Adolescence Recap: School Is Hell
No one wants to be a teen again. How could they? It’s an unnerving, seemingly never-ending time of immense social pressure, roller-coaster hormones, and incredible self-doubt. You feel simultaneously alone and under constant supervision, and the littlest slight or kindness can send you into a mental spiral.
And, God, to be in a school full of teens? No thanks. It seemed bad enough when I went in the late ’90s, when there were parties and cliques and whatever else. But today? With phones, social media, backbiting, and “Are you even my friend if you don’t comment on my Story” stuff? Unthinkable.
It’s not something that DIs Bascombe and Frank are thinking when they go to visit Jamie and Katie’s school, even though it also happens to be the school that Bascombe’s son, Adam, attends. As adults, they think they get how high school works, with bullying and teachers and whatever, but it becomes quickly apparent that they don’t get it at all. They might think they have Jamie dead to rights (and they do, in some sense), but as soon as they question Katie’s friend Jade and almost instantly provoke her into flying off the handle, you realize they’re in over their heads.
Thankfully, Adam’s there to help his dad, finding him to explain the intricate and hairy world of emoji codes. Bascombe and Frank asked Jamie if he and Katie were friends and got a sort of noncommittal affirmative in the previous episode, but people like Adam and Jade make it quickly known that, in fact, they were not. Katie thought Adam was an incel, a red-pilled member of the internet misogynist Andrew Tate’s manosphere. The cops take that to mean she was bullying him, and while that’s certainly possible — calling someone out on social media, via emoji or not, is pretty shitty — I get the feeling we haven’t truthfully discovered the whole story yet. What did Jamie do to make Katie think that about him?
And how were Jamie’s friends involved? At the very least, Ryan knew what was going on, given that he gave Jamie the knife. (Side note: Asking “Did you help him get the knife?” is a weird question considering it’s a kitchen knife. Who would have trouble getting one? I’ve got eight in my knife block right now.) Moreover, who else knew? Were the teachers complicit in their ignorance? Could they claim to be as overwhelmed as Mr. Malik? What role did bullies like Fredo and that shitty kid in the front row of 8G play, and did all that screaming and screen time just serve to exacerbate everything? Could the teachers have done more to protect Katie and all the girls? Or maybe they should have protected the boys and educated them about adult social relationships rather than leaving it to their parents, most of which have to be just as clueless as Bascombe and Frank.
It’s all truly just nightmare fuel. What goes on in our kids’ schools while we’re not watching? On their phones? Do we really know as much as we think we know, and are teenage secrets still okay? At the end of the episode, we see Bascombe trying to reestablish a relationship with his son, who he says barely talks to him. It seems to work … for today, at least, with the pair jetting off for some Chinese-restaurant chips. Adolescence wants us to think that these types of problems can be solved by really, openly talking to our kids. That may be true, but I’m pretty sure that, sadly, it will take more than just this show to get us parents up and moving in that direction.
Stray Observations
• Two things that I thought were well said in this episode. First, Bascombe tells Ryan, “It’s crazy what your brain tells you to do when you’re a kid.” Second was Frank’s assertion that kids just need one person — a teacher, a parent, a friend — to tell them that they’re normal and they’re supported. Ideally, they’ll have more, but it really is amazing and important to have that one person. (And that’s why I’m also incredibly worried about Jade now.)
• I love how Adam knows about red pills and blue pills but has no idea that they’re from The Matrix.
• While the British criminal-justice system seemed pretty all right in episode one, this school failed to make me jealous of the British educational system. However, the uniforms were cute. And they had a tennis court!