I almost agree, however the role of Adam in the series was to point out you can be bullied and still have no impulse to kill. Katie’s bullying was no excuse, and after an inner look at Jamie’s mind and where he placed women in relation to him explains why he killed. He probably thought “How could you someone as insubordinate as a woman bully me” - a direct attack on his masculinity - and decided that exercising violence was the way to remind himself that he does have power over her and to actualise it.
I thought it was brilliant even though I also mind some of the woke undertones on "toxic masculinity." I am from Serbia where a bullied 13-year-old, super smart, introverted boy shot and killed 10 of his classmates last year after years of bullying that he didn't know how to cope with. The school cared only performatively (as much as it is necessary to fill in school reports, move him from a class to another, send him to disinterested school phycologist), and parents wanted him to toughen up and be a man (even though they were educated they have that working class mindset, like “we went through so much, wars and hunger, you can deal with some bullying”). In Serbia, this was an upper-middle-class school, with kids of educated professionals who took great care that their kids didn't wander the city alone doing God knows what. The boy even had a babysitter, but no one cared what he watched and whom he spoke to online. He encountered some Americans who introduced him to school shooting solutions. The rest is history. I cried for an hour watching.
I understand that it's a difficult subject to broach for a number of reasons and nuance when discussing this is more important than ever, but I disagree with your assertion that the show implied that Jamie only did it because Katie was bullying him.
I think it's incredibly important that they showed this part of it because, while girls and women are the victims, they are also sometimes culpable of bad behaviour and while this doesn't IN ANY WAY justify what happens to them, we can't ignore the fact that it can play a part in the radicalisation of these boys. Of course, I'm not suggesting girls tiptoe around boys feelings when they have treated them disrespectfully, but if a boy makes a normal and healthy advance towards a girl and is humiliated in response, then maybe that's the final ingredient in the perfect storm?
Also, let's be real - yes girls are the victims, but girls can also be deeply, deeply unkind and we have to get comfortable with the idea that both of those things can be true at the same time. I think there's a real gap between boys and girls in terms of emotional intelligence and maturity between the ages of 12-16 and some girls can be guilty of wielding a kind of superiority over boys that can feel them feel dehumanised.
It's never a girl's fault that a boy is radicalised in this way, but as a mother of daughters, I have taken on a sense of responsibility to teach my girls to not slip into the trap of humiliating boys or laughing at them when they express feelings towards them that are unrequited. It's a natural response because girls can feel embarrassed or uncomfortable, but when they are young, it's important to me that my girls can treat those feelings with respect even if they don't reciprocate them.
Again, to be clear - I'm not blaming girls for boys becoming violent. I'm simply saying that teaching girls an awareness of the dynamic at this age, and how their behaviour can make people feel is part of addressing the issue. It's also something that I was never taught - no one ever told me that boys may say they liked me when I really didn't like them. No one ever told me how to handle that and it's scary when it happens so part of my responsibility has also been about teaching my girls ways to deal with those kind of situations when the arise.
This is either intentionally or somehow, despite the glaring (to reuse this word) information in the very script, totally misses the point. It is blinkered on one aspect of Katie’s bullying. If anybody had watched and listened, it has been made many times very clear that this was ONE POTENTIAL ELEMENT without a ditrect A->B causality being oversimplified or possible factor in Jamie’s radicalisation. Alongside this element, the series presents and even EXPLICITLY questions (see E3 - the parents doing heartbreaking self-questioning and self-blaming) several other factors, ranging from the father’s temper all the way to general social media culture and so on.
Reductio ad absurdum: if the Katie bullying was the single factor AND severe enough, there would not have been scenes that questioned how this, even if severe, could have led to the events; there would not have been large sections of E3 and E4 present (from psychologist pointing out myriad other factors all the way to the parents' self-analysis and even self-blame) and so on.
It was discussed, even in the E3 session with the psychologist, as one of many possible factors - hilarious omission in the article is that the psychologist even defends Katie’s character and casts doubt about the entire bullying and its level/severity. She even confronts Jamie about what death means and how Katie cannot defend herself against ANY accusation incl. those about her character let alone the bullying.
In an alternate Universe maybe a series aired where the mentioned element was paraded as THE reason and trigger that explains as a "tada" the actions of Jamie, but in this Universe it simply wasn't - anybody can consult the simple facts of the script.
