10 Things I Hate About You

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind;
I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie,
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call,
But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all."

10 Things I Hate About You is a 1999 High School film which was, essentially, a sort of murky, updated High School AU-style take on The Taming of the Shrew. The plot is fairly standard for a romantic comedy, and runs as such:

Something is rotten in the house of Stratford. It has come to light that Katerina Stratford, the feminist, intelligent, and well, shrewish elder sister, has received an acceptance letter to a college her overprotective father doesn't want her to go to. Bianca, the bubbly, popular younger sister, got a ride home from a boy today. There's much anger and words are exchanged that cannot be taken back, and from all of this a new rule sprouts forth: Bianca can date when Kat does. This is pretty much the end of it for Bianca, as Kat doesn't really do the whole dating thing, preferring to snark and study. However, when Bianca spills this to Cameron, the new kid in town who has a crush on her and is her French Tutor, he develops a plan: Find someone who'll date Kat. But who?

The bad boy in town, of course. Enter Patrick Verona. He's mean, he's tough, and he scares off Cameron when he's approached with the idea. However, Michael, Cameron's new friend(ish), comes up with an idea: get Joey, a popular guy with a crush on Bianca, to cough up money for them to bribe Patrick with. This succeeds, and in the end, Patrick woos Kat by essentially being as cantankerous and stubborn as she is, only more romantic. He ends up asking her to the prom, having been given 300 bucks to do it, and while she doesn't go at first, she eventually accepts. The problem? He's actually really starting to like this girl...

Despite being a teen romcom, 10 Things received some good reviews for acting, writing and general amusement value. It's still fondly remembered years later because of that. Most notably, it put its two leads on the map as dramatic actors to watch in the future. Yes, Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger had their break-out roles in a teen comedy. In the meanwhile, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun) and Larisa Oleynik (the title character from The Secret World of Alex Mack, not to mention JGL's girlfriend on Third Rock) played the roles of Cameron and Bianca. Lastly, David Krumholtz of Numb3rs, The Addams Family and The Santa Clause played Michael, and Allison Janney had a One-Scene Wonder role as "Miss Perky," the school's incredibly-messed up guidance counselor. (This film is a shining example of Hey, It's That Guy! and Retroactive Recognition.)

Also had a sitcom based on it, which aired on ABC Family. Despite only lasting two years, it amassed an impressive fanbase and was generally considered better than expected for a series recycled from a film.

Tropes used in 10 Things I Hate About You include:

The movie contains examples of:

  • Actor Shared Background: They worked in Heath Ledger's Australian background to be an actual part of the character, including having Kat ask him if the accent was real or faked.
  • And This Is For: Bianca does this to Joey near the end of the movie. It's immensely satisfying.
  • Angry Black Man: The English teacher Mr. Morgan, sort of.
  • Bad Guys Play Pool: Just to reinforce his badassitude, Patrick is shown smoking and playing pool in a bar before Cameron comes to tell him how to impress Kat.
  • Bad News in a Good Way:

Cameron: We're screwed.
Michael: Hey, no, hey. I don't want to hear that defeatist attitude. I want to hear you upbeat.
Cameron (upbeat): We're screwed!
Michael: There you go.

  • Because I Said So: Their father, sort of, and also Kat towards Bianca's wish to date Joey. She doesn't explain why till the end of the movie. Kat slept with Joey once. When she said she didn't want to do it again, he dumped her.
  • The Bet: Subverted and, in a way, played straight. Joey is actually just after Bianca because his friends bet him he couldn't sleep with her, whilst Patrick is not actually betting, he's getting paid up front. But he and Kat play the rest out exactly as promised.
  • Betty and Veronica: Cameron and Joey for Bianca.
  • Black Bra and Panties: Bianca takes this as a sign that her sister wants to eventually have sex.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: The guidance counselor.

Cameron: Did you just say ... am I in the right room?

