Posted by Abby on April 13, 2000, at 15:13:18
In reply to Re: ABC's Wonderland, posted by Rebecca on April 12, 2000, at 17:20:14
I just listened to this online. It's true that he didn't *sound* empathetic, but I think that he did care. He was also very careful to point out that Rikel didn't stab Lili with the needle.
Based on his Chicago Hope appearances, I can say that he doesn't seem to be a very good actor. His attempts to show empathy naturally always seemed forced, but it was clear that he was trying to make the character compassionate. He writes much better than he acts himself. There were bits that seemed odd. In her review, Lili, head of emergency care, said that she relied largely on gut instinct. I don't wish to minimize the role of instinct, but it could have been clearer that there are diagnostic criteria. Anyway, I don't know.
NAMI attacks the show, because it's not representative, but 'art' isn't supposed to be or it would be boring. We could have TV families with 2 whole children and 2/10 of one. Rikel's psychotic delusions were centred on classical myths. His father fills in the detail that he studied Classics at Columbia. I studied Classics at Harvard. I don't feel offended that a classicist is portrayed as a paranoid schizophrenic. It doesn't reflect on me. I could, of course, argue that there was a pattern of showing Classicists as wackos. A novel came out about 8 or 10 years ago about the small group of people at a New England college who studied Classics. THey decided to recreate the Bacchanalian rites and killed the dumb one among them. There are some Classics people who are a bit weird, though I doubt anybody is trying to recreate Bacchanalian rites in real life. Indeed, that would make a lot of sense. Somebody has argued, and it's very controversial, that schizophrenia is the price we humans pay for having such exquisite linguistic abilities.Just my a $.02
poster:Abby
thread:29249
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000411/msgs/29865.html