TV Throwdown Round 2: Leverage vs. In Plain Sight

Continuing on with my fascination in made-for-cable series, I feel I should explain why some shows are not going to be covered in my little mock battles. Although they are critically acclaimed and among the most-watched series in this vein, I do not particularly like The Closer, Monk or  Psych. This isn’t to say that I never watch them – The Closer, in particular, has a time slot that almost guarantees I’ll be watching since it’s usually followed by something I do enjoy like Raising the Bar or Saving Grace. The USA mainstays are just not my cup of tea, but since there is rarely anything better on TV on Friday nights – at least until Joss Whedon came roaring back with Dollhouse (thank you, thank you Joss!!) – I have seen the majority of both series.

Now that the explanations are out of the way – let’s get to the throwdown!!

Both In Plain Sight (IPS) and Leverage are rather quirky shows that rely heavily on their oddball cast of characters. IPS is the story of Mary Shannon, played by Mary McCormack, as WitSec U.S. Marshall – her job is to keep an eye on individuals enrolled in the Witness Protection Program. At the office, Mary has to contend with a few stand out characters – her trivia-minded, erudite partner Marshall Mann, played by Fred Weller; her nonsense, secret-softie boss Stan McQueen, played by Paul Ben-Victor; and the newest addition to the office, the wise-cracking tough gal office manager Eleanor Prince, played by Holly Maples. Mary’s life really gets crazy when she gets home, where she’s currently sharing space with her recovering-alcoholic mother Jinx, played by the wonderful Lesley Ann Warren; her wacky and trouble-prone sister Brandy, played by Nichole Hiltz; and Mary’s Dominican fiancee Raphael Ramirez, played by the yummy Christian de la Fuente. (I’ll admit up front that the only reason I started watching this show was that I had gotten hooked on Christian during his spin on Dancing with the Stars and was ecstatic to find out he was going to be in a show I could watch on a regular basis!)

 

Of the eclectic array on IPS, my personal favorites are Mary and Marshall. Forgive the bad movie reference, but there’s something about Mary that reminds me of myself – perhaps it’s the dismal luck she has having an organized and relaxed existence. More likely, it’s her quick-fire sarcasm and frustration with stupidity. But Marshall is the real gem of the show – even his name is a little off-the-wall (come on – Marshall Marshall Mann? ). He is a geek in the best sense – quoting miscellaneous facts at random moments, having a far broader base of knowledge about sophisticated subjects like art and literature than is necessary for a U.S. Marshall and his tall gangly appearance make him a well-rounded, lovable character. However, while I love the two characters as partners and friends, I am entirely on the fence about this budding love interest aspect the writers have added to Mary and Marshall’s relationship. First of all, I adore Marshall and would snap him up in a hot second, so it’s pretty painful watching him moon after Mary who clearly prefers a little more beefcake in her squeeze – the tears in this season’s finale made ME cry!! But more importantly, I think the writers should have stuck with Brandy as the third point for a triangle between Mary and Raphael – more chemistry there and way more chance for tension and drama (hello, sisters living under the same roof, chasing after the same guy?!).

Leverage, on the other hand, is a show that focuses on a group of criminals who have joined forces to fight for the little guy, the average Joe citizen who can’t take on the powerful and elite. The honest man and leader of the group, Nathan Ford, is played by Timothy Hutton, who exhibits a real sense of fun in the role. The shadier members of the group are hand-to-hand combat expert Eliot Spencer, played by Angel alum Christian Kane (again I say YUMMY!!); super-tech guy Alec Hardison played by Aldis Hodge; con woman Sophie Devereaux played by Gina Bellman; and thief-extradordinaire Parker played by Beth Riesgraf. Now, while the premise of this show appealed to me a lot – I kind of think of it as a modern-day comedic twist on The Equalizer – the main reason I tuned in the first night was strictly physical. I am a Christian Kane fan since his first appearance on Angel – and to think, he nearly ended up as Riley on Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead! – so any chance to watch him is good, and to watch him get physical on a regular basis is even better.

While it appears that the writers are intent on focusing primarily on Nate and Sophie as the leads, I find the other three way more entertaining. So I’ve explained part of what I like about Eliot – but I also love his anti-gun thing and his soft spot for kids. Maybe it’s the cliche tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold character, but I love it! The real winners in the character contest on Leverage, however, are Parker and Hardison. Parker is creepy weird, yet oddly naive and lovable, while Hardison follows in the happy tradition of wise-cracking black guys like Chris Tucker – he smarts off about as often as I would with a group of goofy colleagues like his.

In the character department, Leverage puts up a good fight, but ultimately it’s IPS that gets the gold star – there’s more variety, more depth and generally more drama surrounding the people in Mary’s life, and that makes for good television.

In the realm of plot and storyline, Leverage seems to come out on top. I have a great love for any show that offers good twists that I can’t always figure out before the end of the show – this is a fairly rare achievement for any show or movie, so I enjoy it a LOT when I do find it. The basic formula for each episode is we set up who the group is working for and why, the development of the con, the implementation, the problem and the resolution. The show’s twists usually come between the problem and the resolution – just when it seems the gang is busted and the con is going to fail, they somehow pull through. The true bright spot is when they show what happened to change the outcome in our heroes’ favor - showing how they got themselves out of that tight spot when it looked like they were certain to lose.

IPS has a similar format for unfolding an episode – start with the crime that sent the witness into the program and their initial meeting with Mary and Marshall, then explain what’s gone wrong now in the witness’ life, wrapping up with the heroes saving the day in the end. The plots are a little more humdrum standard cop show fare, so it’s hard to get excited about them. What makes this show worth watching is the interspersing of Mary’s home life with her work life – just when things hit the fan at work, Mary comes home to another disaster at home, sure to make her blood pressure rise like a rocket. But for some, the domestic drama may be a little to soap-ish and melodramatic – personally, I like that sort of thing, especially when it makes me feel like my own personal life looks great by comparison!

In the end, I have been inclined to declare In Plain Sight the winner by a nose, but given the startling announcement at the end of last Sunday’s season finale that new episodes would not air until NEXT SPRING (!!!!), I’m not sure if it can carry the winner’s title anymore. Leverage is definitely the smarter, more sophisticated choice, but it’s strange time slot (9:00 pm on Wednesdays?) makes it less likely to draw in an ideal audience.

Though tempted to declare this a draw, I’ll stick with my original thoughts and declare this round for In Plain Sight – only the executives at USA better wake up and realize that seven months is too long to make viewers wait for a show!!

Next up – Round 3: freshman medical dramas Royal Pains and Hawthorne face off!!

 

Apologies

Just a quick post to apologize for my tardiness in getting the next round of TV Showdown up (or any post for that matter). I’ve been sick all week, and everything has backed up – I promise to have the next round up before the weekend. If you’re missing my wit, check out my articles over at the Examiner.com - I’m hoping to do a little cross-posting sometime soon, but I would like to be generating new content for both places rather than reusing the same material.

*** Danielle

 

TV Throwdown: Round 1 – Raising the Bar vs. Dark Blue

I used to be a network TV junkie, but over the years, my viewing habits have shifted to basic cable channels, with TNT, USA and Sci-Fi (I refuse to use the new designation). I still watch a handful of mainstream TV shows, like House and Heroes, but I spend the majority of my considerable viewing time on basic cable. I started out on TNT, being a closet Law and Order junkie, and gradually that became my number one channel. In the past couple of years, these rerun-heavy networks have shifted their evening programming from movies and mainstream reruns to original series. I was reluctant at first to add any of these series to my regular lineup, but gradually I was enticed by some of my old favorites returning to television – such as Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Dylan McDermott.

So TV Throwdown will showcase two shows, compare their strengths and weaknesses and declare a winner. Of course, this is strictly my opinion, and I’ll confess up front that I have some serious biases when it comes to what makes a show worthy of attention.

Round 1 features two new TNT series, Raising the Bar, now in its sophomore season, and Dark Blue, which premiered nearly four weeks ago. Both shows come from serious TV heavyweights – Raising the Bar is the product of the fertile imagination of Steven Bochco (creator of hit series like Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue), while Dark Blue belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer (who produces a few shows you might have heard of – CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI:Miami, CSI:NY and Cold Case). So neither show has an advantage in its pedigree but both have a lot of promise simply based on the powers behind them.

The shows premises are related topics that are central to most of my TV viewing – legal drama and cop drama (if I could only watch one TV show for the rest of my life it would probably be Law and Order: SVU). Raising the Bar, as the name implies, is a show that revolves around lawyers – in this case, a set of law school classmates who find themselves on opposite sides of the aisle in criminal law. From the office of the public defender we have NYPD Blue Gosselaar as Jerry Kellerman, Teddy Sears as rich-boy-slumming Richard Woolsley, Natalia Cigliuti as new recruit Roberta “Bobbi” Gilardi and ER alum Gloria Reuben as boss lady Rosalind “Roz” Whitman. Representing the prosecutor’s office are J. August Richards (Charles Gunn from Angel) as Marcus McGrath, Melissa Sagemiller as the young ingenue Michelle Ernhardt and Currie Graham (the fellow who played House’s romantic rival for the lovely Stacy’s affections) as fearless leader Nick Balco. In order to round out the courthouse, Emmy-winner Jane Kaczmerak plays tough-as-nails oddball judge Trudy Kessler, and Jerry’s best bud Charlie Segansky (played by Jonathon Scarfe) works as Kessler’s law clerk. This cast has some true standouts – my three favorites being Gosselaar (not only do I enjoy his good looks, but he plays bleeding-heart Jerry without being over-the-top), Richards (um, hello, any Joss Whedon alum gets my attention) and Scarfe (such a hottie, and far more clever than any of his companions).

Not that Dark Blue is a slouch in the casting department. Dylan McDermott plays Lt. Carter Shaw, a maverick cop who runs a small group of undercover officers – all in a shady, off-the-books sort of way. Rounding out his crew are Omari Hardwick as newlywed Ty Curtis, Logan Marshall-Green as dangerously dark Dean Bendis and Nicki Aycox as rookie Jaimie Allen (or is that Anderson). The core cast here is a lot smaller, and so far the standout isn’t McDermott but Marshall-Green – Dean is the officer who seems most likely to cross that fine line between undercover and over-his-head. Aycox’s Jaimie has some appeal, although her backstory stretches credibility for die-hard police drama fans – how likely does it seem that she could fake an entire identity and make it through the academy background checks, let alone end up as an actual police officer.

The key to any successful television series is good running plots. Every episode may have its own featured drama, but in order to keep viewers, the characters’ overarching stories need to be riveting. In this area, it’s a little unfair to judge Dark Blue since it only has three episodes under its belt, but from what I’ve seen so far, the arc stories for the characters are fairly standard: a boss with baggage that drives him to push his team, an upright guy who wants to do the right thing but worries about how he’s asked to do it, an individual standing on the brink of self-destructing and a young woman with a colored past that she’s trying to rise above. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, we’ll get to see a bit more of all the main players but at the top of my list is McDermott’s Carter – he’s the driving force of the group so I want to know what’s driving him.

On Raising the Bar, the arc plots have been less standard fair. During the first season, the big story was Charlie’s attempts to hide his homosexuality from his boss (and lover!) Judge Kessler. There was a brief dalliance between Jerry and prosecutor Michelle, but that fizzled and never really went anywhere – his budding interest in Bobbi seemed to make this a ripe subplot but so far, little has been delivered beyond some slitty eyes and standoffish behavior. Bobbi’s troubled marriage that led to divorce finalized by a signature and a suicide has had me much more invested in her, but I think the real fun is going to revolve around Woolsley’s struggles to reconcile his privileged background with the realities of the clients of the public defender’s office. He seems to be acting out the thoughts of anyone who wants the well-to-do to take care of the “little people.” I’ve also been enticed by the faint chemistry between rich boy Woolsley and realist Roz but that storyline also seems to have fizzled.

