This may be a lot of feelings for something produced by Netflix, but I'm honestly mad that they even covered the first episode at all? I understand that the family is grieving, and my heart breaks for what Tiffany must have gone through, but the amount of information that Netflix left out to twist the story to fit their own narrative is honestly egregious.
CPS was called on the family three separate times, and Tiffany's mom admitted to punching her during an argument once. We know that at least one of those calls was from one of Tiffany's teachers, who saw bruising on her arm that wasn't consistent with a sports injury. Tiffany stole a credit card, but she also stole money from her parents some time before that. She had very recently broken up with her girlfriend, and she had only come out as lesbian, in a small town, 6 months prior (to which her mom apparently called it "a phase"). She was also self harming and skipping school, and her friends said repeatedly that she wasn't happy. Not only that, but a K 9 unit was able to easily track Tiffany's scent along the two mile walk she took.
I understand that no one would ever want to think that a family member, especially a child, would commit suicide, but saying "she was happy, she was looking forward to college, she had made plans for the weekend," doesn't mean anything. Even the tweet they showcased, where they claimed that it proved she was happy, means nothing ("I probably shouldn't be, but I'm kinda content rn," or something along those lines was the tweet. That could mean anything).
I get that Netflix clearly didn't want to share the actual facts of the case, but at the end of the day, the least they could have done is shine a light on the suicide rates of LGBT+ people, especially LGBT+ youth, which is at an all time high right now. According to The Trevor Project, across the US, 50% of LGBT+ teens have thought about committing suicide, 61% say they're depressed, and 75% admitted that they deal with anxiety. If that's not worrisome enough, 82% said they wanted mental healthcare, but 60% had no access to it.
All in all, the episode left an extremely bad taste in my mouth, and I feel like it did a complete disservice not only to Tiffany, but to struggling teens and mental health as well.