The first episode of Skins I saw was 3x07 and it made me fall in love with the show because I was so impressed by the portrayal of a teenager with diagnosed autism and mental health problems. I've written about the episode a thousand times before, but it occurred to me that what makes it so progressive comes from the very structure of Skins.
First, the episode about JJ has to be from JJ's perspective and show his home life and how he acts when he's by himself, because that's how Skins episodes work by definition. And second, because it takes place pretty late in the season and the audience has seen the episodes about different characters, we understand that everyone has problems.
I hate when people with autism are portrayed as a different species. It's not just insulting to us, but to humanity in general. Talking about how people with autism don't read social cues or understand other people's feelings just makes you sound like you don't know any people without autism. It puts people without autism on a pedestal and ignores what's interesting about all people--our weird, unique failures and perversities and charms.
To me JJ's episode is about stigma. Whether or not that was intended, it can't not come across that way. After all, there's this stereotype that Skins is about kids having parties where they trash houses (there was even a media panic that it was encouraging British kids to have "Skins parties" where they tried to emulate the ones on the show). And there are several instances of Skins characters breaking things when they're angry or high or drunk. Sometimes this is a problem in the character's life, but it's not medicalized--except when it's JJ.
The episode starts with JJ sitting in his room immediately after getting really upset and breaking everything. Unlike most Skins characters who do this, he's actually worried about the fact that he's done this. Unlike every other character who trashes a room in the show, JJ decides that he needs to see his doctor because of what he just did. The doctor, without much thought, prescribes him more medication. JJ, without much thought, obediently takes it.
Later in the episode JJ says something to his friend Cook about not being into drugs. Cook replies that JJ takes a lot of drugs, and JJ gets so mad that he sets out to sabotage Cook for what he said. The truth is that what Cook said is technically true--they both take a lot of drugs--while actually being completely offensive and false.
The difference between JJ and Cook's drug use isn't that one takes drugs and the other doesn't--that isn't the case--but that Cook has a choice about what he puts into his body. His drugs may mess him up more, but he takes them for pleasure and he takes them when he feels like it. JJ has been taught that everything about him needs treatment, and that he should always conform to what other people say is good for him.
We know Cook and the other characters well enough to know that many of them do things that are bad for them, and make choices that hurt other people, while still being really confident in who they are. They have compasses, even though they are shitty ones. JJ is a more thoughtful and sensitive person, but he has no compass. He's afraid to not do what he's told.
When JJ talks to Effy in his episode, she says, "I'm officially off the rails"--she's not joyful about it, but she is a little pleased with herself. It's a cool thing to say. JJ replies that he can't go off the rails because it would upset his mother. Effy is fucked up but she has the freedom to brag about her fucked-up-ness and go as deep into it as she wants. JJ has a disability label so he's held to a higher standard; any signs of fucked-up-ness are a symptom and a potential tragedy that needs to be immediately controlled.
The heart of the episode, when we really learn who JJ is, is when he's talking to Emily about what he would do if he was "normal." He'd have sex! He'd eat whatever he wanted! He'd tell people exactly what he thought! Everyone would respect him!
I can't imagine watching this without wondering what Cook and Effy did to earn all these rights JJ apparently doesn't deserve. Why are they normal? Sure, JJ is different, we can tell he's different, but there's no bad thing he's done that a "normal" character hasn't done too.
Later, Emily and JJ are talking about how Emily's sister won't accept Emily being gay. Emily reassures JJ, who accidentally outed her, that Katie loves her and will get over it. JJ suggests that Katie is "locked on" and Emily agrees with the phrase.
When I first saw the episode I thought that "locked on" was a common British term for...something, I couldn't tell exactly what. After I watched more of the show, I realized that it was a euphemism JJ and his friends use for his particular emotional states. At one point they use it for a meltdown, and in another episode JJ is just getting overexcited and yelling about something when his friend sees the need to correct his behavior--"JJ, you're getting locked on."
I don't think that JJ was written well after series 3, or even in some episodes in series 3 where he serves as a stereotypical "awkward" character who provides comic relief and inappropriate exposition. But his episode is perfect, especially this moment. He realizes that Katie, a very "normal" person, can be described as "locked on." There doesn't need to be a whole separate vocabulary for the things JJ does.
Series 3 does a great job showing how JJ's friends and acquaintances see him as being different (and sometimes lesser) and how he sees himself that way. This is a really serious part of how some disabled kids grow up and yet you hardly ever see it when disabled kids have friends on TV. Their friends either treat them "like everyone else" even when they're clearly different, or take care of them with saintly patience. Mentally disabled people are often portrayed as not knowing we're different, even as we inconvenience and hurt other people with our differentness. Skins shows all the complications for a disabled kid who has friends, but is separate from them--and because of how developed all the characters are, we know just how shoddy the reasons for that separation are, and how unfair it is.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Some ~feelings about Chase/Gert
(This is a bit more altered from the original.)
Part Two: "I think I got brain damage"
Just in case I ever write an academic paper on Runaways (I wish), I'd like to point out that one of the positive nerd characters is Victor Mancha, who has the same first name as Chase’s dad. Characters don’t usually have the same name, so what’s up with this? Notably, Chase resents Victor Mancha because a)he thinks that his nerdy girlfriend is going to leave him for Victor because Victor is nerdier/smarter than Chase, and b)as he admits to Victor, Victor is exactly the kind of son Chase’s dad would have wanted.
Gert was my favorite character when I started reading Runaways, but somehow Chase's love for her made me love him so much that I started liking him even more. Their relationship is pretty close to being my OTP of all time, regardless of genre--I right now cannot think of anything I love quite that much.
It's not exactly groundbreaking for a more "normal" teenager to fall in love with another kid who's geeky/alternative/fat. I do give props for Gert actually being fat sometimes, depending on the artist. But what I really love is how their personal insecurities/stigmas (dumbness for Chase and "ugliness" for Gert) interact so that they're not just opposed in the obvious way, but on every level.
Gert, who is super intellectual, is sure despite all evidence to the contrary that Chase wants to leave her because she’s fat. Chase, who is super conventionally attractive, is sure despite all evidence to the contrary that Gert wants to leave him because he’s dumb. I think the reason Gert/Chase is my OTP to end all OTPs is that neither of them actually cares about the thing the other person expects them to care about. They are awesome, not just on their own, but through each other–because they’re both awesome for being able to see that someone so different from them is awesome. Their awesomeness increases the more they love each other! It’s an infinite awesomeness loop!
Chase, before kissing Gert for the first time: I think I got brain damage ’cause suddenly you’re the hottest chick I’ve ever seen.
Gert, reassuring Chase that she’s not going to leave him for Victor: The smartest man in the world is the one who knows that I’m the best girl alive. I’ve only got four-eyes for you, okay?
Quoted because I love them so much, and emphasis on the intersections that shape their relationship. Obviously both quotes are jokes, but still they’re worth looking at. Chase is “brain-damaged” but “the smartest man in the world,” while Gert is “four-eyes” but “the hottest girl I’ve ever seen.” The first quote sets up Chase as being dumb for loving Gert, while the second quote says the opposite. Or does it? Is it Chase’s dumbness, his identity as inferior to his parents and Gert, that makes him “smart” enough to see Gert as hot instead of as the way she sees herself (inferior to Karolina and Nico)?
It has to be addressed that enemies of the Runaways often refer to Gert as ugly and fat, and mock Chase for having her as his girlfriend. There aren’t equivalent scenes with enemies telling Gert, “Your boyfriend is stupid.” Chase’s hatred of himself for being dumb is at least as deep as Gert’s discomfort with her body, but it’s Gert who is much more regularly attacked for her identity. I think this is a fair portrayal–because while of course there is violence and hatred of “dumbness” in the world, especially among nerds, it’s nowhere near as intense as hatred of fatness, which exists in both nerd culture and mainstream culture. Chase is more personally affected by his stigma, but he’s the more privileged person in the relationship. Which I think he doesn’t always understand.
Just one more thing: at the end of BKV’s run, Gert/Chase both arguably find some kind of peace away from stigma. Chase, who identifies as “bad” just as much as he identifies as “dumb,” carries out a complex plan and comes to identify as “innocent.” (It doesn’t hurt that in during the course of his plan he defeats Victor Mancha with logic, and that the two people he defeats are the two supposed threats to Gert/Chase.) Gert seems completely sure that Chase loves her, and refers to her conventionally attractive, skinny future self as “boring” and “a threat, not a promise.”
Part Two: "I think I got brain damage"
Just in case I ever write an academic paper on Runaways (I wish), I'd like to point out that one of the positive nerd characters is Victor Mancha, who has the same first name as Chase’s dad. Characters don’t usually have the same name, so what’s up with this? Notably, Chase resents Victor Mancha because a)he thinks that his nerdy girlfriend is going to leave him for Victor because Victor is nerdier/smarter than Chase, and b)as he admits to Victor, Victor is exactly the kind of son Chase’s dad would have wanted.
Gert was my favorite character when I started reading Runaways, but somehow Chase's love for her made me love him so much that I started liking him even more. Their relationship is pretty close to being my OTP of all time, regardless of genre--I right now cannot think of anything I love quite that much.
It's not exactly groundbreaking for a more "normal" teenager to fall in love with another kid who's geeky/alternative/fat. I do give props for Gert actually being fat sometimes, depending on the artist. But what I really love is how their personal insecurities/stigmas (dumbness for Chase and "ugliness" for Gert) interact so that they're not just opposed in the obvious way, but on every level.
Gert, who is super intellectual, is sure despite all evidence to the contrary that Chase wants to leave her because she’s fat. Chase, who is super conventionally attractive, is sure despite all evidence to the contrary that Gert wants to leave him because he’s dumb. I think the reason Gert/Chase is my OTP to end all OTPs is that neither of them actually cares about the thing the other person expects them to care about. They are awesome, not just on their own, but through each other–because they’re both awesome for being able to see that someone so different from them is awesome. Their awesomeness increases the more they love each other! It’s an infinite awesomeness loop!
Chase, before kissing Gert for the first time: I think I got brain damage ’cause suddenly you’re the hottest chick I’ve ever seen.
Gert, reassuring Chase that she’s not going to leave him for Victor: The smartest man in the world is the one who knows that I’m the best girl alive. I’ve only got four-eyes for you, okay?
Quoted because I love them so much, and emphasis on the intersections that shape their relationship. Obviously both quotes are jokes, but still they’re worth looking at. Chase is “brain-damaged” but “the smartest man in the world,” while Gert is “four-eyes” but “the hottest girl I’ve ever seen.” The first quote sets up Chase as being dumb for loving Gert, while the second quote says the opposite. Or does it? Is it Chase’s dumbness, his identity as inferior to his parents and Gert, that makes him “smart” enough to see Gert as hot instead of as the way she sees herself (inferior to Karolina and Nico)?
It has to be addressed that enemies of the Runaways often refer to Gert as ugly and fat, and mock Chase for having her as his girlfriend. There aren’t equivalent scenes with enemies telling Gert, “Your boyfriend is stupid.” Chase’s hatred of himself for being dumb is at least as deep as Gert’s discomfort with her body, but it’s Gert who is much more regularly attacked for her identity. I think this is a fair portrayal–because while of course there is violence and hatred of “dumbness” in the world, especially among nerds, it’s nowhere near as intense as hatred of fatness, which exists in both nerd culture and mainstream culture. Chase is more personally affected by his stigma, but he’s the more privileged person in the relationship. Which I think he doesn’t always understand.
Just one more thing: at the end of BKV’s run, Gert/Chase both arguably find some kind of peace away from stigma. Chase, who identifies as “bad” just as much as he identifies as “dumb,” carries out a complex plan and comes to identify as “innocent.” (It doesn’t hurt that in during the course of his plan he defeats Victor Mancha with logic, and that the two people he defeats are the two supposed threats to Gert/Chase.) Gert seems completely sure that Chase loves her, and refers to her conventionally attractive, skinny future self as “boring” and “a threat, not a promise.”
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Some ~feelings about Chase Stein
(This is something I wrote in March on one of my abandoned blogs.)
Part One: "Isn't that a cliche?"
I guess Runaways is a geek-centric comic in that most of the main characters are geeky/alternative in some way--and I think this is sort of what makes Chase like my favorite comic book character of all time. Let me explain. I feel like a character like Chase (who is introduced as a “dumb jock,” and is a lot more than that; but that description never stops being true) is normally only presented sympathetically in really mainstream narratives, which tend to not have a ton of depth and tend to portray geek characters stereotypically. Brian K. Vaughan decenters Chase from being the character we’re supposed to identify with, but still portrays him with a lot of depth.