The primary focus of each episode is usually a stand alone story, or collection of stories. Dark Blue focuses on one sting operation per episode, and so far, the plots have been so-so. The last episode (“Purity“) was definitely the weakest link – even though it offered some juicy opportunities for Jaimie to fall back into her old ways, ultimately, the episode fell sort of flat for me. On the other hand, the plights of the underprivileged clients of the public defender’s office make Raising the Bar more interesting on a week-to-week basis. Jerry’s clients usually are sympathetic and, even more unlikely, innocent. This week’s episode (“Trout Fishing“) focused more on the power play between Judges Kessler and Farnsworth (played by John Michael Higgins) than the cases, but it was a lot of fun watching Jerry wade his way through judicial egos and legal gymnastics to take care of his clients.

Ultimately, I come down on the side of Bochco’s Raising the Bar, partially because I prefer lawyers to cops and also because it has had more time to develop my interest. The one advantage I can give to Dark Blue is that it has a much better time slot, following the very entertaining Leverage, rather than the rather odd Kyra Sedgwick-vehicle The Closer. Although I am a fan of basic-cable series these days, some of the most popular, like Sedgwick’s series or USA’s Monk, are just not my cup of tea. Of course, my intense interest in made-for-cable series has generally not ended well – I am still a huge fan of Farscape and am desperately seeking a second season of The Dresden Files.

Round 2 will pit Leverage against the quirky WitSec drama In Plain Sight. Who’s more fun to watch – cons or cops?

*** Danielle

 

Michelle Malkin, ‘View’ Hosts Fight

This is just ridiculous – a group of intelligent women are gathered to share a feminine perspective on topics that effect us all, but instead sit around waving fingers “You didn’t read the book!” and in general behaving like a group of gossips arguing over the juicy details of some unfortunate’s situation.

What no one mentions is the it’s too late to bash Obama – time to learn to deal with the fact he is the President and he’s not going to be able to make everyone anymore than any other presidents have. Support the process, which requires free speech to make your voice heard, just don’t get upset when articulate argument is built on the opposing sides.

Sheesh!
*** Danielle

Michelle Malkin, ‘View’ Hosts Fight

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A Little Bit of This and That

I’m trying to get my room into decent enough shape that I can get to everything again. I put off a serious straightening until I was done with school, but given how much I hate cleaning (especially laundry!!) it’s taken me six weeks to really dive in. And I’m still dragging my feet – I spent a couple hours this morning scanning old photos and putting them up on Facebook. The major downside to cleaning is that my allergies are in overdrive and I’m a little groggy from all the Benadryl I’ve been taking.

Going through those old photos has made me realize that I was always kind of hard on myself about my looks – wearing glasses and being a stick figure always made me feel like a plain (if not downright ugly) Jane. I realized I liked my old looks so much that I changed my FB profile pic to one from when I turned 21. Check out the difference between the original one of Garen and I on graduation day and my younger, flashier self:

After my graduation with my little man

The only cheat here was I still wore glasses, just took them off for the pic

The lack of confidence in my appearance has eventually given way to other fears – of failure, of rejection and of never being self-sufficient. Right now, not being able to find a job has me seriously gnawing on all those fears. I know I should be working on my writing more if I ever hope to be a novelist but I feel sort of lost when I sit to write anything fictional. I’m really regretting avoiding creative writing classes at UC – I suspect it would help me break through this initial nervousness.

I apologize for putting off the television show discussion again – I’m probably going to have to chunk it up into manageable pieces on a couple shows at a time. I’m only a little worried that no one’s very interested in this blog – it took the other one a little while to warm up and even then,  I didn’t have a huge audience. The web is a pretty populated place so everyone has a piece of the pie – I’m learning how to share

*** Danielle

 

Idol Karma?

Just a quick post this morning. In case you’ve missed the news, the infamous “Glitter Girl,” of American Idol audition fame, was struck and killed by a car today. To refresh your memory, she was the charming young woman who sounded vaguely like a cat in a rooming full of rocking chair in 2007 – when the judges pointed out how dreadful she was, her true talent was revealed – rude gestures and foul language. She returned the next year, trying  a more mellow approach to the audition process, but managed to give the fans what they were waiting for as she left the audition room – the double-fisted one-finger salute.



Check out Pop Eater’s article on her untimely demise – she was only 24.