  • Compensating for Something: Joey's expensive sports car (see Teeny Weenie).
  • Dawson Casting: One of the most notable aversions, all of the main cast was between 18 and 20 during the filming of the movie playing high schoolers (Krumholtz was the oldest, and he was barely 21 when the movie premiered). Some of the supporting cast were a little older, though.
  • Deadpan Snarker: See World of Snark
  • Decoy Protagonist: The film follows Cameron as the main character before the introduction of Kat and Patrick.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Kat.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: Kate deliberately invokes this to get Patrick out of detention.
  • Does Not Like Men: Kat, in keeping with the original. It's eventually subverted, however.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The movie opens with perky pop song playing over fun, bouncing credits, as four perky pretty girls roll up to a stop sign in a brightly-coloured sports car... then the pop music is rapidly drowned out by Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation", as a lone, sour-faced young woman rolls up next to them in a beat-up Ford, glaring. Six minutes before we learn her name, five minutes before she ever speaks, and we already know Kat's basic character.
    • Also captured in that wonderful exchange with Miss Perky:

Ms. Perky: People perceive you as somewhat...
Kat: Tempestuous?
Ms. Perky: "Heinous bitch" is the term used most often.

  • Even the Guys Want Him: After Heath Ledger finished his audition, the director turned to his mostly female staff and said "I'm not gay. But if I was, that is the kind of guy I'd want to sleep with."
  • Face Doodling: Actually took place while the character was awake. Joey doodles on Michael's face as he's trying to speak.

Michael: I have a dick on my face, don't I?

  • Fetish Fuel: Used in-universe. Knowing that Mandella is obsessed over Shakespeare, Michael goes with her to prom with both in period outfits and talking in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
  • Flat Character: well averted. Kat, Bianca and Patrick all turn out to have Hidden Depths. (Cameron does too, but as he's The Ishmael of the pieces the audience knows it long before Bianca does.)
  • Funny Background Event: As Bianca is trying to fire her bow, Joey tries to talk to her. The result is that the arrow misses the target and hits the teacher instead. [1]
    • Made even funnier due to the fact that Biance actually stops to look, before going right back to her conversation.
  • The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Unsurprising, given that this also applies to the original.
  • Groin Attack: Bianca to Joey after finding out he placed a bet to nail her on prom night. And the audience cheers.
    • A Noodle Incident equivalent happens in Kat's backstory. ("I still maintain that he kicked himself in the balls.")
    • When Michael is on his bike and accidentally goes tumbling down a hill, he shouts "My balls!" during one of the bounces.
  • The Grovel: After getting Kat so royally pissed off at him that she won't speak to him, Patrick is instructed to "sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity and even the score." No actual groveling is involved - Patrick opts for a marching-band-assisted rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" in the middle of her soccer practice instead - but the effect is the same, especially as it also nets him detention.
  • Heel Realisation

Cameron: Have you always been this selfish?
Bianca: Yes.

  • "Hey You!" Haymaker: Bianca's pulls one off at the dance.
  • High School AU: It's pretty much just The Taming of the Shrew with high school and more modern things.
  • High School Dance: Well, yes.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: "Can I get a prophylactic?"
  • Hollywood Geography: Anyone who's ever lived in Seattle will be somewhat bemused by how quickly they get from various points of the city to others.
    • An example: It's a 45 minute drive from Stadium High School in Tacoma (where the actual school building is located) to the docks where they rent the boat when they escape detention.
  • Hormone-Addled Teenager: Played pretty straight with Bianca, Cameron, and Joey; spectacularly averted with Kat.
  • Lighter and Softer: The Taming of the Shrew was a good bit more misogynistic.
  • Meaningful Name: Kat and Bianca's last name (after Stratford-on-Avon), as well as Patrick's last name, and Padua High School.
    • Cameron James is named after King James, who ruled during Shakespeare's life.
  • Megaphone Hanging: Stacks of Shakespeare references.
  • Mills and Boon Prose: A guidance counselor, who writes bad sex novels, wants to know another word for "engorged".
    • Turgid.
    • Tumescent!
    • Perfect!
    • Bratwurst.
    • I'll let you get back to Reginald's quivering member.
    • I've got deviants to see and a novel to finish... now SCOOT!
  • Missing Mom: Kat and Bianca's mother is absent, and only gets a mention whenever Bianca puts on a set of her pearls before going out.
    • She gets a few more mentions, the implication being that she left the family, and that left the dad feeling out of control, explaining why he's so overprotective of his daughters. She seemed to have been a character in an older version of the script.
      • Whether she left in a taxi or a hearse is never established, but frankly it doesn't change much.
      • In the original script, their mother was present, but spent all of her time at the computer writing romance novels. All of the gags surrounding Ms. Perky's novels originally belonged to Mrs. Stratford.
    • In the series, it's confirmed that she's dead.
  • Missing Trailer Scene: Kat rejecting Patrick at the lockers then the camera zooms in on his grinning face *swoon*.
  • The Nineties: Ska (lots of it), The Real World and Jared Leto references.
  • Non-Indicative Name: "Ten Things I Hate About You" is catchy, but Kat's poem lists more than ten things.
    • Actually, some of the items may be listed together. The words "I hate" appear in the poem ten times; the words that follow may be lumped together. Thus "I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind" would be one item.
  • Old Shame: Averted, a lot of people expected Heath Ledger to continue in the teen comedy genre but he instead refused a lot of similar roles until he started to get the parts he wanted like in The Patriot and A Knight's Tale. Despite this, he didn't consider this film to be an old shame, just not where he wanted to take his career.
    • Julia Stiles, on the other hand, would rather people talk about any of the other movies she's made since this one. She's not exactly ashamed of it, she just wishes more people expressed an interest in the rest of her career.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Allison Janney as Ms Perky. Technically a Two-Scene Wonder.
    • Or a Three-Scene Wonder if you count a deleted scene where she's shown making out with the soccer coach.
  • Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Played with. Heath Ledger occasionally slips into his native accent, but this is mentioned as because his character spent some years growing up in Australia.
  • Overprotective Dad: In addition to the whole Missing Mom thing, he's also a natal specialist who evidently deals with a lot of teenagers.

