Summary: In flashbacks, Zach dated Hannah over the summer and they had sex but they split up after Zach doesn't want to be public with their relationship. In the present, Zach gets in arguments with Clay, Alex, Bryce and his mother about what he revealed in court. Justin and Jessica meet and she rejects him but still cares for him. Clay's parents discover Justin's presence and ultimately let him live with them.
The Good: I thought the overall Zach and Hannah story was really good and I enjoyed watching it. I actually bought into their romance through the few scenes they shared together and it seemed genuine. I thought that the reveal of their relationship was a big moment and it had fitting repercussions for Zach in the present and led to a really interesting change in character for him. The many arguments he got involved in were compelling and I was able to sympathize with him since he is one of the few likeable and properly fleshed out characters on the show. That made his descent into anger at the end of the episode feel very real and genuinely emotive to us. I sympathized with him, I bought into the fact that he did actually care for Hannah and I felt tense due to him having genuine friendships to lose, and that made this one of the most engaging storylines in this season. I did like Alex's outburst about how messed up he is now. Considering his situation, his character's rage makes more sense than anybody else's and so it made sense for him to be unreasonable and miserable. I thought the scene was pretty emotive, though the convenient boner was extremely clichéd. It also made Alex's storyline feel like filler since it had no bearing on the overall story. Other than that, I thought it worked. I like that we got to see Zach apologizing for being petty to Hannah. He was very clearly a good person so to see him be petty last season felt extremely out of character. This episode treated him much better. The Bad: Unfortunately the Zach/Hannah storyline fell apart at the final hurdle. Their break-up was awful and was treated so nonchalantly that it made me feel that they had hardly even cared for each other at all. They should have worked harder to stay together, especially considering how lonely both were and how happy they were together. With the big pay-off underdelivering, the storyline doesn't end up hitting the heights I wish it could hit. Furthermore, it makes little sense that Hannah wouldn't talk about this on the tapes. The court case is dragging on now. Nothing significant has happened and I'm pretty annoyed by the pacing. So much information has been given, but nothing has happened and as such I'm quickly getting less and less interested. To add on to that, I would really like to know where he opposing lawyers get their information. All of the witnesses are supporting Olivia, so how did the school lawyers learn about all these personal details? That's been a flaw throughout all of the season. The Justin storyline isn't good either. The sequence of him returning to school was edited poorly and felt extremely disjointed and overly dramatic. I still don't care about his relationship with Jessica, so everything they do completely fails to interest me. Additionally, Clay's parents discovering Justin's existence was completely anticlimactic, and like everything else involving Clay's parents, had no impact on the story at all. Everything involving Justin in this episode was just way too melodramatic with no resonance or importance. The last thing is that I really hate what has been done with Hannah this season. We are learning that she apparently had so many more friends than was established last season and that makes her suicide much less impactful. In the end, that means this season is completely ruining the impact of the first season by making Hannah's suicide seem less and less earned, which pretty much destroys her entire character arc. The worst part is that this is only being done to keep Katherine Langford on the show for another season and not to actually further Hannah's story. The Unknown: Why didn't Hannah and Zach fight harder to stay together? What was their relationship like afterwards? Who broke into Clay's house? Best Moment: Zach getting angry and assaulting the lockers with a baseball bat at the end was powerful and earned. Character of the Episode: Zach. Conclusion: While this was easily the most powerful storyline thus far, the episode had way too many flaws to be good. In the end I don't even think this was the best episode of the season because of the sheer number of flaws and how major they were. This season continues to disappoint. Score: 55
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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