Chase reminds me of my best friend in high school, John. John was a jock, and he was dumb. He made gross jokes. He was also a really good friend, and he was an outsider in his own way. I feel like writers, especially genre writers, tend to be geeky/alternative and don’t portray “dumb” or non-alternative characters in a compassionate way.
Although I guess in a lot of ways I am Hipster Scum, I just don’t really identify with the value of rejecting people who aren’t intellectual or aren’t alternative. I try to relate to people based on how I get along with them emotionally and not based on their subculture or what they want out of life. I can certainly be a dick and cut myself off from people for other stupid reasons. But I guess I just get annoyed by people who are anti-anti-intellectual and I got irked with Joss Whedon for the way he wrote Chase during his run.
I also think that Chase’s lack of nerdiness/intellectualism/intelligence/alternative-ness (including the facts that he isn’t part of a subculture, doesn’t do well in school, and is often kind of dense and spacey) is an extremely important part of who he is. Because of that I find Whedon's retcon of him insulting to the character (yes, I'm 12, I can be insulted on behalf of comic book characters).
The conceit of Runaways is that all the main characters have parents who are a different type of supervillain and when the kids find out, they team up to fight their parents. Chase’s parents are “mad scientists,” obviously the most intellectual type of supervillain (which Whedon himself portrayed as a hero in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with the villain being a superhero who is a stereotypical dumb jock). Although, like all the Runaways’ parents, they do evil with the goal of providing for their children, Chase’s parents are physically and emotionally abusive, and they are the only set of parents who are like this.
Although Chase fights with his parents and behaves rebelliously, he is written throughout Brian K. Vaughan’s run as having internalized the lessons he was taught by their abuse--basically, that he deserved to be abused because he wasn’t a good person, misbehaved, or was otherwise unsatisfactory. Chase’s parents frame their abuse of him in terms of “we’re smart, and you’re unsatisfactory and don’t know what is good for you, because you aren’t smart/intellectual.”
This value set has to come from somewhere, and it's not hard to guess. When the Steins first appear, Chase and his parents are fighting about his grades. Victor punches Chase and tells him he is a “dumb jock,” a “cliche.” Chase responds, “You’re a nerd who punches like a girl--isn’t that a cliche?” Which I think is really interesting because if you do read Chase’s dad through that lens, as a nerd who was bullied as a kid and wasn’t physically able to stand up for himself, and the violence that grew in him became his supervillainy...doesn’t that serve as a frame for his parenting? Does he have a childhood hatred of “dumb jocks,” which he takes out on his dumb jock son? It doesn’t matter if you “punch like a girl,” after all, if the person you’re punching is young and dependent on you.
So can I just say how much I love Brian K. Vaughan? He clearly isn’t mainstream or anti-nerd, as many of the positive characters are nerdy, but he also sees the potential violence in the idea that nerds are better than other people. In Y the Last Man he does a great job of portraying very diverse characters and the same is true for Runaways.
Part One: "Isn't that a cliche?"
I guess Runaways is a geek-centric comic in that most of the main characters are geeky/alternative in some way--and I think this is sort of what makes Chase like my favorite comic book character of all time. Let me explain. I feel like a character like Chase (who is introduced as a “dumb jock,” and is a lot more than that; but that description never stops being true) is normally only presented sympathetically in really mainstream narratives, which tend to not have a ton of depth and tend to portray geek characters stereotypically. Brian K. Vaughan decenters Chase from being the character we’re supposed to identify with, but still portrays him with a lot of depth.
Chase reminds me of my best friend in high school, John. John was a jock, and he was dumb. He made gross jokes. He was also a really good friend, and he was an outsider in his own way. I feel like writers, especially genre writers, tend to be geeky/alternative and don’t portray “dumb” or non-alternative characters in a compassionate way.
Although I guess in a lot of ways I am Hipster Scum, I just don’t really identify with the value of rejecting people who aren’t intellectual or aren’t alternative. I try to relate to people based on how I get along with them emotionally and not based on their subculture or what they want out of life. I can certainly be a dick and cut myself off from people for other stupid reasons. But I guess I just get annoyed by people who are anti-anti-intellectual and I got irked with Joss Whedon for the way he wrote Chase during his run.
I also think that Chase’s lack of nerdiness/intellectualism/intelligence/alternative-ness (including the facts that he isn’t part of a subculture, doesn’t do well in school, and is often kind of dense and spacey) is an extremely important part of who he is. Because of that I find Whedon's retcon of him insulting to the character (yes, I'm 12, I can be insulted on behalf of comic book characters).
The conceit of Runaways is that all the main characters have parents who are a different type of supervillain and when the kids find out, they team up to fight their parents. Chase’s parents are “mad scientists,” obviously the most intellectual type of supervillain (which Whedon himself portrayed as a hero in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with the villain being a superhero who is a stereotypical dumb jock). Although, like all the Runaways’ parents, they do evil with the goal of providing for their children, Chase’s parents are physically and emotionally abusive, and they are the only set of parents who are like this.
Although Chase fights with his parents and behaves rebelliously, he is written throughout Brian K. Vaughan’s run as having internalized the lessons he was taught by their abuse--basically, that he deserved to be abused because he wasn’t a good person, misbehaved, or was otherwise unsatisfactory. Chase’s parents frame their abuse of him in terms of “we’re smart, and you’re unsatisfactory and don’t know what is good for you, because you aren’t smart/intellectual.”
This value set has to come from somewhere, and it's not hard to guess. When the Steins first appear, Chase and his parents are fighting about his grades. Victor punches Chase and tells him he is a “dumb jock,” a “cliche.” Chase responds, “You’re a nerd who punches like a girl--isn’t that a cliche?” Which I think is really interesting because if you do read Chase’s dad through that lens, as a nerd who was bullied as a kid and wasn’t physically able to stand up for himself, and the violence that grew in him became his supervillainy...doesn’t that serve as a frame for his parenting? Does he have a childhood hatred of “dumb jocks,” which he takes out on his dumb jock son? It doesn’t matter if you “punch like a girl,” after all, if the person you’re punching is young and dependent on you.
So can I just say how much I love Brian K. Vaughan? He clearly isn’t mainstream or anti-nerd, as many of the positive characters are nerdy, but he also sees the potential violence in the idea that nerds are better than other people. In Y the Last Man he does a great job of portraying very diverse characters and the same is true for Runaways.