In reply to Brian B. I'm not disputing the facts of your post but would like to briefly describe my 60's/70's childhood as a girl in Greater London. We played in the streets and in the local park. Men routinely exposed themselves and masturbated in front of us girls. This was a very common occurrence. Streetwise we knew to keep out of the bushes and the public toilets because of the dangers. Boys grabbed our breasts and twisted our nipples every day at school once we started developing, they grabbed our pubic areas and were generally violent towards us. They commented publicly on our bodies and those comments were violent, insulting and disparaging. They discussed how easy we were in terms of sex. I was often followed by men in cars and on foot in the street. You knew to be vigilant but it was just pure luck that you got home unscathed and alive. This was everyday experience. I felt coerced enough to have non consensual sex several times to preserve my "image" and be socially accepted. Later on in early adulthood I was sexually molested in three different workplaces not once but often. You had to comply. You couldn't complain because you had to keep your job. Throughout all of this my parents maintained that women were at fault for just being women (the slut and temptress) with all that that implied. The worst of all of these violent attacks happened when my own father in law came up behind me and reached around to grab my breasts. Utter betrayal. What do you do with that? Explode the family? No, you keep quiet as I've always kept quiet. I would never have been seen as a victim but as a slut who invited and deserved this treatment.
All of this occurred as a very regular childhood experience in the UK as a girl and a young woman. This isn't just occurring now. It's been present a long time. Although the levels of violence are horrifically worse now. Thank you for reading.
Stephen Graham wrote in an article that he hoped that not only Katie, but also Jamie himself, would be seen as a tragedy. His misogyny was not born out of poor upbringing or trauma, but rather out of a desperate attempt to reject and make peace with the feeling that he was undesirable to women, in a world where so many other guys seemed to be desired and liked(by women). This feeling was repeatedly reinforced by the online bullying. It is inevitable that some may interpret this to be victim blaming, but what was really meant to be said, that young people are simply too unequiped to deal with this new modern art of bullying in a healthy manner. (Similarly, they are also too young to really understand how their bullying makes people actually feel).When they are bullied like this, the teachers and parents are unaware, coming from an older generation.
I don't think just portraying Jamie just as a stone cold misogynistic murderer would have done any justice. We need to atleast try to understand what drives and causes such thinking, if we are to have any hope of improving the future. The online bullying is the writers's attempt to understand Jamie.
Because Jamie ultimately gives in and decides to confess in the end, he ultimately realizes the wrong he has done. So I don't think the online bullying thing is a glaring mistake.
Every part of this series is a tragedy, including Jamie. But the misogyny didn't happen because Jamie felt undesirable - this series is about the radicalization of men due to the rise in extreme online misogyny. Everything that happens stems from that. And no, Jamie isn't, by definition a stone cold misogynist, but his actions were 100% stone-cold misogyny. And that's why we need to have this conversation - to confront how chillingly easy it is to radicalize men and boys into taking horrific, violent actions against other human beings just because those other human beings are women.
Yes, the online misogyny is indeed the main villain here, but where does it specifically find easy, moldable targets? In young boys who feel abandoned and rejected by society (here, women). They go to them, embrace them, tell them that there's nothing wrong with them, that they are okay as they are, and that the women are at fault. Boys like Jamie find such a narrative soothing, and that is where monster is born, which grows to become capable of even stone cold murder.
Perhaps your point is that even without Katie's online bullying, Jamie still could have been easily radicalized because of a few rejections, and he could still be seen as a tragic figure, with these radicalizers the true villains. I agree with this. But then it would be slightly unbelievable that a person with no history of prior violence would suddenly murder a girl who simply just rejected him.
The writers made it more realistic this way, I think, in showing that no one, not even Katie, is perfect. This does take attention away from the misogyny perhaps, but it also shines light on a problem of comparable scale - bullying, showing how it has evolved, in the digital space, even further outside the reach of teachers and parents than it was before. Bullying and mass murder in young boys have been correlated in the past(think US school shootings), lending the connection between the two in the show some credibility.
In summary, I would say that showing both bullying and misogyny, and the connection between them was probably one of the writer's goals. The former alienates, isolates and rejects. The latter embraces, aggrandizes and ultimately monstrosizes the outcast. People in whom the latter has already begun operations will probably blame Katie, but atleast they will out themselves.
True, but children are too young and undiscerning to process what they are being fed online. They are uniquely vulnerable to extreme content. Also things like sharing nudes would be inconceivable without widespread smartphone use by teenagers. There should be a 16+ age rating for smartphones.