*** Danielle

 

The Geek Within

So here it is again, convention time, and I still haven’t managed to make it to a single solitary one!! This is the weekend of the phenomenal Comic-Con in San Diego (I had a brain fart lol), and from the news coverage available so far, it sounds like I’m missing yet another great time. *sigh* Rather than moaning about my frustration at missing the event, I’m going to chat about some cool stuff happening there this weekend.

A ton of movie previews, sneak peeks and trailers are being unveiled at the event. Topping the movie mania there is the new Twilight flick, New Moon - but I have to wonder if the Twi-fans feel a little overwhelmed by the geekiness of comic book convention. According the Rolling Stones piece, Twilighters are showing their enthusiasm (or obsession, depending on your point of view) by wearing t-shirts advertising the series or, in the extreme, paper crowns proclaiming their allegiance to either Team Edward or Team Jacob. But as we true geeks and fanboys/fangirls know, these folks are lightweights went it comes to showing devotion to their show/movie/book/comic of choice – check out this pic of the devotion of some Star Wars fans. I have this picture in my head of a middle-aged mom and her preteen daughter standing in line to enter the convention, intently scanning the area for any sign of Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner, and being overwhelmed by the sights of Wonder Woman, Klingons, Stormtroopers, Wolverine and less recognizable characters milling around, asking for autographs or sipping cans of soda. The thought balloon on the mom would read something like this: “What kind of degenerate nightmare of childishness have I taken my daughter to? I thought we were here to see some cute boys and oooh and aaah over the yummy Twilight movie stars?!!”

Perhaps some kindhearted gamer girl should drag some of the young ladies at the convention strictly for the Twilight fluff to one of the more intellectual events – say for instance the Wonder Women: Female Icons in Pop Culture discussion panel. Although I know next to nothing about panelist Zoe Saldana other than she played Lt. Uhura in the recent Star Trek remake (which, btw, I have not seen – turns out I’m more of a Trekkie than I thought ) and I’m more familiar with Elizabeth Mitchell from her turn as Carrie’s lesbian lover Dr. Legaspi on ER, the other two ladies on the panel are at the top of my female role model list. Eliza Dushku gets recognized mostly for her work with Joss Whedon, first as Faith the Vampire Slayer and more recently as Echo on the new (fabulous!!) series Dollhouse – I am a more serious Eliza fan, and have enjoyed her work from the days of True Lies (yeah, she played Arnold’s daughter – remember her hanging off the nose of the VTOL jet?) and even liked her turn as a reluctant cheerleader in Bring It On. But for sheer female awesomeness, it’s hard to top Sigourney Weaver. Forever remembered in the sci-fi community as the fierce-yet-vulnerable Ripley of the Alien series, Sigourney has run the gamut of acting. Even sci-fi geeks realize she’s great for a comedic role – fanboys drooled over her in Galaxy Quest. At any rate, the whole point of the discussion panel was to discuss the role of women in action/sci-fi films and shows – I think it would be a good idea to awaken little girls to the fact that Bella isn’t much of a role model with her damsel-in-distress, romantic-fatalism schtick.

In other convention news (lol), Peter Jackson – you know, the guy who brought to life the ultimate geekfest The Lord of the Rings trilogy - was talking about what’s new for him this year. I sort of ignored the excitement about his next film, District 9, because I saw two things that were way more interesting. From my inner geek came the panting over the news that his script for The Hobbit is weeks away from studio approval. But I was blown away by the news (apparently I’m totally out of the loop sometimes) that Jackson helmed the movie version of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. One of the few non sci-fi/fantasy books I’ve truly enjoyed, Sebold’s macabre tale of a murdered girl’s experiences after death seems like a dicey choice for a film, but I have high hopes that Jackson might be able to pull it off.