Joss Whedon is Diablo Cody
After googling their names I found out I’m not the only person in the world to draw this conclusion, which makes me feel better about the world.
Okay seriously. I was trying to explain to Clayton why even though BtVS is really special to me, I don’t really consider myself a Joss Whedon fan. About the time I stopped was when he wrote some issues of Runaways and portrayed Chase as a big superhero fan. This sounds dumb, but like…that would be Victor. It became really obvious to me while reading that arc that Joss Whedon could only write, or was only willing to write, Joss Whedon Characters with Joss Whedon Dialogue.
That felt self-centered to me—well, maybe I’m putting moral judgments on the lack of certain abilities, but even if that’s true, I don’t think Whedon should be considered such a huge genius if he can’t write characters who think and talk outside of a very narrow style.
While I was saying this to Clayton, it occurred to me that Diablo Cody is super maligned for: a. writing characters who belong to a certain “type” b. writing characters who all talk in a certain quirky way.
What the fuck, guys!
I would argue that in Juno, despite the homeskilletness or whatever people are offended by, Cody comes out on the side of saying that someone uncool and unquirky like Jennifer Garner’s character is a better person than her husband who seems to think he’s better than her because he’s so ~indie. Which in my opinion is much more open-minded than Joss Whedon.
Yet Joss Whedon’s name is basically a synonym for AWESOME, while Cody is criticized and made fun of for having quirky dialogue and characters?
Okay seriously. I was trying to explain to Clayton why even though BtVS is really special to me, I don’t really consider myself a Joss Whedon fan. About the time I stopped was when he wrote some issues of Runaways and portrayed Chase as a big superhero fan. This sounds dumb, but like…that would be Victor. It became really obvious to me while reading that arc that Joss Whedon could only write, or was only willing to write, Joss Whedon Characters with Joss Whedon Dialogue.
That felt self-centered to me—well, maybe I’m putting moral judgments on the lack of certain abilities, but even if that’s true, I don’t think Whedon should be considered such a huge genius if he can’t write characters who think and talk outside of a very narrow style.
While I was saying this to Clayton, it occurred to me that Diablo Cody is super maligned for: a. writing characters who belong to a certain “type” b. writing characters who all talk in a certain quirky way.
What the fuck, guys!
I would argue that in Juno, despite the homeskilletness or whatever people are offended by, Cody comes out on the side of saying that someone uncool and unquirky like Jennifer Garner’s character is a better person than her husband who seems to think he’s better than her because he’s so ~indie. Which in my opinion is much more open-minded than Joss Whedon.
Yet Joss Whedon’s name is basically a synonym for AWESOME, while Cody is criticized and made fun of for having quirky dialogue and characters?
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The Fades 1x04
This episode was so good I didn't even post about it for a week and a half because I was so intimidated. Plus I started descending into the joy/awfulness of Bedlam. So it's not super fresh in my head now, but it was really great and made me feel bad for ever doubting The Fades in the slightest.
Paul got magically brought back to life but it didn't annoy me, which seemed like it would be impossible until it actually happened. He was a Fade for most of the episode. He hung out with the Joe Dempsie ex-Fade (who is now an immortal human) and learned about how badly Angelics have treated Fades in the past. Just when the viewer was hoping Paul would stay as a Fade and start fighting Neil and the other Angelics, Paul brought himself back to life BECAUSE HE LOVES DANIEL KALUUYA SO MUCH. Then he threw up butterflies.
I have to admit that if I magically brought myself back to life, those would probably be the circumstances. The butterflies helped a lot.
In The Vampire Diaries, which is crammed full of annoying resurrections, I think what makes the resurrections most annoying is that they are so obviously driven by the importance of the person who died. If a recurring character gets bitten by a werewolf, she dies. If the star of the show gets bitten by a werewolf, they find a way to keep him from dying. The major human characters wear rings that cause them to come back to life if a supernatural creature kills them--well, okay--but what happens when one of the characters gets shot by a human with a gun? Don't worry, a girl who has been doing magic for less than a year is able to bring him back to life. For some reason none of the other humans who died on the show got to be brought back to life, but oh well. They weren't main characters.
I think The Fades avoided this kind of bad writing by having Paul bring himself back to life. It had already been established that Paul is the most powerful Angelic ever, so there's no need to explain why Angelics have never brought anyone back to life before--no one as strong as Paul had ever tried it.
Notes:
The awkward previouslies were actually cool this time, because in the middle of narrating them Mac almost started crying about Paul's death. He also sounded like he was crushing on Paul so hard. I appreciate that this show is about a friendship but I can't help wishing there could be a horror-quirkfest show about gay kids.
Sarah's husband decided that he doesn't like knowing her ghost is following him around, and he told her to go away. Everyone obvs found out he didn't really kill any of those people. Sarah didn't annoy me in this episode. PLUS, at the end she told Neil that it was time for her to eat some dead bodies and become powerful. She told Neil that this was so she could be a Fade on the Angelics' side or something, but I bet she was just tricking him.
I guess the main important thing I learned about Fades was that they can't just not touch people--they find it unbearably painful to do so. The special guns that Angelics fire at Fades have little pieces of blood and skin in them. The Joe Dempsie ex-Fade started having the power to touch humans when he was lying on the bathroom floor while his wife was committing suicide. He loved her too much to move away from her dripping blood, and he grew new skin in the places where the blood had hurt him. This is quite beautiful and even Christian, and really messes with the evil/zombie implications of the Fades eating people.
The Joe Dempsie ex-Fade is perfect, as I think I said before. He eats chocolate, moves his head around like a raptor, and throws up black liquid every so often. Paul trusted him so he killed a bunch of Angelics and he saved Natalie (the best character!!!) and turned her into a human by the same process that he was turned into one. Josh's comments about her in 1x05 were "oh my gosh, dribble" so I guess that she is going to be hot?
Neil was a dick. I'm not going to try to actually summarize this episode since I watched it so long ago (and am super tired) but Neil was such a dick that even some of the other Angelics were mad at him. For example! Mac kept saying it was his fault Paul had died, and Paul's Fade kept telling Neil to say that it wasn't, but Neil was just like, "Yeah, it sounds like it was your fault, great job ruining the last hope of humanity."
Hate Neil! Anyone who upsets Daniel Kaluuya should be erased with the giant eraser from Are You Afraid of the Dark. You should have seen Daniel Kaluuya by the way. He was just...I don't even know how many times I wrote "Daniel Kaluuya is a perfect human being" in my notes while watching the episode. He was so fucking good when Paul was dead. They did a good job portraying the stereotypical geeky comic relief character actually being sad, without losing his character traits.
