After the first season being pretty hard-hitting, and then the second season making me lose all confidence in this show (reference Tyler) I wasn’t planning on watching the third season. Then I saw it was a murder mystery and thought, well, might as well.

Season 3 opens up the story line of Bryce’s murder, Bryce of course was the convicted rapist so everyone has a motive. It also begins the tale where we left off in season 2 with Tyler and his want to shoot up his school.

Let’s begin with Tyler. This felt odd to me, yes he’s their friend and they want to protect him but he was still an attempted murderer. It seemed they just didn’t care about this fact and more wanted to help him while not knowing his motive or the reason behind his desire to kill.

But this can be shown in other areas of the season where they also cover up Bryce’s murderer with a guy that, yes had a lot of issues and was already in prison, but was not the one that had committed the murder. He was used as the scapegoat and I think that’s wrong.

Because let’s look back a minute, Tyler wanted to shoot up a school. He wanted to commit mass murder but the students were fine to continue rehabilitating him back to normality while the guy they framed for murder, Monty to be clear, also hurt students but had his reasons too. Tyler wanted to shoot up the school because he was sexually assaulted and horrifically bullied. Monty wanted to hurt people because he was a closeted homosexual that knew he would never be accepted by his family or his peers. The only difference is no one stopped Monty, it seemed no one cared enough to help Monty who committed, yes horrific crimes, but they cared enough with Tyler who wanted to commit cold blooded murder.

I see hypocrisy here and really the message of the show is anti-bullying and being accepting of the people around you, but of course not if you’re a jock or someone who made mistakes that wanted to change.

Do I think Bryce deserved to die? No I do not. I don’t think anyone has a right to end someone else’s life and the person who did kill him in the end I think does deserve to be brought to justice. Yes it was a somewhat accidental death but with all the cover ups and conspiracies and lies I think he deserves to be punished. Yes Monty may already be incarcerated but that doesn’t mean you can just blame it all on him and all’s well that ends well.

I think this season was one of the worst with the messages it brought across to the viewers. That people don’t deserve the same amount of love and respect no matter their past or background. There is always a reason for people’s actions and yes the show did recognise these cause and effects but it did nothing to show the audience how their actions can effect other people in a positive light. I bring it all back to my story idea from the first review: this show could’ve been so much better and more informative but unfortunately it just triggered a lot of audience members and made us feel sympathy for an attempted murderer.

What did you think of season 3?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding