“Adolescence” doesn’t have a twist, as some disgruntled viewers have pointed out. That’s the point. To watch the Netflix series as a murder mystery, hoping for a big dramatic revelation at the end, is to miss the actual point entirely. What’s chilling is how true-to-life its events are and how utterly ill-equipped any of its characters are to either foresee or deal with them. What begins as a show about a 13-year-old boy in North England accused of murdering his female classmate becomes an unnerving look at the prevalence of the manosphere and how it sinks its hooks into those far too young to know any better. The teen’s parents are oblivious to his online activities and subsequent radicalization; the officer investigating the case only makes a breakthrough when his young son pulls him aside and exasperatedly explains coded online red-pill content to him. The show covers significant geographical distances, all in a single take in each episode, but its characters can’t seem to bridge the insurmountable generation gap.
“Adolescence” shares this anxiety with the Pittsburgh-set Max medical drama series “The Pitt,” in which one elderly patient (Joanna Going) confesses that she made herself ill only in the hopes of being brought to the hospital and having a medical professional to confide in about the fear that her son might be planning to hurt his female classmates. Unlike “Adolescence’s” oblivious adults, “The Pitt’s” senior attending physician, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), is well-versed in how the manosphere targets young men. He’s still hesitant to call the police. He doesn’t want to jeopardize the 18-year-old boy’s life. If “Adolescence” examines the cost of not knowing, “The Pitt” looks at what our choices are when all we have are our suspicions.
When “Adolescence” begins, however, it’s already too late. Episode 1 creates room for doubt as to whether young Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) has committed the central crime, honing in on his diminutive stature and his vulnerability, unlike “The Pitt’s” teen, David Saunders (Jackson Kelly), whose curious detachment and “weird vibe“ initially spark suspicion that he might be abusive. In “Adolescence“, harrowing scenes of a young boy being put through the legal wringer conjure a loss of childhood innocence. Even if Jamie is released and his name cleared, it’s evident he can never go back to a life that’s now been irrevocably altered. The jolting revelation that the episode concludes with, however, cements that his innocence was lost a long time ago. CCTV footage depicts Jamie stabbing his classmate, Katie Leonard (Emilia Holliday), multiple times. “Adolescence” reveals itself as not a standard whodunit but a distressing whydunit.
Each episode unravels as though in real-time, the absence of cuts offering no respite from the enormity of Jamie’s crime and the suffocating dread viewers are compelled to sit with. By contrast, each episode of “The Pitt” spans just one hour of the 15-hour-long emergency department shift at the (fictional) Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, a chaotic and stressful environment that necessitates (and explains) rapid judgments and snap decisions. David is just one of the hundreds of patients who need attention that day. Unlike the secret, emoji-couched teen language of “Adolescence,” however, his intentions are framed in far more direct terms — he has a list of female classmates he wants to “eliminate.” This puts “Adolescence” and “The Pitt” on differing timelines; if one show follows the shattering aftermath of a tragedy, another examines the staggering task of having to prevent it.
David brushes off the hospital social worker’s concerns and abruptly flees when Dr. Robby attempts to talk to him. A mass shooting occurs at a local festival later in the season; David’s cell phone is tracked to the site. The immediate conclusion is that the morose teen, now dubbed the “incel kid“ by resident Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif), is the shooter.
One of the critiques of “Adolescence” as a show mirrors one of its character’s complaints. DS Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) grimly observes that it’s often the perpetrators who get all the attention, their victims long forgotten. Katie, constructed only through her digital footprint and descriptions provided by other characters, is similarly reduced to a mere starting point for larger conversations about misogyny. Likewise, Dr. Robby’s focus isn’t on the young girls that David could potentially victimize; he isn’t convinced the lonely young boy who walked into the ER is a killer. Later, he’s frustrated by Dr. McKay’s decision to report David to the police. “You may have ruined this kid’s life forever,“ he tells her. The square focus on David’s future calls to mind cases in which “promising young men“ are absolved of their crimes against women or given reduced sentences, their victims’ futures unconsidered. “What about the girls on his list?“ Dr. McKay asks Dr. Robby, “Are you telling me their safety, their lives are worth less than his?“
While David’s social media profile, which chronicles an “existence of loneliness and pain,“ is discovered and read as a bleak confirmation of his intent in the moment, Jamie’s becomes a red flag only in hindsight — his Instagram account features photos of models and aggressive innuendos.
