Adolescence
I watched the show almost as soon as it came out, without knowing anything at all about the plot. In its violent opening, the director makes sure to lay down the fundamental premise for the protagonist: a scared 13-year-old boy who wakes up in his childhood bedroom and wets himself. The forceful police presence stands in contrast to the obedient parents trying to protect the illusion of family peace. The mother cries and wails, but she’s also the calm one, making phone calls to ensure their home is okay. The father, on the other hand, shuffles around like a pitiful man trying to be tough—just as he’s expected to be.
When the police ask for blood samples, Jamie is afraid of needles, but the father encourages him by saying he’ll be watching. During the strip search, Jamie resists, saying “cause 2 guys will be looking at his bits.” It’s the first time the father almost hugs him—triggered by the fear that his son's masculinity might be compromised—while the child actually seems calm. The second time is when they watch the video of the crime; the father hugs him again, but probably only because he needs it.
At school, the kids are out of control. The teachers respond to teenage rebellion with more macho energy and yelling. You can almost feel that Jamie doesn’t really fit in there. The policeman’s son talks to him about incel culture and social media lingo, but Jamie doesn’t have the tools to understand—or care. He only goes along to gain his son’s superficial sympathy.
The third episode becomes the heart of the entire series. Jamie almost forgets where he is—he’s cheerful, flirty, mocking the psychologist with a fake “girly” voice. He opens up, lashes out, becomes violent—but he always, always tries to maintain control over her. For him, control translates to intimacy, and vice versa. The psychologist in front of him is a real girl—even though she’s much older—straight out of the Instagram posts he scrolls through daily. He examines her, consumes her, devours her energy voraciously—but he’s not interested in her, doesn’t ask her a single question. All that matters is what she does for him.
When he says he didn’t like Katie because she was flat-chested, he glances at the psychologist’s small chest and says “no offense”—as if criticism of the female body becomes another tool of control. He speaks easily about the women around him—his mom, his sister, Katie with her “funny girly” voice, the psychologist herself—but the dad is above critique, beyond consumption. He’s the one who holds power over Jamie, through indifference, shame, or violence. Men are simple and shallow “like the other bloke who doesn’t ask such weird questions.” Men get angry “normally,” and when they get really mad—“in a proper rager”—it’s funny and normal, not scary or strange. Men go to the pub, love football, and don’t hug each other—that’s weird. Men aren’t defined by what they do, but by the fact that they are not women. That’s why men don’t have female friends—only “mates.” Men consume women—as bodies, as images, as desire, as experience—online, in porn, at school, at work, in a simple conversation. But they don’t like women—only their validation, and what they do for them.
The hot chocolate with extra sprinkles that the psychologist offers—on one hand maternal, because she still believes in Jamie’s innocence, and on the other hand a hopeful Pavlovian experiment—gets twisted under toxic masculinity into another control element. Jamie asks for it again to reassure her of his “childlikeness” and to put her back in her place: the symbolic kitchen, the symbolic motherhood, under his control. But this time, she refuses.
The sandwich becomes the ultimate metaphor for his dynamic with Katie—and with women in general. He says he doesn’t like it, but he’ll keep it. He opens it, tears off part of the plastic wrapping, and sets it aside. When he remembers her rejection and gets angry—when things don’t go his way—he takes a bite, knowing he doesn’t like it, and tosses it aside again.
He insists he’s better than the other men who would have raped Katie if they had a knife—he’s the Nice Guy. He insists he wanted to do it, but didn’t. He insists he “did nothing wrong”—not that he didn’t do anything.
He keeps desperately seeking the psychologist’s validation. She’s clearly sly and difficult too, just like the others—she tricked him into confessing what he did. She’s a bitch, like Katie, “a fucking queen,” who with one dismissive gesture reassures the guard that she’s not afraid of Jamie. And just like that, he loses control—the kind of control driven by fear.
He insists that he likes her—not like that, but as a person—even though he’s flirted with her and demands the same from her. The only question he ever asks the psychologist—the only thing that actually matters to him—is whether she likes him. He begs her to say he’s not ugly, because the only reason he opened up to her, the only reason he gave her his time, was to get something from her. When he doesn’t get it, he collapses under the weight of rejection and snaps.
In the empty room, the psychologist, out of habit or as a coping mechanism, mechanically goes to clean up the sandwich. She sees the bite, understands what it means, feels disgust—and instantly steps out of the robotic role she plays for society, for the men around her, for Jamie.
In the final scene—which, weirdly, moved so many parents—the father visits his son’s room. The teddy bear becomes the avatar of the missing child—the one who’s always been missing. Because the father was absent. Because he never accepted him. Because he was ashamed of him. It’s easy to cry over the teddy bear. Easy to cover it with a blanket. But no matter how much he cries or covers the replica, the real child will never come back. Because he was never hugged, never received love or acceptance from his father—no matter what lies the parents tell themselves. The boy found other symbolic father figures—in the manosphere, in social media, in the shouting teachers, in the rebellious classmates. All products of other violent or indifferent fathers and mothers.
As a man, woman, or parent, you don’t need a high IQ or deep cinematic knowledge to watch Adolescence—just a willingness for self-criticism and the courage to look yourself in the eye and ask: how do I contribute to this endless cesspool that poisons a 13-year-old with hatred and drives him to commit something he can barely even understand?
What collective mistake did we make that someone like Tate—or anyone else who talks about women like they’re garbage—can become a joke or worse, a father figure, to boys, teens, and grown men?