Comparative Review of 13 Reasons Why, Made in One Caffeine-Induced Night

13 Reasons Why is a series based off of its own book made by Jay Asher while the series is directed by Tom McCarthy. Both the show and book won a wide variety of awards and has gotten many many nominations. However, this comes to the question. Which one’s better, and why?

 The series is far more superior, if you have the time. The story in the book lasts a little over a day while the series is stretched into multiple weeks. It’s not unreasonable to say the director stretched it for marketing purposes, they even made 3 sequels coming after the book ended. Though because of that, the film itself are more in depth, which can communicate a lot in a film that brings suicidal/bullying awareness. Although, there does come some unnecessary filler that comes along every now and then.

In the series, there’s small scenes not written in the book that just makes the series more flavorful and gives so much more emotion to the characters. For example, Marcus catching Tyler peeping on the girls before being revealed he was the peeping tom in Hannah’s tapes. This is only one example, there’s many scenes completely original under McCarthy’s direction. It’s just those little filler scenes that can give the show that gossipy highschool sting that people crave. 

One of the most important scenes is portrayed pretty identically, while the series does its best to be similar to the book, it also shows more. Near the end of both season 1 and the book, Hannah goes to her English teacher, Mr. Porter, as her last plea of hope. She confesses her troubles, not specifically but enough to show signs of potential suicide. In the series, there’s constant switch backs from the tape and the present as Clay confronts Mr. Porter about how he could’ve intervened, possibly preventing Hannah’s death. Comparing this to the book, there wasn’t as much meaning being told compared to the series. Thus leading the series to be more in-depth, showing Mr. Porter’s guilt and clearly outlines the importance of intervention. 

Overall, the series tells the story more powerfully because it’s more stretched out compared to the book. Thus giving the author more opportunities to go more in depth with many scenes.