Most of us seek truth to see the world clearly. But what if the path to truth is painful? What if the truth, before it sets you free, wounds you deeply?
These are the unsettling questions at the heart of the TV series Adolescence. While the show opens with a gripping mystery — Did Jamie Cooper really kill Katie? — it quickly becomes clear that the real story isn’t just about solving a crime. It’s about confronting how our emotions cloud reality, and how pain often becomes the only way we learn to see clearly.
We catch glimpses of this theme through the lives of each character.
Jamie, the main character who is accused of murder, never admits to it. Despite the police uncovering clear evidence of his guilt, he keeps repeating the same line: “I didn’t do it.” Because he doesn’t feel like he’s a killer, he cannot grasp the reality of what he’s done. He is driven by emotions of shame and rage, and the haunting label of being an incel—someone deemed unworthy of love or intimacy. And his version of the truth becomes inseparable from the pain and shame he feels.
His father, on the other hand, sees the evidence that proves Jamie committed the crime. But even then, he cannot bring himself to face it. The weight of his son’s actions overwhelms him, and instead of engaging with the truth, he erupts in anger, violence, and silence. His pain, never letting him confront the truth, eats him up from the inside.
Jamie’s mother lives in the gap between not knowing and not wanting to know. She carries the ache of uncertainty and clings to the hope that her son will somehow be proven innocent. Her pain is quieter, but she too seeks to deny the truth, as a way out of her pain.
Meanwhile, Jamie’s sister accepts the painful truth with resolve. She doesn’t deny who he is—or what he’s done. Instead, she holds on to the belief: He is still ours. However, her strength and quiet endurance, and her decision to accept the truth, does not take her pain away. Instead, the truth chips away hope of ever recovering from its pain.
Then there’s the psychologist. Like Jamie’s sister, she also accepts and receives his rage, confusion, and despair. However, to seek the truth, she has to refuse to succumb to another’s pain. In the end, she too cannot fully bear the weight of truth.
Throughout the series, we see how these different characters deal with the pain of knowing the truth. Some collapse from the pain, some endure it, and some rise from it. But in all of them, we see this: The only way out of pain is to navigate through it. And the only way to arrive at the truth is to let it form you as you walk with it.
In the end, Adolescence doesn’t just ask what is true. Nor does it give us any easy answers about the truth. It simply invites us to watch how people respond when the reality of suffering strikes them, and leads us to ask—how do we live once we know the truth?
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Written by Roselina Vundi