Thank you for this thoughtful and thought-provoking article. Having just watched Adolescence I did not pick up on this, but agree with you wholeheartedly.
I agree with your sentiment, but the truth is it’s not written from the perspective of someone that writes for TV. The added element of the bullying on IG and red/white symbols etc only adds to the intrigue and is necessary to add a layer to ensure it makes for good TV. And judging by their viewing figures, they made the right creative choice!
Callum Parslow. Eddie Ratcliffe. Ben Ruddock. And I could go on. What "whitewashing?" Are you suggesting that white men don't commit murder with knives (or any other weapon at their disposal)? That sounds rather racist to me.
Yes! I knew something was bothering me about the series after I finished watching it, and I knew it was this, but you put it into words incredibly.
From the way this "bullying" storyline was established in episode 2 and not expanded on until much later in episode 3, I felt it allowed audiences time to have the notion that Katie was a bully cemented in their minds. For the victim, this is unfair.
So much emphasis was placed on Katie's supposed bullying and almost none on what led her to call Jamie an incel. Once again, this is unfair to the victim, and can lead the common viewer to continue to see the victim as a bully, which can lead to lowered credibility for her suffering in their eyes.
Moreover, it seemed as though the story was trying to give the police a clear "motive" behind the murder, which is what they were searching for. However, as you so accurately pointed out, when men commit violence against women, there often is no clear or easily understood motive, and this series claiming that there must be one is inaccurate, and can allow men in real life to get away with violence should a clear motive for their behaviour not be found.
While the series was an incredible piece of work, I think it could have displayed a better understanding of men's violence against women. This is particularly important because men can do hundreds of wrongs, but the moment the woman displays a flaw or ceases to be a "perfect victim", all his wrongs are forgotten and the script is flipped to hating her.
Lastly, I hope that this was not the show trying to create nuance in a situation where there isn't much at all. I felt as though the show was coming across as overly sympathetic to the murderer, and I can see how easy it would be for a misogynistic viewer to be sympathetic towards the perpetrator over the victim as a result of this portrayal.
I do think they were trying to create nuance, and I actually think they meant it in a thought-provoking way. I believe they had the best intentions in this, and overall did a great job. Nothing is perfect, and I'm just grateful this series started a conversation!
Great commentary and valid points. I think the sequential reveal of first the cyber “bullying” from Katie and then then reveal of rejection and sexual harassment in the next episode that proceeds it, shows that the writer intended to view the rejection primed by manosphere radicalisation, as the deeper cause to the murder. I felt the show left me wanted more, especially around the more direct manosphere and masculinity aspects, but I suspect this would have been a worse choice from a storytelling perspective.
What I think Graham does best is offer us a glimpse of the complex and disjointed factors that feature in the act of extreme male violence: radicalisation, humiliation, patriarchal attitudes towards men and women, shame, interpersonal conflict, his father’s unprocessed trauma and own shame etc. These don’t fit together nicely, but hang together in uneasy and interconnected tension - this reflects similar cases in real life. The show’s story can’t tell every story of femicide or male radicalisation, it has to be particular, but because it does it so well I feel that we want to be a wider critique than the form can support.
This show resonated with my experiences in forensic psychiatry, often working with men and adolescents who have committed extreme violence against women. The reasons for the violence resemble more closely a collage than a clear narrative.
Ultimately, that we can make these interpretations is a sign of the show’s significance as a piece of art and story telling. I would also like the next such show to go deeper and explore more in the vein you suggest.
I definitely think they had very good intentions for the choice to make Katie a bully - I just don't think the average viewer will catch that and will unconsciously or consciously blame Katie. I LOVED the way they built the character of Jamie's dad and how Graham portrayed him. So complex and nuanced. Very well done.
I watched the show with my husband, who is a therapist and has worked with both sexually violent predators and juveniles with violent backgrounds in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Despite the story line and the current climate created/fed by social media, we felt the young man portrayed a young anti-social personality disordered individual brilliantly. Whatever acts as a trigger, there are those who will react violently.
I almost agree, however the role of Adam in the series was to point out you can be bullied and still have no impulse to kill. Katie’s bullying was no excuse, and after an inner look at Jamie’s mind and where he placed women in relation to him explains why he killed. He probably thought “How could you someone as insubordinate as a woman bully me” - a direct attack on his masculinity - and decided that exercising violence was the way to remind himself that he does have power over her and to actualise it.