Paul got magically brought back to life but it didn't annoy me, which seemed like it would be impossible until it actually happened. He was a Fade for most of the episode. He hung out with the Joe Dempsie ex-Fade (who is now an immortal human) and learned about how badly Angelics have treated Fades in the past. Just when the viewer was hoping Paul would stay as a Fade and start fighting Neil and the other Angelics, Paul brought himself back to life BECAUSE HE LOVES DANIEL KALUUYA SO MUCH. Then he threw up butterflies.
I have to admit that if I magically brought myself back to life, those would probably be the circumstances. The butterflies helped a lot.
In The Vampire Diaries, which is crammed full of annoying resurrections, I think what makes the resurrections most annoying is that they are so obviously driven by the importance of the person who died. If a recurring character gets bitten by a werewolf, she dies. If the star of the show gets bitten by a werewolf, they find a way to keep him from dying. The major human characters wear rings that cause them to come back to life if a supernatural creature kills them--well, okay--but what happens when one of the characters gets shot by a human with a gun? Don't worry, a girl who has been doing magic for less than a year is able to bring him back to life. For some reason none of the other humans who died on the show got to be brought back to life, but oh well. They weren't main characters.
I think The Fades avoided this kind of bad writing by having Paul bring himself back to life. It had already been established that Paul is the most powerful Angelic ever, so there's no need to explain why Angelics have never brought anyone back to life before--no one as strong as Paul had ever tried it.
Notes:
The awkward previouslies were actually cool this time, because in the middle of narrating them Mac almost started crying about Paul's death. He also sounded like he was crushing on Paul so hard. I appreciate that this show is about a friendship but I can't help wishing there could be a horror-quirkfest show about gay kids.
Sarah's husband decided that he doesn't like knowing her ghost is following him around, and he told her to go away. Everyone obvs found out he didn't really kill any of those people. Sarah didn't annoy me in this episode. PLUS, at the end she told Neil that it was time for her to eat some dead bodies and become powerful. She told Neil that this was so she could be a Fade on the Angelics' side or something, but I bet she was just tricking him.
I guess the main important thing I learned about Fades was that they can't just not touch people--they find it unbearably painful to do so. The special guns that Angelics fire at Fades have little pieces of blood and skin in them. The Joe Dempsie ex-Fade started having the power to touch humans when he was lying on the bathroom floor while his wife was committing suicide. He loved her too much to move away from her dripping blood, and he grew new skin in the places where the blood had hurt him. This is quite beautiful and even Christian, and really messes with the evil/zombie implications of the Fades eating people.
The Joe Dempsie ex-Fade is perfect, as I think I said before. He eats chocolate, moves his head around like a raptor, and throws up black liquid every so often. Paul trusted him so he killed a bunch of Angelics and he saved Natalie (the best character!!!) and turned her into a human by the same process that he was turned into one. Josh's comments about her in 1x05 were "oh my gosh, dribble" so I guess that she is going to be hot?
Neil was a dick. I'm not going to try to actually summarize this episode since I watched it so long ago (and am super tired) but Neil was such a dick that even some of the other Angelics were mad at him. For example! Mac kept saying it was his fault Paul had died, and Paul's Fade kept telling Neil to say that it wasn't, but Neil was just like, "Yeah, it sounds like it was your fault, great job ruining the last hope of humanity."
Hate Neil! Anyone who upsets Daniel Kaluuya should be erased with the giant eraser from Are You Afraid of the Dark. You should have seen Daniel Kaluuya by the way. He was just...I don't even know how many times I wrote "Daniel Kaluuya is a perfect human being" in my notes while watching the episode. He was so fucking good when Paul was dead. They did a good job portraying the stereotypical geeky comic relief character actually being sad, without losing his character traits.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Bedlam 1x04, 1x05, 1x06
Heart is broken that even the ever-loyal Jim won't read my posts about this show. It is so funny you guys! Can't actually explain why.
Anyway, it is British and therefore short, so it wasn't too much trouble to finish. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED.
Episode Four
"IS THIS SOME KIND OF EX-MENTAL PATIENT THING GETTING ALL MORALISTIC THE WAY PRISONERS GET RELIGION?"--one of Kate's awful comments when Jed criticized her for sleeping with a married man.
When I watched the teaser for episode three, I had dared to hope that Lily Loveless was going to be having power exchange sex with Jed! But in fact the clip that I thought (hoped/dreamed) was her was actually about Kate getting possessed by a creepy ghost while having sex with a married man, and slapping him and acting like she was going to kill him, and then seeing herself in a mirror with giant lopsided eyeballs.
Anyway, in this episode Kate tried to come back to the guy and get him to sleep with her again. FAIL. She did this by saying, "I was in bed and I lost control, how flattering is that?" and suggesting that this time, he can hit her during sex. It's only fair!
Not surprisingly the guy was not into it and told her to go away. I did think it was weird since she's his landlady that he didn't try to be more polite about it. But how could you be?
Molly got a job as a nanny/babysitter for a little girl named Ella who lives in the building. She wanted to sleep with Ella's dad and they had the most bizarre romantic dialogue as he told her he wished he could switch lives with her and she told him that, in fact, her life sucks.
Molly: You would get the worst deal, trust me.
Ella's dad: (looking lovingly at her) I don't believe that for a second.
Molly: (swoons)
If I told someone I thought I had a crappy life and they told me they DIDN'T BELIEVE ME...that probably wouldn't increase my attraction to them? Is Molly turned on by men thinking she's a liar/unable to judge the circumstances of her life?
Admittedly, as far as I can tell, Molly's life IS better than everyone else's life on the show. Kate is possessed and her dad is probs evil, Jed's life sucks for obvious reasons, Ryan is gay and his brother got murdered, and John Foster has to look in the mirror every day and see this:
But I guess no one on this show tells anyone their secrets (except Jed and Ryan, bros forever!) so Molly probably doesn't know how good she has it. Anyway, they slept together, but the guy started hating her because a ghost was after his daughter and Jed saved her. I know this doesn't make sense, but Ella's dad decided that because Jed was in a "loony bin," he clearly kidnapped Ella and then brought her back as a joke.
