Sometimes, there are certain things that hurt you deeply but enable you to stand at the pinnacle of your own life. Tragic Shows do something like that with their stories. They make you stronger and fierce and ignite within you the fire of having your life under your control and living it guilt-free. Here is a set of tragic stories available on Netflix that teach you enormous life lessons. We’ve picked up a few for you; let us get into a bit of detail so you can know which show deserves the next spot on your watchlist.
The End Of The F***ing World
This particular show on Netflix is distinctive from every angle. Projects like this come once in a blue moon. With enormous idiosyncratic vibes that surround the entire stretch of the show, The End Of The F***ing World is a must-watch for the viewers who are looking for a tragic comedy, with loads of life lessons that the plot beholds.
A still from the series
It mainly revolves around the lives of two teenagers, Alyssa and James, who have suffered a lot in their lives, on a personal level. They’ve been a victim of emotional distress since childhood. James believes that he is a psychopath, and he loves killing animals and feels relieved. He lives with his father and dreams of punching him hard at least for once. James had a terrible childhood, for his mother had committed suicide in front of him when he was 6. He gets flashbacks of that day and when he witnessed his mother dying in front of him.
Similarly, as James has a sense of loss linked to his childhood, so has Alyssa. Alyssa witnessed her father moving out when she was 8. Her mother then gets remarried to an abusive man who hates Alyssa and always tries to insult her. Alyssa, even after her parents’ separation, holds a good impression of her father, mainly because of all the birthday cards she receives from him, which in the end gets revealed are given to her by her mother.
James and Alyssa
James, after being bored with killing animals, now aims to kill a human. He then comes across his schoolmate Alyssa, a rebellious teen who he marks as his next target. Both of them gain some proximity, and Alyssa insists that they run away from their homes. James gets convinced for he wants a chance to kill her and gain some satisfaction and steals his father’s car. But while they’re on their journey, James falls in love with Alyssa, and both of them, coming from a dysfunctional home, can interrelate with each other’s misery. Then begins a series of adventures and struggles, which they overcome with each other’s support.
The show has two seasons wherein the initial season, James and Alyssa go and visit her father but eventually, when they see him as a threat, they try to run away. Since they’re suspects in a murder investigation, James tries to save Alyssa. To bring all the attention towards him, he runs away, and the police shoot James down, and Alyssa feels she has lost him. The second season picks up the plot from the same storyline and offers another set of adventures and the reunion of both of the protagonists.
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All The Bright Places
Based on the novel of the same name, All The Bright Places is a story surrounding the tragic romance genre that gives you lessons and makes your heart wrench. It follows the lives of two teenagers Theodore Finch and Violet Markey, whose lives get interconnected after Finch saves Violet from an expected suicide and pulls her off the bridge. The fact that he sees Violet up there makes him anxious.
He, too, suffers from near-death thoughts, and that’s what made him come to the bridge. But he was startled to see Violet up there because she is one of the most popular girls in school. Violet has lost her sister in a car accident, and the guilt that hasn’t let her move on is even when she was the one sharing the car with her, she couldn’t save her. The car crash incident keeps haunting her, and that’s the reason Violet has become distant from people and avoids traveling by car. She visits the bridge where her sister died, and Finch saves her from a possible suicide by convincing her with his words.
Violet and Finch
While Violet has suffered a trauma that is linked to her sister’s loss, Finch suffers from bipolar disorder. He is a victim of depression because of the traumatic childhood he has lived in. He used to get beaten up by his father, and the flashbacks still haunt him. He is labeled as a freak by the students of his school. His family doesn’t understand his mental situation, and this makes him feel more isolated. He prefers writing his thoughts out in the form of notes and sticks them on the walls of his room.
When he comes to know about Violet’s situation, he tries to help her and make her come out of her trauma. During a school project, he initiates to be Violet’s partner. For the project, the students were supposed to explore two unusual spots in Indiana and make a report on them. Finch finds this as a way to help Violet recover. He makes her travel to different sites, one of them being homemade roller coasters. He makes her talk about the death of her sister, which she has kept within her for months. A blooming love and relationship start to rise within the two. Violet starts to heal. She begins traveling in cars and writing, as she used to.
But Finch’s condition worsens. He is still in the habit of disappearing every now and then. He ignores treatment because he’s terrified of the labels he’ll be marked with. He has been a victim of child abuse and bullying at school. His thoughts are blocked by the traumatic incidents that have happened to him. Suffering from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder which makes his behavior vary from time to time.
Eventually, Violet gets to know about his condition and tries to help him. But the closer she comes, the more he pushes her away. One day he goes missing again, and Violet tries to find him. He sends her mysterious texts, which she finds difficult to understand. A month later, Finch sends a goodbye email to everyone who’s close to him. Reading this, Violet becomes distressed. She tries and ends up decoding all the texts he had sent her. She becomes aware that all this while he was traveling to those places that existed on their exploration list. In search of him, she goes by the lake and sees his clothes lying at the side.
Violet realizes he has committed suicide and wanted them both to visit the last location together. He drowns himself at the Blue Hole, which once was Violet’s healing aid. She comes across a song that Finch wrote for her, and she understands she isn’t the reason behind him taking his own life. This helps her with the healing process. She goes swimming by the lake, remembering the time when they both were together. She understands the importance of smaller things in life that help a person heal from the deepest wounds.
Although both the stories are distinctively very different from each other, both of them have one thing in common, both of the stories had protagonists who were traumatized, but they helped each other heal. While the first ended up uniting the two, the second separated the two with a unison of souls.
