and severe depression and an innumerable amount of anxieties and I was not offended by this series. Sorry. And you know what I attribute this to? The mere fact that I can differentiate between the functioning mentally ill and the non-functioning mentally ill. Yes, there are both, no matter what NAMI or any other extremist group wants us to think. There are places like Bellevue. They're called state hospitals. While I can't say whether Wonderland depicted them to a -t-, I will say that I did have family in one such state hospital for a brief time and yes, there are people who act in very extreme manners. You must remember that these are the extreme cases and more often than not they cannot simply be cured by a few days of hospitilization and therapy and a prescription or two. Sometimes it takes a lot more time to find the appropriate treatments, and sometimes they simply don't have the funding to take on a single patient's case that long. And that's why it's a vicious circle, why the same people may go in and out again and again. These such people in particular were the sum of who was portrayed on "Wonderland". They were not me. They were not the kind of people that NAMI claimed to be defending. They were chronic and "non-functional". Apparently NAMI doesn't want their stories told...
Some people complained that a man was having a silly hallucination of a tiny rhino walking across the floor. They said that it was a silly stereotype, the mentally ill having hallucinations. Has anyone seen "A Beautiful Mind"? Why didn't anyone bitch about that? Probably because Ron Howard was given enough time to tell the whole story, to explain what fueled it. Unlike the ill-fated "Wonderland", which wasn't given enough time to tell that character's story. It was wildly misjudged and done a great disservice by getting stopped in its tracks. And for that, I think that NAMI shot itself in the foot. I don't think that isolating a whole segment of the mentally ill population, (no matter how big or small), is going to make their stories go away...or help us get any closer to understanding them.
If they really wanted a sympathetic portrayal of the functioning mentally ill in the media, they should've just shut their mouths about this show and waited for it. Because you know it's only a matter of time since it's becoming more and more apparent how very many of us are walking around.
This show was quality. I only saw 2 episodes and I feel cheated. I *loved* the Ted Levine character and wanted to know what happened with his kids. I wanted to know what happened to that woman's baby, how she dealt with her trauma and if she got back to work. While not a pleasant show to watch, it sure felt dirt real and rough. As it should have...
I hope they release all the episodes on DVD someday.
