Part Four: A Look at the Series Adolescence (2025)
Adolescence (2025)
Director: Philip Barantini
Original Concept and Screenplay: Jack Thorne / Stephen Graham
Genre: Psychological Crime Drama
Production: United Kingdom
Episodes: 4
Duration of Each Episode: 60 minutes
“Note: By reading this review, the story of the series may be spoiled.”
This time we return to the Miller household for the second time—not as we did the first time, uninvited, unexpected, and intrusive, but now by prior invitation. It feels as though, more than a year after our tense first entry into the Millers’ home, Eddie, Manda (Christine Tremarco), and Lisa (Amelie Peiz) have asked us to sit with them, while we ourselves, given what we have learned in the previous episode, try to assess the situation and see what their life looks like without Jamie; and of course, their home—now seen in its calmness, intimacy, its touches of beauty, and the taste of the woman who runs it.
Episode four of Adolescence moves contrary to the expectations we have of the series. There is no courtroom, no judge, no defense statements, and no final verdict. Instead, this episode boldly tackles a part of the genre that is almost always overlooked: the overturning of a family due to the sin of one of its members, and more specifically, the parents’ share of their child’s guilt. This episode is a new experiment in facing disgrace and humiliation caused by another’s crime, and learning how to live under such hellish conditions.
Now that the initial uproar has subsided, we can get to know Eddie, Manda, and Lisa better—not through dialogue, but through their subtle, tangible behaviors, their silences, and their glances. Thirteen months earlier, they suddenly found themselves in the midst of a horrific ordeal; and later they learned that, alongside crying, reliving the past, and blaming themselves or others, they also had to speak, laugh, have fun, take pleasure, love, and instead of confrontation and conflict, defend themselves in other ways. Thus they entered the game with the ever-snooping neighbors, mocking them afterward in their own trio. That trio—crammed tightly together in the seats of the Miller’s plumbing van—laughing, fearing, crying, until the sequence of frames shows this cohesive bond will not be broken; in fact, after Jamie’s ordeal, it has grown even deeper.
The painful, suspended state of the Millers, with the ingrained sorrow in their eyes—even when laughing—and the gray strokes of the frames, the repeated word “love,” and even the sight of that word written in Eddie and Manda’s room, create a unique harmony between form and mood in this final episode, perfectly aligned with its structure and subplots. In the hardware store, the sympathy and support of a young clerk takes Eddie’s breath away, leaving him with a suffocating sensation that robs him of agency. Then, outside the store, once Eddie steps into the open air and can breathe again, he grabs one of those cycling teenagers, erupting like a firecracker. He yells, shoves him back and forth. At this point, the audience may fall into the trap of cognitive bias, imagining Eddie is venting his anger from the hardware store incident. Yet from his words, tone, and manner, we sense deep compassion. He is not taking revenge on a delinquent teen. He knows well the stigma on his family’s name cannot be washed away by any solvent. Eddie isn’t acting for himself—he is fathering those two teenage boys, showing them right from wrong. Exactly what he had tried to do for Jamie (unsuccessfully) and for Lisa (successfully).
And still, Eddie retains a resilient spirit. Though angry, sorrowful, broken, suspended, and even despairing, he remains Jamie’s father—the father who knows he cannot turn back time, cannot return the spilled water to the stream. Yet he does everything in his power to act better than before. He encourages his son to take painting—an art in which Jamie has shown talent—seriously, and to look after himself so no one will hurt him. The boy, left alone with the catastrophe he himself has brought down, has matured, learning how to fend for himself. Jamie has learned to abandon denial, to face the consequence of his act, to accept it, and to take a momentous step like confessing to murder. Thus, when Jamie’s recorded voice plays in the Miller van, we clearly hear and feel his confidence, inner calm, determination, and maturity. We can even picture him in our minds, taller now, likely broad-shouldered, with muscles beginning to show—everything that this handsome boy might have attained with some patience, effort, and exercise. Instead, what remains of him is such a faint presence, like recalling the memories of a beloved lost one.
That is why, when we return to the Miller household, Manda and Eddie’s grief for their dear child feels necessary, palpable, and inevitable. Their minds overflow with questions that will never find clear answers—questions like “What did we do?” or “What didn’t we do?” that brought them here. They replay memories and events endlessly, morning, noon, and night, as if an old film passes before their eyes, in the hope of finding an answer. An answer that no longer matters—because what is left for both of them is the crushing weight of guilt: guilt for what happened to Jamie, and guilt for what he did.
The ending of Adolescence is bitter and agonizing, breaking into sobs; the pinnacle of stirring emotion in the most impartial portrayal of a slow emotional collapse taking place in Jamie’s small room. It is Eddie’s second birthday without Jamie by his side under their roof. Now Eddie knows well that whatever drove Jamie’s behavior originated in the family’s own voids—just like that torn strip of wallpaper in Jamie’s room, which destroyed the design’s unity. And what else can Eddie do but confess his own shortcomings and weep in mourning for his son?
