I thought the first season had a pretty interesting story but often frustrating style. The worst was that the tape about Clay wasn't played for so long, frustrating that he understandably or rightly gets angry at others without even knowing or considering what he did-and then when he does it's not really bad even though the others often thought he would be quiet about everything to protect himself. It was nice that the cast was diverse without them therefore being either idealized or particularly attacked (although I thought Ryan felt kind of thrown-in, just bad enough to be included as a victimizer/person blamed, not bad enough to get much negative focus, and the last episode felt a little both too tough on and too positive to the counselor). Also I'm pretty sure Hannah did tell Bryce stop early on so forced/frustrating that she answered the counselor that she didn't.
Season 2 had moments but it felt too much about both shock value and having pretty much all the cast members pretty much redeem themselves (aside from two or three characters still being bad and Clay being a lot worse than he used to be) which felt forced/excessive (fine that Sheri, Zach and somewhat Courtney do, I guess that Alex and Jessica do, all of them plus Justin (plus the kind of equivalent of Clay being worse) too much). The endless, often self-serving narration (which sometimes felt like it was part of the court testimony but more often didn't) was really annoying. It felt forced and weak that the mother now had the tapes and wanted to use the trial to tell Hannah's story and wanted to use the tapes in the trial but ultimately didn't just release the tapes in the trial or otherwise. And that Clay kept saying the same thing to Jessica expecting a different response and it finally worked.