MovieChat Forums > Black Box (2014) Discussion > This show is so unrealistic

This show is so unrealistic

posted 10 years ago by jghitchins
36 replies | jump to latest

As a person suffering from bipolar disorder, I find this show laughable and just perpetuating stereotypes and misinformation about mental illness. Here's my highlights of what is wrong with the characterization.

1) To even compare mentally ill people from 50 or more years ago to options we have today is absurd. While not all get help, not all can afford help and not all want help, the leaps and bounds made in managing mental illness is phenomenal.

2) Not everyone suffers from a mental illness to the same degree, there is a spectrum. Some find their mental illness easy to manage and it hardly affects their life. Others are so inflicted it impacts their lives every moment of every day leading many to be unable effectively manage their illness even with meds. Many sit somewhere between those two extremes.

Being bi-polar doesn't make you creative. Being creative doesn't make you bi-polar.

A mentally ill person doesn't accomplish and hold down a job like she does without having insight into their disease and managing it well.

3) They would not attend a conference of such magnitude and deliberately go off their meds.

4) Going off your meds does not mean that you will immediately experience an episode, just like it takes a while for meds to start working (1-2 weeks at least), it takes a while for them to stop working.

5) When the meds are finally low enough that they can no longer manage your disease, that still doesn't mean you will experience an episode immediately, never mind it the immediate future. It just means you have the potential.

6) An episode can be mania OR depression.

8) The odds of talking someone down who is in the middle of a full blown episode of any disease are pretty low.

9) IF she really was that non-compliant and suffers episodes so frequently her colleagues would notice and whether they managed to correctly diagnose her condition, they would still manage to understand she was not capable of seeing patients. Whether they did something about it is open to debate, but they would definitely notice.

10) Doctors can not write scripts for themselves, though they can write them for someone else who can then give them the meds.

11) Any medical professional who truly wanted to die would make sure there was a DNR (Do not Resuscitate) in their chart -- especially if they were planning on committing suicide in a hospital.

[–] spimpernel 10 years ago

12) Her relationship with her bf/fiance. He keeps asking her to be honest, saying he can deal with anything except lies, yet the first time, when she tells him she's bipolar and the second time, when she says she slept with someone while manic, he immediately drives/runs away. "What, you're super vulnerable right now? Let me desert you so that you learn openness in relationships is bad." Can't wait to see him run away when she reveals her niece is her daughter. Oh, and he totally got kind of rapey with her when they were next in bed following her manic episode. If he's more sexually compatible with her when she's manic than not, this cannot end well. He's going to want the "beneficial" aspects of her illness but none of the downsides.

[–] sabar-1 10 years ago

"Oh, ok, so you had sex with someone else but you were manic. It's cool. I completely understand."

Nope.

Rachel

[–] spimpernel 10 years ago

He doesn't have to be cool with it, but literally turning around and running away is ridiculous. He could at the very least say "Ok, I need some time alone to process this. But thank you for being honest like I asked."

Although she does have a pretty good excuse. Medicated Catherine would never do what unmedicated Catherine does, so it's not like she's cheating on him on purpose. The only problem is that medicated Catherine is the one who decides to go off her meds...

It's just as well that she's cheated on him. The sooner this doomed relationship ends, the better.

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[–] dm-111 10 years ago

her boyfriend is an idiot as he seems to not even understand her condition and expects her to act in typical sort of way and that's the one thing she wont be able to do as shes bipolar

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[–] frankstallone1 10 years ago

Anyone who feels the need to post an IQ score in a thread on imdb, for any reason, is most likely lying and is most definitely a douche bag

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[–] Korios 10 years ago

Exactly.

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.

[–] Jazzie-too 10 years ago

I'm with you! It is so unreal and becoming a bit disgusting. I'm watching it and my brain is screaming "SLUT neurosurgeon"! So absurd. Kelly Reilly's character turns my stomach. Her puckering lip, seductive expressions are insulting to the viewer's intelligence. Making out all over the hospital!! Please!! No more for me!

[–] ejj1955-1 10 years ago

Much of this is what I thought when I saw this show. I've known a bipolar person and watched the development of the disease in him closely, doing a lot of research along the way. The process of building up to the manic state or going down into the depressive state is not instantaneous, even among those who experience rapid cycling, and certainly would not occur five minutes after someone flushed her meds down the toilet. With behavior as erratic as hers, others would have noticed. And we never see the depressive state: slower speech, curled into a ball unable to get out of bed, etc. The manic state for this character seems to consist solely of whirling dances and sexual promiscuity.

Criticism of a TV show for lack of realism isn't a failure to recognize that it's fiction: it's a valid criticism that the fiction has failed to create a believable alternate reality. If you saw a show set in ancient Rome and the characters were wearing wristwatches, you'd notice that as a mistake. This show has made many of them.

[–] machieba 10 years ago

If I could high-five this post I would. Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it gets to be nonsensical.