All of the sudden, Jed looked up and guess what was there:
This show is making me want to make little YouTube horror movies because it's SO EASY TO MAKE THINGS SCARY. This was the only semi-scary ghost and they didn't have to do anything expensive: they just made her a little kid who runs really fast, draws creepy pictures, has clown makeup on, and has her spooky face flashed on the screen at random moments. Finally. This isn't rocket science.
By the point she was randomly on the ceiling though the episode stopped being scary because I had seen her face enough to just go, "Oh, there's a little kid wearing clown makeup."
Oh well. Good try.
Episode Five
Can someone explain why Jed always looks so scared when he has a vision. He has them all the time! I get it when the vision is about someone drowning or cutting their wrists, but in this episode, he kept having a vision of a girl having sex with an ugly man, and every time he surfaced from the vision he would look really shaky and upset. Ugly people have sex too Jed!
Ryan and Molly researched Jed's biological mom who I may have mentioned was a patient at the hospital who died in childbirth. Some shady things were revealed. The best part was when Ryan told her that Jed was born in the asylum and Molly said, "What." As beautiful as Molly is, I have come to realize that the actress who plays her never attempts to come off like a person having emotional reactions, but just tries to seem more and more and more beautiful.
The ghost was okay.
At the end of the episode Kate realized that her dad John Foster is obvs a serial killer, so she was crying to Jed about how she wants to run away or something, and then they made out. I was SO surprised, not.
Episode Six
This episode started with Kate being the worst person in the world. Molly and Ryan were playing with Tarot cards and a ghost got mad and set Molly's arm on fire. Then Kate came home and yelled at Molly for burning "stupid hippie candles" and said, "I'll charge you for damages."
Later Kate apologized, which led me to believe she has been possessed by someone nicer.
Jed got a text that said "kate dad danger" and showed it to Ryan and was asking what it meant. FFS. I WONDER WHAT IT MEANS.
Jed did explain thought that he hasn't always gotten supernatural texts. It turned out that he just started getting them at the beginning of the series and they're from this weird number, which turns out to be the number of a room in the asylum. I think it turns out his mom is actually texting him, which is solid.
Molly kept trying to hint to Ryan that they should get married. Kate kept telling Molly Ryan was gay and Molly basically said that she didn't care if he was gay because "love is more than sexuality." FFS Molly! Her greatest goal in life is to be the Linda Thomas to someone's Cole Porter?
John Foster was trying to be a good dad and take Kate out to lunch which was awkward since Kate knows he's evil now. Kate basically ended up admitting she knows he's a serial killer and he told her he's actually not and she believed him. I actually thought this was a pretty realistic turn of events because it would be hard to accept your dad is John Foster. But whatever.
Ryan and Jed were discussing the ghost who set his sister on fire and is now trying to set Molly on fire. Why did he do that?
Ryan: Maybe he was just a nutter.
Jed: No one's just a nutter, Ryan.
Come on Ryan, if someone appears in multiple scenes and we see their face they can never be "just a nutter." Actually this time I guess he was because the show kind of forgot about him in all the drama. Ryan slept with Molly like an asshole and when she realized he wasn't into her she angrily decided to leave and stay with friends. She was walking down the street trying really hard to look cute:
I think it took that moment for me to realize how much Molly's facial expressions are just NOT facial expressions. She just opens her eyes really wide and looks dazed and bites her mouth. Anyway, she got into a white van just as a helpful voiceover reminded us that Zoe (her friend who went missing) was last seen getting into a white van.
A bunch of stuff happened but none of it made sense. Kate went to the room she's been having scary dreams about. It turned out that when she was a little kid she saw her dad and another guy carrying a dead body out of that room. Jed and Kate went to smash the wall and get into the room and Kate's dad was running after them saying that he didn't kill Zoe but implying that he knows who did and Kate definitely shouldn't go into the room.
In the room there was an elevator and Jed went down on it. Kate went down too but her dad caught up to her and made her go back up while Jed was yelling at her from inside a room that she needed to leave because it wasn't safe. This was actually semi-scary because we didn't know why everyone was so upset about Kate in particular being there. Jed said something to his mom and there was a scary ghost.
THE END.
As someone said on the IMDB board:
"A cliffhanger is something that leaves you wondering what will happen next. By that definition, Bedlam did not end on a cliffhanger."
Anyway, it is British and therefore short, so it wasn't too much trouble to finish. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED.
Episode Four
"IS THIS SOME KIND OF EX-MENTAL PATIENT THING GETTING ALL MORALISTIC THE WAY PRISONERS GET RELIGION?"--one of Kate's awful comments when Jed criticized her for sleeping with a married man.
When I watched the teaser for episode three, I had dared to hope that Lily Loveless was going to be having power exchange sex with Jed! But in fact the clip that I thought (hoped/dreamed) was her was actually about Kate getting possessed by a creepy ghost while having sex with a married man, and slapping him and acting like she was going to kill him, and then seeing herself in a mirror with giant lopsided eyeballs.
Anyway, in this episode Kate tried to come back to the guy and get him to sleep with her again. FAIL. She did this by saying, "I was in bed and I lost control, how flattering is that?" and suggesting that this time, he can hit her during sex. It's only fair!
Not surprisingly the guy was not into it and told her to go away. I did think it was weird since she's his landlady that he didn't try to be more polite about it. But how could you be?
Molly got a job as a nanny/babysitter for a little girl named Ella who lives in the building. She wanted to sleep with Ella's dad and they had the most bizarre romantic dialogue as he told her he wished he could switch lives with her and she told him that, in fact, her life sucks.
Molly: You would get the worst deal, trust me.
Ella's dad: (looking lovingly at her) I don't believe that for a second.
Molly: (swoons)
If I told someone I thought I had a crappy life and they told me they DIDN'T BELIEVE ME...that probably wouldn't increase my attraction to them? Is Molly turned on by men thinking she's a liar/unable to judge the circumstances of her life?
Admittedly, as far as I can tell, Molly's life IS better than everyone else's life on the show. Kate is possessed and her dad is probs evil, Jed's life sucks for obvious reasons, Ryan is gay and his brother got murdered, and John Foster has to look in the mirror every day and see this:
But I guess no one on this show tells anyone their secrets (except Jed and Ryan, bros forever!) so Molly probably doesn't know how good she has it. Anyway, they slept together, but the guy started hating her because a ghost was after his daughter and Jed saved her. I know this doesn't make sense, but Ella's dad decided that because Jed was in a "loony bin," he clearly kidnapped Ella and then brought her back as a joke.
