The folks at Animation Dingle have kindly accepted Serpent City for next year’s festival! This festival is a huge event attended by all sorts of huge names from the animation industry, so I’m extremely honored.
It was like a binge-eating session, I just kept watching even though I knew in my heart and soul that it was a bad idea, and when it was done I wanted to fucking puke
Season 2 was horrid and I had this morbid curiosity to see how much worse it could get. I wouldn’t have given a shit, but the teasers admittedly hooked me with the premise that Bryce is dead and it’s a murder mystery who-dunnit now. The way this show is done, it works better as a melodramatic teen soap anyway. So I went in hoping that they’d focus on that instead of doing the self-important “starting a conversation” bullshit that made the first two seasons so infamous. I’m very pro-free speech and freedom of expression and I believe no topic is off-limits, but I do believe that if you want to explore subjects like sexual assault, suicide, depression, school shootings and abortion, and you’re doing it in a way that’s supposed to be helpful and educational for young people, you should do it with some subtlety, respect and care.
This show has no respect for the delicate subjects it chooses to go after. It simplifies everything, all of the characters are one-dimensional, and the depictions of sexual assault and suicide are needlessly graphic and sensationalized.
I knew this season would have Chloe get an abortion, and I knew it would be handled super poorly, but I had no idea it would be this horribly tasteless. From the crazy protested shoving a fucking fetus in her hand, to the fact that they show her lying there while the procedure is performed. They honestly haven’t learned their lesson. Even after all the controversy led to them having to remove the portrayal of Hannah’s suicide, they still think it’s okay to show this shit. And if you think that this show should be praised for its unflinching and honest portrayal of this very real issue that effects women and girls every day - consider the fact that Chloe pretty much disappears right after this. She pops up once at the end of the season and she seems fine now. They don’t give a shit about abortion, or the people it effects, and they don’t give a shit about honestly and vividly exploring the implications of this choice. They threw it in for shock value and then they just sort of tossed the character out the window. It’s so horribly insulting.
I also want to know just who the fuck thought it was a good idea to give Bryce a redemption arc. He spends two seasons being a one-dimensional bully, a sociopathic serial rapist who has destroyed lives and hurt people, and now I’m supposed to feel bad that his new schoolmates are picking on him? He brought all of this on himself and he deserves no sympathy.
“What if you were judged by the worst thing you ever did?”
I guess that’s applicable to, say, a one-time mistake, but the fact remains that Bryce was a serial rapist. The fact that they’re trying to humanize him now, is just insulting. I honestly thought it couldn’t get any more cheap and tasteless than season 2 but here we are.
Anyway, fuck this show. It should have ended after the first season. Stop giving this series credit for its handling of serious and delicate subject matter, and instead ask yourself if this is the kind of approach writers should be taking to such issues. The last OITNB season dealt with the issue of deportation and internment much more effectively. BoJack Horseman deals with the implications of mental illness and depression far more honestly. The last shit I took has more personality than any of these teenagers, the last time I jerked off was more nuanced and meaningful than this show and any of the shit it thinks it’s smart enough to talk about.
