C'est la Vie

Pride & Prejudice(2005)//Fire Island(2022)

Two houses both alike in dignity never establishes the level of dignity they both obtain. This is usually assumed to be high, but could in fact be extremely low. Thus an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with both houses being rival clown troupes would not be in opposition to the text. In this essay I will

Ted Lasso this season has leaned hard into men’s mental health.

One thing it’s definitely playing with is the audience’s own biases.

One of the hardest parts of mental health is that people only think you deserve care and compassion and healing if you’re a “good mentally ill” person aka Ted Lasso. Ted experienced trauma but instead of taking it out on others, he directs it inward. It obviously had consequences for others (see: his wife) but mostly Ted is the only one who gets hurt by his coping. He is still functional. He is still pleasant to be around. We want help for him.

Then you have Nate. The “bad” trauma survivor (this is my own suspicion where they’re going with Nate). The one who struggles with anger, paranoia, projection. The one who lashes out and thinks everyone is trying to bring him down. He’s difficult. He doesn’t know he has a problem. People will say “having trauma isn’t an excuse to traumatize others” and while that’s obviously correct, the societal response is to then cut off, ostracize, belittle the person so they are isolated and without help. Fans are literally saying Nate deserves death even though the people Nate actually hurt would never say this.

And let’s be honest, no one has seen Nate’s changing behavior and ever asked, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” That’s part of the season theme: ignoring mental health problems in front of your eyes because they’re “none of one’s business.”

We love to say everyone deserves compassion and love but in practice we only mean that about mental illness that doesn’t impact others negatively. This is not saying we should all have no boundaries with bad behavior or we can never cut off people who cause us pain or that Nate’s actions are justified. This is about how society treats mental health and how access to treatment is then delayed or withheld because individuals with challenging symptoms are written off as too difficult or undeserving.

And by having the audience get worked up about Nate - whom we know is experiencing deep pain and who needs help - it’s asking us to check our own biases about who deserves compassion, who deserves help, who deserves support.

the range 

not to talk about doctor who but remember being a lonely depressed teenager and hearing him say '900 years of time and space and i've never met anyone who wasn't important'

This had such good meme potential I couldn’t resist

Clear your mind here

It's almost fall.