I thought it was brilliant even though I also mind some of the woke undertones on "toxic masculinity." I am from Serbia where a bullied 13-year-old, super smart, introverted boy shot and killed 10 of his classmates last year after years of bullying that he didn't know how to cope with. The school cared only performatively (as much as it is necessary to fill in school reports, move him from a class to another, send him to disinterested school phycologist), and parents wanted him to toughen up and be a man (even though they were educated they have that working class mindset, like “we went through so much, wars and hunger, you can deal with some bullying”). In Serbia, this was an upper-middle-class school, with kids of educated professionals who took great care that their kids didn't wander the city alone doing God knows what. The boy even had a babysitter, but no one cared what he watched and whom he spoke to online. He encountered some Americans who introduced him to school shooting solutions. The rest is history. I cried for an hour watching.
I understand that it's a difficult subject to broach for a number of reasons and nuance when discussing this is more important than ever, but I disagree with your assertion that the show implied that Jamie only did it because Katie was bullying him.
I think it's incredibly important that they showed this part of it because, while girls and women are the victims, they are also sometimes culpable of bad behaviour and while this doesn't IN ANY WAY justify what happens to them, we can't ignore the fact that it can play a part in the radicalisation of these boys. Of course, I'm not suggesting girls tiptoe around boys feelings when they have treated them disrespectfully, but if a boy makes a normal and healthy advance towards a girl and is humiliated in response, then maybe that's the final ingredient in the perfect storm?
Also, let's be real - yes girls are the victims, but girls can also be deeply, deeply unkind and we have to get comfortable with the idea that both of those things can be true at the same time. I think there's a real gap between boys and girls in terms of emotional intelligence and maturity between the ages of 12-16 and some girls can be guilty of wielding a kind of superiority over boys that can feel them feel dehumanised.
It's never a girl's fault that a boy is radicalised in this way, but as a mother of daughters, I have taken on a sense of responsibility to teach my girls to not slip into the trap of humiliating boys or laughing at them when they express feelings towards them that are unrequited. It's a natural response because girls can feel embarrassed or uncomfortable, but when they are young, it's important to me that my girls can treat those feelings with respect even if they don't reciprocate them.
Again, to be clear - I'm not blaming girls for boys becoming violent. I'm simply saying that teaching girls an awareness of the dynamic at this age, and how their behaviour can make people feel is part of addressing the issue. It's also something that I was never taught - no one ever told me that boys may say they liked me when I really didn't like them. No one ever told me how to handle that and it's scary when it happens so part of my responsibility has also been about teaching my girls ways to deal with those kind of situations when the arise.
This is either intentionally or somehow, despite the glaring (to reuse this word) information in the very script, totally misses the point. It is blinkered on one aspect of Katie’s bullying. If anybody had watched and listened, it has been made many times very clear that this was ONE POTENTIAL ELEMENT without a ditrect A->B causality being oversimplified or possible factor in Jamie’s radicalisation. Alongside this element, the series presents and even EXPLICITLY questions (see E3 - the parents doing heartbreaking self-questioning and self-blaming) several other factors, ranging from the father’s temper all the way to general social media culture and so on.
Reductio ad absurdum: if the Katie bullying was the single factor AND severe enough, there would not have been scenes that questioned how this, even if severe, could have led to the events; there would not have been large sections of E3 and E4 present (from psychologist pointing out myriad other factors all the way to the parents' self-analysis and even self-blame) and so on.
It was discussed, even in the E3 session with the psychologist, as one of many possible factors - hilarious omission in the article is that the psychologist even defends Katie’s character and casts doubt about the entire bullying and its level/severity. She even confronts Jamie about what death means and how Katie cannot defend herself against ANY accusation incl. those about her character let alone the bullying.
In an alternate Universe maybe a series aired where the mentioned element was paraded as THE reason and trigger that explains as a "tada" the actions of Jamie, but in this Universe it simply wasn't - anybody can consult the simple facts of the script.