All of the sudden, Jed looked up and guess what was there:
This show is making me want to make little YouTube horror movies because it's SO EASY TO MAKE THINGS SCARY. This was the only semi-scary ghost and they didn't have to do anything expensive: they just made her a little kid who runs really fast, draws creepy pictures, has clown makeup on, and has her spooky face flashed on the screen at random moments. Finally. This isn't rocket science.
By the point she was randomly on the ceiling though the episode stopped being scary because I had seen her face enough to just go, "Oh, there's a little kid wearing clown makeup."
Oh well. Good try.
Episode Five
Can someone explain why Jed always looks so scared when he has a vision. He has them all the time! I get it when the vision is about someone drowning or cutting their wrists, but in this episode, he kept having a vision of a girl having sex with an ugly man, and every time he surfaced from the vision he would look really shaky and upset. Ugly people have sex too Jed!
Ryan and Molly researched Jed's biological mom who I may have mentioned was a patient at the hospital who died in childbirth. Some shady things were revealed. The best part was when Ryan told her that Jed was born in the asylum and Molly said, "What." As beautiful as Molly is, I have come to realize that the actress who plays her never attempts to come off like a person having emotional reactions, but just tries to seem more and more and more beautiful.
The ghost was okay.
At the end of the episode Kate realized that her dad John Foster is obvs a serial killer, so she was crying to Jed about how she wants to run away or something, and then they made out. I was SO surprised, not.
Episode Six
This episode started with Kate being the worst person in the world. Molly and Ryan were playing with Tarot cards and a ghost got mad and set Molly's arm on fire. Then Kate came home and yelled at Molly for burning "stupid hippie candles" and said, "I'll charge you for damages."
Later Kate apologized, which led me to believe she has been possessed by someone nicer.
Jed got a text that said "kate dad danger" and showed it to Ryan and was asking what it meant. FFS. I WONDER WHAT IT MEANS.
Jed did explain thought that he hasn't always gotten supernatural texts. It turned out that he just started getting them at the beginning of the series and they're from this weird number, which turns out to be the number of a room in the asylum. I think it turns out his mom is actually texting him, which is solid.
Molly kept trying to hint to Ryan that they should get married. Kate kept telling Molly Ryan was gay and Molly basically said that she didn't care if he was gay because "love is more than sexuality." FFS Molly! Her greatest goal in life is to be the Linda Thomas to someone's Cole Porter?
John Foster was trying to be a good dad and take Kate out to lunch which was awkward since Kate knows he's evil now. Kate basically ended up admitting she knows he's a serial killer and he told her he's actually not and she believed him. I actually thought this was a pretty realistic turn of events because it would be hard to accept your dad is John Foster. But whatever.
Ryan and Jed were discussing the ghost who set his sister on fire and is now trying to set Molly on fire. Why did he do that?
Ryan: Maybe he was just a nutter.
Jed: No one's just a nutter, Ryan.
Come on Ryan, if someone appears in multiple scenes and we see their face they can never be "just a nutter." Actually this time I guess he was because the show kind of forgot about him in all the drama. Ryan slept with Molly like an asshole and when she realized he wasn't into her she angrily decided to leave and stay with friends. She was walking down the street trying really hard to look cute:
I think it took that moment for me to realize how much Molly's facial expressions are just NOT facial expressions. She just opens her eyes really wide and looks dazed and bites her mouth. Anyway, she got into a white van just as a helpful voiceover reminded us that Zoe (her friend who went missing) was last seen getting into a white van.
A bunch of stuff happened but none of it made sense. Kate went to the room she's been having scary dreams about. It turned out that when she was a little kid she saw her dad and another guy carrying a dead body out of that room. Jed and Kate went to smash the wall and get into the room and Kate's dad was running after them saying that he didn't kill Zoe but implying that he knows who did and Kate definitely shouldn't go into the room.
In the room there was an elevator and Jed went down on it. Kate went down too but her dad caught up to her and made her go back up while Jed was yelling at her from inside a room that she needed to leave because it wasn't safe. This was actually semi-scary because we didn't know why everyone was so upset about Kate in particular being there. Jed said something to his mom and there was a scary ghost.
THE END.
As someone said on the IMDB board:
"A cliffhanger is something that leaves you wondering what will happen next. By that definition, Bedlam did not end on a cliffhanger."
The unfunny Bedlam post
So here's what I have to say about the show Bedlam that isn't really about the show at all. It's about the way people think about disability and the way this is reflected in and reinforced by pop culture.
Any institution (school, hospital, or prison) is a great setting for horror fiction because a)you can use a huge creepy-looking building with winding halls, b)there are lots of people there hence the potential for lots of ghosts, and c)people are likely to have been abused there.
But mental institutions are such a good setting that they're almost cheating because, even more than abuse or winding halls, people with disabilities are one of the basic units of the horror genre. I'd argue that at least half of villainous humans and ghosts in horror movies could be considered disabled--in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of disabled movie characters appear in horror movies.
I come to praise horror not to bury it though. After all, I like it. I also think that physical and mental "weakness" may be themes that are inherently scary because they threaten our security. The idea of criticizing porn for being offensive always strikes me as really senseless because porn is created to push certain buttons so I don't see how it can be any more offensive than an icemaker can be offensive for making ice--and the same argument can be made about horror.
So I'm not talking about the fact that Bedlam a TV show set in a haunted institution for people with mental health disabilities. I do think it says something interesting, though, that while the idea of the institution (and therefore disability) is used to give the show its spookiness, there are very few disabled characters.
I first found out about Bedlam on the Skins LiveJournal community when someone posted some gifs of Lily Loveless's guest appearance on the show. From the gifs, I could tell that her character was supposed to be ill (she was taking medication) and that she had moved into a new place. The name of the show made me assume that it took place in a psychiatric hospital, so I imagined that she had just been admitted to a hospital for treatment, only to discover it was haunted.
I thought this show was going to be about people with psychiatric disabilities in a haunted hospital. Like, there would be a few main ghost hunters who were either long-term patients or staff, and the guest stars would be various short-term patients who would be menaced by a ghost. After actually looking up the show, I realized that the hospital was no longer a hospital, but I figured the ghosts were going to have psychiatric disabilities since they were the ghosts of patients.
