3 min read

on march 13, netflix dropped a 4-episode miniseries called adolescence about jamie miller, a 13-year-old student who gets arrested for allegedly killing a classmate.

this ain't supposed to be a review. i'll throw in some personal opinions, but mostly, i just wanna rant about how some people reacted to this show.

i like crime-related media, but that's not why i watched adolescence. i saw someone on twitter talking about how kids like jamie are getting more common in real life, and in the replies, people were praising owen cooper's acting (he plays jamie) and mentioning the third episode, which focuses on jamie's session with a psychologist.

honestly, i'm lowkey into the psychological aspect of crime, so whenever a show explores the accused-psychologist dynamic, i'm all in.

so i opened netflix and hit play.

at first, it felt like a regular crime show where you just follow the investigation, try to guess what happened, figure out if the accused is actually guilty, what the motive was, and then watch everything unfold. but adolescence? that's not what it's doing. and a lot of people completely missed that.

from episode two onwards, it's crystal clear that this isn't an investigative series. sure, a crime happened, and yeah, we wanna know if jamie really did it and why. but more than that, the show is about the rise of misogyny among younger generations, the lack of respect for authority figures, and how there's a whole mess going on in teenagers' lives that adults are either unaware of or straight-up ignoring.

and no, this isn't me reading too much into things and making up meanings for the sake of it. adolescence is a critique. and that's not just my take, it's what the creators themselves said.

but people got mad because the show "didn't show" the conclusion of the investigation.

so now i'm wondering: did the show fail to communicate its message or do people just not know how to interpret something unless it's spoon-fed to them?

the show uses long takes, where entire scenes are filmed without cuts. i get that this can be overwhelming or even a little boring depending on the scene. but for this series, i genuinely think it was the perfect choice, so i refuse to accept people saying that episodes three and four were "boring" or "about nothing".

the conversation between jamie and psychologist briony in episode three is absolutely intense. owen cooper and erin doherty's performances are insane. it's 52 minutes of one continuous scene, and when it ends, you just sit there, staring at the ceiling in complete silence, trying to process what you just watched.

at least, that's what happened to me. i stared at the ceiling. then i cried. a lot. and to this day, i still don't fully understand why. but i think, as a woman, i deeply felt what the psychologist was going through with the men in that episode, including jamie, who is "just 13 years old".

being a woman is fucking hard, and when the episode ended, i just thought: "it has always been hard, it still is, and apparently, it will always be". and that hit me hard. i'm only 24, but watching this show made me think "if i have a son, he could end up like this. if i have a daughter, she could end up dead because of someone else's son". it was like reality just smacked me in the face. it really sank in and it hurt.

the last episode shifts the perspective to jamie's parents. no, you're not gonna see jamie in court. no, you're not gonna see him going to prison. that's not what the show is about. it makes a point, and if you get it, you get it. so no, we didn't need more episodes and we sure as hell don't need a second season.

adolescence doesn't end with a sense of "justice was served". the ending is bitter and there's nothing we can do about it. and honestly, i just hope that same sense of helplessness doesn't apply to real life too.