[–] Korios 10 years ago

Criticism of a TV show for lack of realism isn't a failure to recognize that it's fiction: it's a valid criticism that the fiction has failed to create a believable alternate reality. If you saw a show set in ancient Rome and the characters were wearing wristwatches, you'd notice that as a mistake. This show has made many of them.

Two thumbs up.

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.

[–] jannas-email 10 years ago

I'm also bipolar, and I agree with every point you made. I cringed when she skipped one dose of meds and immediately went into a manic episode.

I was also a little put off by the portrayal of hypersexuality. I know it's 'Hollywood', and sex sells, but I feel like they could have used another compulsion to illustrate mania without making it seem 'sexy'. Her compulsive writing was pretty close to what I experience when I'm hypomanic: plan, plan, plan, all day and night. (The problem is that I tend to spend a lot of money bringing those plans to fruition, then my mood regulates and I find that I've wasted my money. :/)

That said, I'm still on Episode 1. Does anyone know if they're portraying schizophrenia accurately with the young man? Do the voices sound like whispers, or regular speech, or does that vary? I've never had the chance to ask anyone who has the disease.

[–] tonksrock-825-21596 10 years ago

I have bipolar II, which means I have only experienced hypomania, but not everyone with full blown mania is hypersexual. I do spend tend to stay up all night though.

[–] tonksrock-825-21596 10 years ago

I have bipolar II, which means I have only experienced hypomania, but not everyone with full blown mania is hypersexual. I do tend to stay up all night though.

[–] TheOnlyVindicator 10 years ago

It's tough to deal with if you don't understand that they have a problem.

[–] steelnoles-2 10 years ago

I too suffer from bipolar and I disagree with many of your bullet points. I held a job in a CPA firm without being on meds or seeking help. It eventually did catch up with me but I was able to work just fine for quite a while.

I would sometimes think that I needed to stop taking my meds when there was something important coming up because the meds' side effects would interfere. When I stopped taking my meds, I could have an episode within a few days.

Luckily my wife (gf at the time) was able to talk me down when I was in a depressive episode. If it was not for her, things would have gotten very ugly.

I was able to "wear a mask" for many years. No one knew I was having manic or depressive episodes. I was very good at "looking and acting normal."

[–] first_sentence 10 years ago

I don't want to start arguments, but are you sure you weren't having a discontinuation syndrome? It can take the meds a few days to totally leave your system and abruptly stopping can cause severe psychological symptoms.

I've heard this before where people have said they stopped their meds and suddenly had an episode, but I don't think all of them realize that this would happen to EVERY SINGLE PERSON who abruptly discontinued. It's not the illness. You could have no mental illness, get put on the meds for experimental purposes, and have the same thing happen if you just stopped. It's the brain going haywire from withdrawal and needing to reset back to normal.

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[–] tonksrock-825-21596 10 years ago

I was able to "wear a mask" for many years. No one knew I was having manic or depressive episodes. I was very good at "looking and acting normal."

I take my meds regularly and very few people know I have a mental illness. In fact, people are shocked when they find out I am bipolar. I guess I wear my mask pretty well. I also have a great psychiatrist and a wonderful therapist and good insurance so I am very fortunate.

I am an African American woman and there is a HUGE stigma in the black community against mental illness. It's considered a "white" thing and a sign of weakness. Of course, this is ridiculous. People of all races and social classes have mental illnesses. My father is a health professional and he has told me I need to "get my self together" and "get ahold of myself." I wish it were that easy.

[–] activista 10 years ago

@tonksrock

I am an African American woman and there is a HUGE stigma in the black community against mental illness. It's considered a "white" thing and a sign of weakness. Of course, this is ridiculous. People of all races and social classes have mental illnesses.

There is some truth to what you said, but I don't think that stigma is prevalent as much as it used to be, but then, that may depend on where you live,too. I'm African-American myself,and grew up with parents who worked in the medical field, and my mother went back to school and became a social worker. Since she had to study psychology for it, I grew up with (and occasionally peeked in) medical tomes and books about psychology all around the house. So mental illness was always an interest of mine, and there was no stigma about it in our house. Plus I have a couple of mentally ill relatives who have been managing on their own for some years now. I think a lot of black folks have finally realized that just going to church and praying it away isn't going to help just all by itself, and that there are simply some issues that you can NOT overcome by yourself,plain and simple. And,yeah, mental illness knows no race,creed, or color--anyone can get it, but until recently the media only seemed to focus on white folks when it came to mental illness. I mean when's the last time you saw a show featuring a black character who was mentally ill? Rarely,if ever--that would be interesting to watch.

That said, I'm not surprised BLACK BOX didn't last long----it was complicated, slightly different from the usual thing, I only saw it twice, and didn't recall seeing it after that.

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[–] Korios 10 years ago

Some admin please delete this duplicate. It's insane to delete comments for no apparent reason yet leave duplicates intact.. You can delete my comment as well if you delete the above one.

Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.

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