The End of the F***ing World Season 1 Analysis

The End of the F***ing World Season 1

Written by: Charlie Covell

This show is about a 17-year old James, who believes himself to be a psychopath and Alyssa who meet and get along because they are bored by the monotony of the world. Both of them want to break the rules and they feel that they are at the wrong place around the wrong set of people. The arc of the show is that James discovers himself to not be a psychopath because he starts caring for Alyssa at some level and this angle is fleshed out very well. If James would've met you or me, he wouldn't even have bothered to have a conversation but since he met someone whom he could relate to, or someone who is even more risk taking than he is, the better side of him comes out. 

The performances in the show by the lead actors Alex Lawther and Jessica Barden is so convincing in their roles, especially because characters like these are not easy and the voice over is also challenging to pull off. The episodes are 20 mins each and I don't know why they made this choice instead of long and less number of episodes. Is that because they weren't confident that the material would be engaging for like 40-45 mins or is it because the episodes have a turning plot point every 20 mins? This could've also been a movie, the format and the structure is similar to a movie. We meet two characters, they decide to go on a road trip, we have a premise and they keep meeting people in the journey and finally they discover and know more about themselves. I'm unable to figure out the creative motivations behind the choice of the format of the show.

The first season had a good arc and this makes me curious as to what they've done in the second season, but usually it's very difficult to have an as good arc for the second season when there's this good closing for the first season and a good example for that would be 13 Reasons Why. What is the show about, entirely changes when they extend the show just because they're excited to explore more dynamics between the characters. You can't explore the romantic lives of two characters of a gangster show in the next season, so shows aren't about characters, they are about a certain aspect of their characters. But I'm curious to see what they've done in the 2nd season.