I’m glad to read this. Giving the perpetrator a ‘reason’ of sorts still feels like a kind of victim blaming
In reply to Brian B. I'm not disputing the facts of your post but would like to briefly describe my 60's/70's childhood as a girl in Greater London. We played in the streets and in the local park. Men routinely exposed themselves and masturbated in front of us girls. This was a very common occurrence. Streetwise we knew to keep out of the bushes and the public toilets because of the dangers. Boys grabbed our breasts and twisted our nipples every day at school once we started developing, they grabbed our pubic areas and were generally violent towards us. They commented publicly on our bodies and those comments were violent, insulting and disparaging. They discussed how easy we were in terms of sex. I was often followed by men in cars and on foot in the street. You knew to be vigilant but it was just pure luck that you got home unscathed and alive. This was everyday experience. I felt coerced enough to have non consensual sex several times to preserve my "image" and be socially accepted. Later on in early adulthood I was sexually molested in three different workplaces not once but often. You had to comply. You couldn't complain because you had to keep your job. Throughout all of this my parents maintained that women were at fault for just being women (the slut and temptress) with all that that implied. The worst of all of these violent attacks happened when my own father in law came up behind me and reached around to grab my breasts. Utter betrayal. What do you do with that? Explode the family? No, you keep quiet as I've always kept quiet. I would never have been seen as a victim but as a slut who invited and deserved this treatment.
All of this occurred as a very regular childhood experience in the UK as a girl and a young woman. This isn't just occurring now. It's been present a long time. Although the levels of violence are horrifically worse now. Thank you for reading.
Stephen Graham wrote in an article that he hoped that not only Katie, but also Jamie himself, would be seen as a tragedy. His misogyny was not born out of poor upbringing or trauma, but rather out of a desperate attempt to reject and make peace with the feeling that he was undesirable to women, in a world where so many other guys seemed to be desired and liked(by women). This feeling was repeatedly reinforced by the online bullying. It is inevitable that some may interpret this to be victim blaming, but what was really meant to be said, that young people are simply too unequiped to deal with this new modern art of bullying in a healthy manner. (Similarly, they are also too young to really understand how their bullying makes people actually feel).When they are bullied like this, the teachers and parents are unaware, coming from an older generation.
I don't think just portraying Jamie just as a stone cold misogynistic murderer would have done any justice. We need to atleast try to understand what drives and causes such thinking, if we are to have any hope of improving the future. The online bullying is the writers's attempt to understand Jamie.
Because Jamie ultimately gives in and decides to confess in the end, he ultimately realizes the wrong he has done. So I don't think the online bullying thing is a glaring mistake.
Every part of this series is a tragedy, including Jamie. But the misogyny didn't happen because Jamie felt undesirable - this series is about the radicalization of men due to the rise in extreme online misogyny. Everything that happens stems from that. And no, Jamie isn't, by definition a stone cold misogynist, but his actions were 100% stone-cold misogyny. And that's why we need to have this conversation - to confront how chillingly easy it is to radicalize men and boys into taking horrific, violent actions against other human beings just because those other human beings are women.
Yes, the online misogyny is indeed the main villain here, but where does it specifically find easy, moldable targets? In young boys who feel abandoned and rejected by society (here, women). They go to them, embrace them, tell them that there's nothing wrong with them, that they are okay as they are, and that the women are at fault. Boys like Jamie find such a narrative soothing, and that is where monster is born, which grows to become capable of even stone cold murder.
Perhaps your point is that even without Katie's online bullying, Jamie still could have been easily radicalized because of a few rejections, and he could still be seen as a tragic figure, with these radicalizers the true villains. I agree with this. But then it would be slightly unbelievable that a person with no history of prior violence would suddenly murder a girl who simply just rejected him.
The writers made it more realistic this way, I think, in showing that no one, not even Katie, is perfect. This does take attention away from the misogyny perhaps, but it also shines light on a problem of comparable scale - bullying, showing how it has evolved, in the digital space, even further outside the reach of teachers and parents than it was before. Bullying and mass murder in young boys have been correlated in the past(think US school shootings), lending the connection between the two in the show some credibility.
In summary, I would say that showing both bullying and misogyny, and the connection between them was probably one of the writer's goals. The former alienates, isolates and rejects. The latter embraces, aggrandizes and ultimately monstrosizes the outcast. People in whom the latter has already begun operations will probably blame Katie, but atleast they will out themselves.
Girls and women should urgently come, speak out against this unspeakable!
Producers and profiteers of such inhuman malware should be ostracized!
The mainstreaming of the utterly abject despicable should be named by the remainder of rational morality for what it is!
This is why we shouldn't give smartphones to children
Misogyny doesn't only exist on our phones.
