Anger is one of our core emotional responses, alongside joy, sadness, and anxiety.
Anger
There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. In fact, when someone starts suppressing their emotions, it can cause serious long-term damage to their personality. However, anger can take on extreme forms, where a person’s reaction escalates into physical acts. These are states in which the individual enters a dissociative relationship with themselves — they detach from their own self. It’s similar to daydreaming, where not much memory remains of what just happened.
(Sorry, no, we’re not talking about drunken blackouts — this is a very different kind of “state.”)
Denial
is one of the ego’s core defense mechanisms — a mental shutdown where reality is rejected, even in the face of clear facts.
Boring, right?!
Well, hold up!
It’s not — because:
The latest Netflix buzz, Adolescence, dares to tackle a timeless theme. It’s worth checking out this professionally intriguing miniseries, pulled off with a one-shot technique, because it explores a phenomenon you’ve definitely encountered during your own teenage years.
The difference? In your case, things probably didn’t escalate to such extremes.
It’s a major societal mistake to treat these serious events as if they’re part of some new, emerging trend. The only real change is the medium — what used to be passed in folded notes or whispered in hallways is now shared through DMs and group chats. There’s nothing new under the sun. We’ve collected enough information about adolescent behavior, its causes, and its consequences. The library is full.
Meh…
Little geek, technic and magic
Anyway, what is this magical “one-shot” take?! (Still no, it’s not about doing a shot of booze.)
It’s quite simple: each episode is crafted from a single, continuous camera roll — something that usually calls for seasoned experience. Or raw talent. And in this case, it definitely smells like the latter. The story follows a teenager, Jamie Miller, portrayed by newbie Owen Cooper in his acting debut.
The story without spoiler!
You’ll follow the life of a typical British, middle-class, small-town family across four episodes, as a central event slowly unfolds into a psychological drama.
And what a drama!
No fancy framing — just raw storytelling.
The series walks you through a classic teenage school experience, laid out in black and white: teasing, bullying, and hazing. Who hasn’t seen a teenager break out in rage — throwing words like weapons, or even escalating to physical aggression? And the other side, like here: a parent, despite all the clear signs, chooses to follow their heart and block out reality — misleading their most intimate circle, the immediate family.
Denial, indeed.
That mental block is delivered with gut-wrenching force by Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller, Jamie’s father. His character remains trapped in a protective mental vacuum for four full episodes — until it finally shatters into tiny fragments of a loving father’s heart and mind in the very last moment of the final episode.
Stick with Adolescence, and you’ll witness a raw, deeply human outburst — no filter, no sugarcoating.
The series hits you with unflinching, honest scenes that make it impossible not to empathize with this loving dude, whose family life seemed totally fine on the surface.
The series flashes up those evergreen questions around responsibility.
Do you run — or stay and face the fallout in a punishing situation?
How does the neighborhood respond when a family breaks down under the weight of such a tragedy? You become a witness to their collapse, shown through raw, unfiltered reactions — amplified by the eerie, reality show-like vibe of the one-shot technique.
And once again, we’re left with the question:
Why can’t we do anything with the enormous amount of knowledge we already have about human behavior?
Who’s really to blame for the explosion of anger?
Who bears the responsibility?
Why do we keep pretending it’s some new behavioral fashion?
Why do we keep hoarding information like hamsters, when it does so little good in the mirror of reality — just as the miniseries Adolescence so clearly reflects back at us?
Image ownership? Well, waiting for the rightfull owners to show up for lovely credit.
The original Hungarian version of this article by Heti Mocsok is HERE.