Walter: Kissing isn't what keeps me up to my elbows in placentas all day!

  • Paintball Episode: A variation in the paint balloon-throwing scene.
  • Pair the Spares: Chastity ends up with Joey; Michael starts dating Kat's best friend Mandella.
  • Parking Payback: Kat's least favourite person parks his shiny new sports car behind her, in the middle of the road. This is, itself, illegal and done specifically to annoy her, but Kat takes it a bit too far when she backs right into him, destroying the side.
  • A Party - Also Known as an Orgy: Trope Namer.
  • Pretty Boy: Patrick's prettiness gets lampshaded in the movie.

Cameron: And Kat likes pretty guys.
Patrick: Are you saying I'm not a pretty guy?

  • Recycled: the Series
  • Romance on the Set: Joseph Gordon-Levitt dated both Larisa Oleynik and Julia Stiles after filming... but not at the same time. The main cast apparently became fairly close friends, regardless.
  • Rooftop Concert: The movie ends with a crane shot, revealing the band Letters to Cleo playing on top of Padua High School.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Beautiful: Bianca believes she can manipulate Cameron's feelings for her based on this. When he finds out, as seen in the What the Hell, Hero? examples below, Cameron disagrees.
  • Serenade Your Lover: The famous "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" scene in the stadium. With a brass band and a parade.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Kat and Patrick have this effect on one another.
  • Show Some Leg: It isn't exactly her leg.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Patrick Verona is supposed to have eaten a live duck, sold his liver on the black market for a new set of speakers, lit a State Trooper on fire, known Marilyn Manson, slept with a Spice Girl (he thinks) and been a porn star, among other things. Kat has a bit of a reputation too. Amusingly, when they discuss this later, it turns out the only thing that's actually true is Kat pulling a Groin Attack on a guy who tried to grope her in the lunch line.

Ms. Perky: His testicle retrieval operation went quite well, in case you're wondering.
Kat: I still maintain that he kicked himself in the balls.

  • "Shut Up" Kiss: Bianca does this to Cameron when he calls her out on her actions at the party (he was technically her date, but she spent more time with Joey only to recognize Joey for what he was. Cameron was being a gentleman by driving her home). Probably the best way to get back in his good graces.
    • Subverted later when Kat finally finds out that Patrick was paid to date her. He tries resorting to this to convince her that he really did love her, but she was too angry and pushed him away.
    • Played straight again at the very end of the movie, after Patrick finally wins Kat back by buying her dream guitar for her.
  • Small Reference Pools: Kat, complaining about not discussing literature by women, mentions Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir, all well-known female authors.
    • Given the extremely well-known nature of these authors, it's perhaps a pretty egregious error that even they aren't being taught.
  • The Snark Knight: Kat is quite a good example of this character-type.
  • Teeny Weenie: Joey, apparently. Kat threatens to reveal this to the cheerleading team if he tells anyone that he slept with her.
  • Totally Radical: Played for laughs in-universe; Walter Stratford's various attempts at speaking 'teen' in an effort to get his point across to his daughters aren't as successful as he hopes.
  • Tsundere: Kat is a definitive type A.
  • Two-Teacher School: The gym teacher/soccer coach and the English teacher are the only ones seen.
  • Unusual Euphemism:

