on Netflix’s Adolescence

 

Itzik Basman

@ItzikBasman

34m • 25 tweets • 3 min read •  Read on X

I watched Adolescence. It’s mostly unbearable. 1 

Its drama is artificially heightened by its contrived, unrelenting rawness. 2 

Episode 3 exemplifies this in the psychologist’s unceasing irrelevant questions and in the orchestrated waves of Jamie’s emotions. 3 

Episode 4 in its unrelenting grimness makes no sense, given the purported subject—adolescence, and given what seems to be the implication that his father’s anger is somehow a cause of the son’s. 4 

That implication arises in part from the unending absurd questions the psychologist keeps hurling at Jamie about his father and their relationship. 5 

The series scrubs grey what ought to be its central question—why the murderous stabbing. 6 

Is it the boy’s psychopathic rage? 

Is it the pollutant of ostensible toxic masculinity? 

Is it the effects of adolescent cruelty? 

Is it Jamie’s inheritance of and the examples of Eddie’s anger? 

Is it one, some or all of these? 7 

A problem is that apart from the contrived enraged emotions of episode 3 provoked by the insufferable irrelevancy of most of the psychologist’s questions, we have no credibly dramatic belief in Jamie’s rage. 8 

What is it in him that drives him to this insanely murderous stabbing? We’re shown nothing in his past as prologue to it, no displays of out-of-control rage as are evident in episode 3. 9 

Discount this episode and the stabbing murder is a dramatic contrivance, something unearned as drama but on which to hang the series. 10 

Again, once episode 3 is discounted as genuinely revealing anything, what shows the effects of putative toxic masculinity and schoolmates’ cruelty and where are they shown? 11 

There are references to direct and online insults, bullying and cruelty. We’re told about these, not shown, (except for the rage of the victim’s friend who’s now beside herself and violently acts out). 

Telling not showing is cheap dramatic hearsay; in a word, it’s a dodge. 12 

Not only are the psychologist’s questions mostly irrelevant, they’re as well a cheap way of implying certain causes of Jamie’s murder of Katie. 13 

All the questions to him about what is a man, what counts for manliness, does he thinks his father is a man, about his father’s friends, about Eddie’s anger, about what Jamie at 13 feels about girls, what he wants sexually from them, about if he might be gay…14 

…and on and on, questions that eventually provoke his unhinged outbursts are meant, again on the cheap, to suggest that toxic masculinity is the air Jamie breathes, takes in to himself. 15 

And if the intent is causally to link the father’s anger to his son’s, then, simply put, it’s a crock. Eddie’s anger where it’s shown, especially in the confused 4th episode, is righteous and proportionate to what triggers it in each instance. 16 

The 4th episode is confused because it has nothing to do with adolescence, the series’ subject. 17 

The episode is effective to a fault—and I do mean to a fault— in its unremitting grimness dramatizing the brutal impact of Jamie’s murder on the family. 18 

But given all that is unanswered and undramatized as I’ve noted, all that is told not shown, the fourth episode is a distraction from what could have filled in the gaps leading up to the murder and then Jamie in the legal aftermath. 19 

As for the unremitting grimness in 4, the fault is lack of dramatic balance. Why is being pounded in the head effective drama? Why doesn’t this series know in this respect when enough is enough? 20 

Unbearability in drama is not necessarily a virtue. 21 

Also, there’s a bad flaw in this episode for a series that purports to swim in being realistic. There’s no way a 13 year old and his lawyer would have come to his decision to plead guilty without his parents’ involvement. 22 

That Jamie simply announces it to them in a telephone call on Eddie’s birthday is as unbelievable as it is unrealistic. More, this flaw signifies the loss of series coherence. Jamie’s announcement is a “deus ex machina”. 23 

We see how beside the point Jamie’s adolescence and the subject of adolescence have now become. 24/24 

P.S. I omitted to mention but was just reminded by a friend how absurd is the opening scene of storm troopers en masse crashing into the house, all strapped to the hilt and yelling, in order to take a skinny, diminutive13 year old into custody.