Spoiler Warning: The Girl From Plainville / Trigger Warning: This article contains bullying, mental health, and self-harm content.
In The Girl From Plainville, the true story of Michelle Carter's "texting-suicide" case is further documented, providing an unedited version of the entire case. While exploring Carter's relationship with her then 18-year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III and the series of events that lead to his ultimate death, the show leads to her conviction of involuntary manslaughter. It also emphasizes the mental health issues both Roy and Carter had experienced.
The Hulu Original limited series is based on the Esquire article by Jesse Barron, where Massachusetts teenager Conrad Roy (played in the show by Colton Ryan) committed suicide after Michelle Carter (played in the show by Elle Fanning) had sent him a series of text messages, urging him to kill himself. As actress Elle Fanning says that the show aims to present an unbiased view of the widely debatable case, it does shed light on cases involving suicide and cyberbullying.
Here's how the case and series featured instrumental cyberbullying tactics that ultimately led to suicide.
The Back & Forth Exchanges Between Roy and Carter
The Girl From Plainville drama mini-series is based on the real-life trial that took place in Massachusetts. Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter contained a profound amount of text messages, emails, and recorded phone calls between Carter and Roy leading up to his death, where Carter had repeatedly pressured Roy to kill himself. The 17-year-old was on the phone with Roy, on July 13, 2014, at the same time that Roy had died by suicide after poisoning himself with carbon monoxide fumes in his truck outside of a Kmart parking lot in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
Both struggling with mental illness, specifically depression, and a previous suicide attempt by Roy, the two had initially met in 2012. After meeting on a family vacation to Florida, both parties saw each other five times later, living only an hour apart in Massachusetts (Roy residing in Fairhaven and Carter in Plainville, MA). Leading up to the act, Roy was experiencing severe depression. Carter sent continuous messages, even providing step-by-step instructions via text message, entailing exactly what he should do to go forward with the suicide. At one point, Roy had gotten out of the car, where he initially planned to carry out the suicide, but Michelle urged him to go back into the car and continue the process.
In The Girl From Plainville, the relationship between the teenagers is further emphasized, as well as the fallout from Roy's death. However, the text exchanges are crucial because it shows the state of mind that Roy and Carter were both in leading up to the death. Fanning, 23, who had to read the texts in order to prep for her role, stated the exchanges were "extremely haunting and difficult to read." The series does not gloss over any details. Many of the episodes highlighting these messages are difficult to digest because it's hard to imagine anyone could be urging another person to carry out this act.
Showing the Buildup to Each Moment
The first 42-minute episode of the series goes right into Roy's death. With police officers searching for the teen, this seems to be a typical day. Kids are riding their bikes down the street, and the sun is shining in the local suburban neighborhood when an officer in the area gets a page from dispatch regarding Conrad's car being spotted. As the officer pulls into the parking lot, viewers can pinpoint his black pick-up truck in the distance, parked in an isolated spot in the store lot.
Finding Roy lifeless, the officer calls for dispatch, and from there, the fall-out abruptly begins to occur. While the investigation develops throughout the upcoming episodes, a series of flashbacks showed what their lives looked like before meeting, the moment they met, and the drastic ways their lives turned after their first run in. The moment on the bridge where they bonded over not being able to sleep was the catalyst for the relationship.
In relation to Hulu's The Girl From Plainville and how the limited series sheds light on cases involving cyberbullying and suicide cases, the content challenges Michelle's court argument in the series, where her messages to Conrad were labeled as freedom of speech. The contrast in the freedom of speech argument and encouraging someone to end their own life is also shown extensively.
As viewers, we can all see two teenagers who go through tremendous levels of social anxiety and additional mental health challenges. Everyone either knows someone who has faced similar issues or has gone through the experience firsthand. The difference is the sinister turn this relationship took and how a life was unjustifiably lost.
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