Patrick: Joey can plough whatever he wants.
Cameron: Hey! There will be no ploughing!

Cameron: Just 'cause you're beautiful, that doesn't mean that you can treat people like they don't matter.

Michael: (in character) The shit hath hitteth the fan... eth.


The series contains examples of:

  • Cassandra Truth: Bianca tries to explain to people that she didn't have sex with her teacher but no one listened and he was arrested (although he was having sex with another girl)
  • The Cast Showoff: The talent show episode may have been created so Meaghan Martin could sing.
  • The Cheerleader: Bianca, Chastity, Dawn etc.
  • Cliff Hanger: The season one finale, which became the series finale when the show wasn't renewed. Walter walked in on Kat and Patrick right after they finished having sex. Bianca and Dawn quit the cheerleading squad in protest over their Chastity being unfairly kicked off, only to find out that Chastity is transferring schools and they didn't have to quit. Joey had become a contestant on a reality show and Bianca tunes in just in time to see him kissing another one of the contestants. The creator of the show was nice enough to tell fans how things would have developed if the series had continued Basically, Kat and Patrick's relationship would grow closer, though they'd eventually clash about college.(Kat wants to go and wants Patrick to go, Patrick doesn't think college is his thing.) We'd meet Patrick's mom and stepdad, and Walter would become a sort of father figure to Patrick. Kat's other possible love interest, Blank, would be around, but it wasn't quite going to turn into a full-fledged love triangle. Joey would get kicked off the reality show, causing him to lose a bit of his spark. His and Bianca's problems(from his cheating and bit of a personality change) would lead to Bianca confiding in Cameron, which would lead to a Bianca/Joey/Cameron love triangle. Chastity was going to be gone for good, since the actress quit the show, and Dawn would be given a bigger role to compensate.
  • Dark Horse Victory: Joey wins the talent show rather than any of the main characters
  • Dumb Blonde: Joey, who also represents Dumb Is Good
    • Though Bianca isn't as smart as Kat, she is not dumb as stated by her teacher being dragged away by cops
      • "Was this because I gave you an A-?"
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Walter Stratford from the film plays Walter Stratford in the series.
    • Kat's car in the series was Cameron's in the movie.
  • Hide Your Gays: Mandella is hinted at being a lesbian and appears sporadically, until it's confirmed and she disappears. Michael disappears for several episodes only to return to come out.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: It's yet another show that names episodes after songs, I Want You To Want Me was episode two.
  • Irony: Walter constantly gets on Bianca for the slightest things when in reality she hasn't done anything nearly as bad as Kat did.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Bianca thinks this of Cameron when Michael who really is gay gives him a makeover
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bianca is actually quite good at delivering them and has on more than one occasion called Chastity out.
    • She also receives a brutal one from Cameron. It's not exactly true as it is his false perception of her.
  • Sudden School Uniform
  • Talent Show: In the episode 'The Winner Takes All'.
  • Third-Act Misunderstanding
  • What the Hell, Hero?: After Cameron hears Bianca's date wants to have sex with her he goes out of his way to sabotage the date rather than telling her. She hates him briefly when she finds out
  • Younger Than They Look: Patrick, who is supposed to be 17, was played by a 21 year old and looked like it, mainly due to his muscular build, very deep voice, mature facial features, and the way he dressed. Walter even pointed this out in one episode, calling him out to Kat as 'your friend with the disturbingly deep voice who looks much older than 17.'
  1. ↑ The Coach was kind of asking for it standing in front of the firing line. He was clearly away from the line of fire but Bianca had turned about 60 degrees to her left between Joey's appearance and letting the arrow go. Regardless, that's why the general rule is to stay behind the firing line.
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