Over 15 episodes, “The Pitt” is often a thoughtful study of parents attempting to connect with their children. In one case, a woman doesn’t know how to confront the possibility that her husband might be molesting their young daughter. Another is adamant that her teen does not have an abortion but eventually relents. David, who lost his father during the pandemic, resists opening up to his mother. In “Adolescence,” the teachers can’t seem to get through to their students either, placating unruly kids with videos or threatening them with isolation. “I only teach history; I don’t see him,“ says one teacher about Jamie, underscoring how easy it is to overlook troubled students. For all “The Pitt” staff’s insistence that vulnerable kids don’t fall through the cracks, in “Adolescence,” they do.
In the absence of role models, it’s easy to see how young men teetering on the precarious edge of self-doubt, self-critique, and crushing social pressure are brainwashed into adopting a brand of masculinity that could make them feel powerful, if only by painting women as inferior. (Andrew Tate is name-checked in “Adolescence,” “toxic podcasts“ are referenced in “The Pitt“). Their identities are packaged and sold to them by manosphere forums before they ever have a chance to forge their own.
Jamie bristles at the term “incel,” but gradually, unnervingly, it becomes apparent he’s been indoctrinated by the manosphere. He reveals that despite not being interested in Katie, he asked her out after a topless photo of hers was leaked. “I just thought she might be weak,“ he admits, his attempt to exploit her in a moment of vulnerability clear. He points out that he didn’t “touch“ Katie the night he killed her the way other boys might have. And doesn’t that make him better than them? It’s deeply upsetting.
Like “Adolescence,” “The Pitt” too upturns our assumptions of violent men, what they appear like, and how they act. When David returns to the hospital to check on his mother towards the end of the season, he’s immediately detained. Only the real shooter is discovered dead an episode later, information delivered through only a brief snatch of conversation. He remains unidentified. “The Pitt,” focused on compassionate workers and tough calls, was never a whodunit either.
If “Adolescence’s” parents are tormented by the feeling that they could’ve done more, David’s mother decides to act, petitioning to place her son in an involuntary psychiatric hold. He still refuses help. It’s only when Dr. McKay tells him about women’s daily, deep-seated fear of male violence that something finally breaks through to him, even though it logically shouldn’t. Wouldn’t an incel see this as further confirmation that men are unfairly demonized? And that their hatred of women is thus entirely justified? David is asked to consider how he’d feel if his mother was on someone else’s elimination list. He is, at heart, a lonely kid, as the show has well-established. Having lost one parent, he can’t lose his mother, too. On some level, it makes sense, but the show, otherwise so sharply written, ends a complex conversation with a thuddingly simplistic potential resolution. It’s in stark contrast to “Adolescence,” which is created and directed by three men in their 40s and 50s and weaves their generation’s tragic unfamiliarity with new-gen dangers — and their helpless inability to resolve them — into the fabric of the show.
It does, however, suggest that more involved parenting might help. By the end of Episode 2, DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters), who earlier worried he might not be the “right fit“ as a parent, makes a renewed effort to get to know his 15-year-old son. On the other hand, Jamie’s story indicates a clear communication gap. “He never left his room,“ says his mother, Manda (Christine Tremarco). “He’d come home, slam the door, straight up the stairs on the computer…he never said nothing.“ In hindsight, she wishes she’d picked up on his temper and taught him to control it. Jamie assumes his dad was ashamed of his lack of sporting prowess; a later episode reveals he was, and he let that embarrassment eclipse his son’s emotional needs. A contrasting scene in “The Pitt” espouses frank vulnerability. In the season finale, medical intern Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) not only gets a troubled young man to admit to his suicide attempt but also agree to seek help by confiding in him about her own past demons. Her technique works, but her patient is someone who wanted to hurt himself — what of men who seek to harm others? The underlying unease of “Adolescence” and “The Pitt,” both of which tap into the horror that loving your children never guarantees knowing them, is that the answer remains elusive.
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on our X account, and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Emmy predictions for “Adolescence” and “The Pitt,” here. Please also be sure to subscribe to the Next Best Series Podcast where the team is conducting a number of interviews with Emmy contenders throughout the awards season and discussing the race over the next several months.