True, but children are too young and undiscerning to process what they are being fed online. They are uniquely vulnerable to extreme content. Also things like sharing nudes would be inconceivable without widespread smartphone use by teenagers. There should be a 16+ age rating for smartphones.
Thank you for this thoughtful and thought-provoking article. Having just watched Adolescence I did not pick up on this, but agree with you wholeheartedly.
I agree with your sentiment, but the truth is it’s not written from the perspective of someone that writes for TV. The added element of the bullying on IG and red/white symbols etc only adds to the intrigue and is necessary to add a layer to ensure it makes for good TV. And judging by their viewing figures, they made the right creative choice!
Callum Parslow. Eddie Ratcliffe. Ben Ruddock. And I could go on. What "whitewashing?" Are you suggesting that white men don't commit murder with knives (or any other weapon at their disposal)? That sounds rather racist to me.
Good work, Yael. So glad you're over here.
Thanks, Julia! xoxo
Yes! I knew something was bothering me about the series after I finished watching it, and I knew it was this, but you put it into words incredibly.
From the way this "bullying" storyline was established in episode 2 and not expanded on until much later in episode 3, I felt it allowed audiences time to have the notion that Katie was a bully cemented in their minds. For the victim, this is unfair.
So much emphasis was placed on Katie's supposed bullying and almost none on what led her to call Jamie an incel. Once again, this is unfair to the victim, and can lead the common viewer to continue to see the victim as a bully, which can lead to lowered credibility for her suffering in their eyes.
Moreover, it seemed as though the story was trying to give the police a clear "motive" behind the murder, which is what they were searching for. However, as you so accurately pointed out, when men commit violence against women, there often is no clear or easily understood motive, and this series claiming that there must be one is inaccurate, and can allow men in real life to get away with violence should a clear motive for their behaviour not be found.
While the series was an incredible piece of work, I think it could have displayed a better understanding of men's violence against women. This is particularly important because men can do hundreds of wrongs, but the moment the woman displays a flaw or ceases to be a "perfect victim", all his wrongs are forgotten and the script is flipped to hating her.
Lastly, I hope that this was not the show trying to create nuance in a situation where there isn't much at all. I felt as though the show was coming across as overly sympathetic to the murderer, and I can see how easy it would be for a misogynistic viewer to be sympathetic towards the perpetrator over the victim as a result of this portrayal.
I do think they were trying to create nuance, and I actually think they meant it in a thought-provoking way. I believe they had the best intentions in this, and overall did a great job. Nothing is perfect, and I'm just grateful this series started a conversation!
Yep, I agree that they had the best intentions. I just wish they displayed a better understanding of violence against girls and women by boys and men.
Great commentary and valid points. I think the sequential reveal of first the cyber “bullying” from Katie and then then reveal of rejection and sexual harassment in the next episode that proceeds it, shows that the writer intended to view the rejection primed by manosphere radicalisation, as the deeper cause to the murder. I felt the show left me wanted more, especially around the more direct manosphere and masculinity aspects, but I suspect this would have been a worse choice from a storytelling perspective.
What I think Graham does best is offer us a glimpse of the complex and disjointed factors that feature in the act of extreme male violence: radicalisation, humiliation, patriarchal attitudes towards men and women, shame, interpersonal conflict, his father’s unprocessed trauma and own shame etc. These don’t fit together nicely, but hang together in uneasy and interconnected tension - this reflects similar cases in real life. The show’s story can’t tell every story of femicide or male radicalisation, it has to be particular, but because it does it so well I feel that we want to be a wider critique than the form can support.
This show resonated with my experiences in forensic psychiatry, often working with men and adolescents who have committed extreme violence against women. The reasons for the violence resemble more closely a collage than a clear narrative.
Ultimately, that we can make these interpretations is a sign of the show’s significance as a piece of art and story telling. I would also like the next such show to go deeper and explore more in the vein you suggest.
I definitely think they had very good intentions for the choice to make Katie a bully - I just don't think the average viewer will catch that and will unconsciously or consciously blame Katie. I LOVED the way they built the character of Jamie's dad and how Graham portrayed him. So complex and nuanced. Very well done.
I watched the show with my husband, who is a therapist and has worked with both sexually violent predators and juveniles with violent backgrounds in a children’s psychiatric hospital. Despite the story line and the current climate created/fed by social media, we felt the young man portrayed a young anti-social personality disordered individual brilliantly. Whatever acts as a trigger, there are those who will react violently.