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Notes -
"Adolescence" isn't like that.
After watching it, I can give my thoughts, and it really isn't.
First let's look at what "incel" means in the world of the show (which may not reflect reality). "Incel" is portrayed as a zoomer concept that all the kids know about and the boring old adults don't get it. The kids know about it because all kids know about it, and boring old adults don't because it's a kid thing and it's just not part of their generation. It's also shown to be a generic insult, kind of like how calling someone a fag may have been used 10 years ago. Calling someone an incel doesn't make them an incel, just like calling someone a fag doesn't make him a homosexual. And in fact the protagonist explicitly rejects the label. His friends are also not suggested to be incels, though they are pushed together as common victims of bullying. One is bullied for being poor and the other is bullied for being dumb.
In the show there is no idea that there's a looming incel threat that is coming for your kids and schools. The attack is portrayed as being motivated by bullying and a personal grudge against the victim, not by ideology or misogyny. Of course being called ugly and an incel was a big part of this bullying, but no more than any other kind of relentless torment that kids put each other through.
Now let's analyze the episodes individually.
Episode 1 mostly lacks social commentary, but if anything, is anti-police by showcasing quality police brutality and abuse. The show starts off with the detectives nonchalantly executing a hardcore no-knock raid with dozens of heavily armed officers in order to pick up a kid. Even though the kid is an accused murderer, they have no reason to believe he will resist or that the family will impede the investigation. Then there's the interrogation, where the police don't have enough evidence, so they gaslight in order to fish for a confession. Fortunately the kid has a lawyer and is able to avoid most of the traps. It's true that being anti-police is somewhat blue-coded but I don't otherwise see anything too major happening in this episode.
Episode 2 is more of a commentary on school and society. The administration is shown as uncaring and incompetent. Bullying runs rampant. The detective's son is even bullied every day nobody things anything of it. The drama and storytelling is nice, because we see in the beginning that the victim's best friend is hiding something, and we find out gradually that it's because the victim was doing the bullying too. Of course murder isn't justified in this situation, but it establishes the main character as a sort of antihero that we can almost relate to. Which is the perfect time because when the detective breaks the friend he says that's the last thing he needs to close the case and throw our antihero in prison.
Episode 3 is a battle of wits between the two characters. The killer wrongly assumes that the psychologist is in cahoots with the police and fishing for a confession, but rightly understands that she is not on his side. The psychologist alternates between trying to build a rapport and asserting her authority, while the killer remains on the defensive. At the end we find out that the killer gained a liking for his nemesis, in sort of a messed up Stockholm syndrome kind of way. It is shown that the killer's mind is melted by being exposed to too much oversexualized content on Instagram. This sounds correct as whenever I make the mistake of opening FB, I get reels by creators who also do OF.
Episode 4 is hard to analyze, but it's hard to argue that there's any sort of partisan propaganda wrapped up in it.
Overall, the show is overhyped but also interesting enough, and really isn't pushing some sort of woke angle. 50% of murders are committed by a certain kind of person, yet true crime shows usually feature karens and highly intelligent men as the killers. This is because their crimes are shocking and unexpected, not because of a woke bias in reporting.
The first episode is pro police brutality. The protagonist of the first two episodes is a police officer, and the daughter corrects her parents when they ask about a complaint. The response is considered justifiable by the police and the child’s own counsel didn’t consider police brutality worthy of attention. The audience takeaway is that this action is justified — all the cool protagonists were involved, and it’s only an angry low class Dad who temporarily wants to file a complaint. Episode two is where we learn about incels and the “red pill” from the detective’s son, and that this is what caused the murder. The accomplice is also clearly depicted as being incel adherent, hence his obsession with looks and asking the detective about whether he got girls.
I have never seen a piece of media that is so clearly a psy-op. The series is designed to (1) make children afraid of ever coming across something online about incels or the red pill by introducing a strong terror response, for instance (a) imagining themself as the boy and having your father watch as the police inspect your penis [this is the director’s intent, hence the focus on the father’s face], (b) making the boy utterly humiliated and demeaned, for instance his peeing himself and crying and then being thrown in jail after being humiliated by a woman, (c) making you think you can be an accomplice also thrown in jail, hence the plot line of the body who was beaten by the black girl [the only time the “authority-coded” characters cry and sympathize is for the black girl]; (2) make women afraid of boys who look or behave like the boy protagonist, by associating the boy with all sorts of evils and shock and humiliation; [3] artificially raise the status of minorities, for instance the black police officer and the south Asian teachers, whereas there’s an ugly white police officer who is intentionally depicted as an ugly older incel
It’s really not about “bullying is bad” at all. That’s what episode three was about. Episode three is about raising the possibility that this is the case, and then the director shooting down the notion psychologically via (1) depicting the boy as aggressive and manipulative and violent, (2) making us unsympathetic to the boy and instead sympathetic to the dominant detective, (3) showing the detective denying any sympathy to the boy at the end and then breaking down, signaling to the viewer to sympathize with the woman and not the boy.
What I just can’t wrap my head around is —
is it a foreign country somehow spending, like, billions of dollars in espionage and subterfuge to get this show made and shown to the youth? Why would anyone show this to their own children?
is it a domestically made psy-op in order to, like, “subjugate” white people in the UK further? Did the government think they were getting too uppity because of the grooming gangs?
Like there is nothing organic about the directorial decisions at all.
It's a show aimed at adults and not children. I'd expect a 14 year old child wouldn't understand and just snooze through the show.
Possibly. If the aim is to normalize police brutality, indifference to your society collapsing, and anarcho-tyranny, then it kind of works.
Unfortunately that's just a reflection of reality in 2025 UK.
The detective was looking for a motive for the killer when he had no evidence they weren't on good terms. The motive was a personal grudge, not incel ideology.
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