In fact, every single ghost of a patient has been casually mentioned to not actually have been mentally ill--even when this doesn't have anything important to do with the ghost's motivations. I want to make it clear I am not criticizing this particular show for this! But I went through every character in the first five episodes (living or dead) who has been a patient in a psychiatric hospital or is thought to have mental health problems.
There were ten characters like this--four were main character ghosts, three were living characters, and three were part of a ghost or living character's backstory. Only half of the characters who have been institutionalized or said to have MH problems actually have MH problems. Of these five, three are part of someone's backstory--they only appear very briefly and exist to drive the motivation of another character.
Of the four ghosts of patients, not one of them actually has MH problems. They were all institutionalized "wrongly."
The show portrays a lot of abuse against people labeled with psychiatric disabilities. Jed is constantly made fun of, insulted, or feared because of his label. All of the patients, especially the female ones, were treated unfairly or even killed by staff. This abuse is portrayed as wrong, but all the abuse we see against people with disabilities is experienced by characters who don't actually have disabilities.
It would be kind of a heavy accusation (especially against such an awesomely stupid show) if I tried to argue that the writers of the show are trying to say that abuse of people with disabilities is okay, and is only wrong when it happens to people without disabilities who are mistakenly perceived as disabled. I also think it would be wrong to try to read something into the fact that most of the actually-disabled characters are only notable for having killed themselves and/or someone else. That comes with them being backstory characters in a show where every character has a tragic past.
What I'm trying to say is more simple. Definitely a lot of people are institutionalized when they don't actually have a disability, and in the 19th century (which most of the ghosts are from) this was much more true than it is now. But there must have been some patients in the institution who actually had disabilities. Most of them, even.
So, where are the ghosts with disabilities? I think we are probably supposed to imagine they are among the many ghosts in Bedlam Heights. Like the ghosts without disabilities, they probably were abused and had tragic lives. But for some reason, none of the disabled ghosts get to be the ghost of the week, who Jed sees visions of and whose terrible experiences he clucks over with Ryan.
I think this isn't through anyone's decision to ignore the experience of actually crazy people in an institution for crazy people. I think when the writers were coming up with the concept for the ghost of the week, every week they just happened to come up with a ghost who was non-disabled, because main characters--characters whose point of view is show--are almost always non-disabled. Given the premise of this show, it makes absolutely no sense! But I think it's totally, completely ordinary and frankly I would have been surprised if it was any other way.
Any institution (school, hospital, or prison) is a great setting for horror fiction because a)you can use a huge creepy-looking building with winding halls, b)there are lots of people there hence the potential for lots of ghosts, and c)people are likely to have been abused there.
But mental institutions are such a good setting that they're almost cheating because, even more than abuse or winding halls, people with disabilities are one of the basic units of the horror genre. I'd argue that at least half of villainous humans and ghosts in horror movies could be considered disabled--in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of disabled movie characters appear in horror movies.
I come to praise horror not to bury it though. After all, I like it. I also think that physical and mental "weakness" may be themes that are inherently scary because they threaten our security. The idea of criticizing porn for being offensive always strikes me as really senseless because porn is created to push certain buttons so I don't see how it can be any more offensive than an icemaker can be offensive for making ice--and the same argument can be made about horror.
So I'm not talking about the fact that Bedlam a TV show set in a haunted institution for people with mental health disabilities. I do think it says something interesting, though, that while the idea of the institution (and therefore disability) is used to give the show its spookiness, there are very few disabled characters.
I first found out about Bedlam on the Skins LiveJournal community when someone posted some gifs of Lily Loveless's guest appearance on the show. From the gifs, I could tell that her character was supposed to be ill (she was taking medication) and that she had moved into a new place. The name of the show made me assume that it took place in a psychiatric hospital, so I imagined that she had just been admitted to a hospital for treatment, only to discover it was haunted.
I thought this show was going to be about people with psychiatric disabilities in a haunted hospital. Like, there would be a few main ghost hunters who were either long-term patients or staff, and the guest stars would be various short-term patients who would be menaced by a ghost. After actually looking up the show, I realized that the hospital was no longer a hospital, but I figured the ghosts were going to have psychiatric disabilities since they were the ghosts of patients.
In fact, every single ghost of a patient has been casually mentioned to not actually have been mentally ill--even when this doesn't have anything important to do with the ghost's motivations. I want to make it clear I am not criticizing this particular show for this! But I went through every character in the first five episodes (living or dead) who has been a patient in a psychiatric hospital or is thought to have mental health problems.
There were ten characters like this--four were main character ghosts, three were living characters, and three were part of a ghost or living character's backstory. Only half of the characters who have been institutionalized or said to have MH problems actually have MH problems. Of these five, three are part of someone's backstory--they only appear very briefly and exist to drive the motivation of another character.
Of the four ghosts of patients, not one of them actually has MH problems. They were all institutionalized "wrongly."
The show portrays a lot of abuse against people labeled with psychiatric disabilities. Jed is constantly made fun of, insulted, or feared because of his label. All of the patients, especially the female ones, were treated unfairly or even killed by staff. This abuse is portrayed as wrong, but all the abuse we see against people with disabilities is experienced by characters who don't actually have disabilities.
It would be kind of a heavy accusation (especially against such an awesomely stupid show) if I tried to argue that the writers of the show are trying to say that abuse of people with disabilities is okay, and is only wrong when it happens to people without disabilities who are mistakenly perceived as disabled. I also think it would be wrong to try to read something into the fact that most of the actually-disabled characters are only notable for having killed themselves and/or someone else. That comes with them being backstory characters in a show where every character has a tragic past.
What I'm trying to say is more simple. Definitely a lot of people are institutionalized when they don't actually have a disability, and in the 19th century (which most of the ghosts are from) this was much more true than it is now. But there must have been some patients in the institution who actually had disabilities. Most of them, even.
So, where are the ghosts with disabilities? I think we are probably supposed to imagine they are among the many ghosts in Bedlam Heights. Like the ghosts without disabilities, they probably were abused and had tragic lives. But for some reason, none of the disabled ghosts get to be the ghost of the week, who Jed sees visions of and whose terrible experiences he clucks over with Ryan.
I think this isn't through anyone's decision to ignore the experience of actually crazy people in an institution for crazy people. I think when the writers were coming up with the concept for the ghost of the week, every week they just happened to come up with a ghost who was non-disabled, because main characters--characters whose point of view is show--are almost always non-disabled. Given the premise of this show, it makes absolutely no sense! But I think it's totally, completely ordinary and frankly I would have been surprised if it was any other way.
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