And now is the point where the mask comes off, and my inner geek takes the stage. I find it hilarious that USAToday has an entire piece about the “war” between Star Wars fans – original trilogy vs. the prequels. Old time fans, like me, were heartbroken by the ridiculous Phantom Menace – my teeth grate every time someone mentions Jar Jar Binks. Still, I attended each segment of the prequel trilogy during its first week at the theaters – as a long time Bengals fan, I’m familiar with being a glutton for punishment. And I will say that I really did enjoy Revenge of the Sith, although the scene with the little “jedi” being slaughtered was a little creepy for the mom in me. But regardless, I find it astonishing that anyone could be a fan of the prequels and dismiss the original trilogy. Sure the effects aren’t the best anymore, but there is the little fact that without the “old” films, there would be nothing to base the modern movies on!! The little girl in the USAToday article makes me want to cry – now I understand why Jar Jar Binks seemed like a good addition. Apparently, little kids need some slapstick in their sci-fi space operas. – *shudder*

I think I’ll talk about television shows tomorrow – my romps through Facebook quiz-land have left me with a need to talk up my favorites shows

*** Danielle

 

Making Me Mental

Okay, so I have a lot of issues with this mental health angle on the Virginia Tech shooter. One is strictly personal – I too suffer from a mood disorder and require medication to function. When it was announced that this kid had a history of mental illness (unspecified of course), there was natural outrage that he was able to purchase the guns he used in the shooting. Even my father said that the mentally ill should be barred from purchasing or owning weapons – with me sitting right across from him. I was flabbergasted that he blurted that out in front of me, but I managed to speak up – I asked him if he thought that I should be banned too. He just waved off my question with a “You’re different” and went on badmouthing people who have mental health issues.

I understand that some people with psychiatric problems are dangerous, to both themselves and others. But how about people who suffer from OCD or anxiety disorders? Although I have suffered from severe depression, I have never been truly suicidal – and now that I’m on meds, my encounters with depression revolve mostly around disappointing relationships or worry about finding a job. So, if I wanted to buy a gun for security reasons (like scaring off an intruder) does my mental illness disqualify me from being allowed to protect myself? Of course, this is a rather disingenious argument, since I hate guns

A bigger issue I have with the coverage of Seung-Hui Cho’s mental problems is this notion that he deliberately made the choice to be sick – because he resisted efforts to treat him, he obviously wanted to be “sick.” I actually have two problems with this thinking. First of all, why is it okay to criticize the mentally ill for their reluctance to seek treatment, but not for people who have diabetes or heart disease? It’s extremely rare for any mainstream press to endorse, either through deliberate communication or through subtle innuendo, blaming diabetics for their illness because of overeating or avoiding doctors’ visits. But it’s okay to fuss about the mentally ill not seeing doctors or maintaining their medication regiments.

This leads into the other problem – there’s a firmly ingrained notion that mental health issues are just “in the head” and not valid illnesses like cancer or emphysema. While the idea of “it’s all in their head” is literally true of mental illness, that’s not what people mean when they say that – instead, the implication is that mental illness is just an excuse or an imaginary ailment (ironic, since that very problem is a mental illness all its own – hypochondria). This attitude is especially prevalent among older generations – there’s a lot of griping that anyone who claims to be mentally ill is lazy, undisciplined, irresponsible, immature, freeloading and so on. I like what this woman had to say on the Wall Street Journal website on the subject of mental health stigma.

Situations like this make it 100 times harder to get anyone to treat mental illness seriously; whether this guy is faking or not, it makes people that much less clear about what mental illness actually is. In cases like these, the public tends to believe that the accused are simply denying responsibility for their actions – another variety of the stigma. It’s like those episodes of Law and Order SVU where the detectives explain that falsely claiming rape diminishes the credibility of actual victims, making the system that much more reluctant to investigate. Or, more proverbially, it’s like the boy who cried wolf – people hear the mental illness defense so often, they just assume that anyone who claims to be mentally ill must be making it up.

Here is a student journalist who sees the problem of the prevailing notion that severe mental illness requires the sufferer to be wandering around talking to angels or actively trying to commit suicide. I’ll try to describe this in turns of a physical illness that most people are familiar with – cancer. The need for some identifiable symptom in mental illness is like expecting everyone who has cancer to have skin lesions or a tumor pushing against the surface of their skin. In reality, there are plenty of cancers that are not visible to the naked eye – that doesn’t make them any less deadly or real. By the same token, there are plenty of disabling mental illnesses where the suffering and pain is contained inside the person. It makes it impossible to just spot someone who has a potentially lethal problem – your office mate may seem perfectly fine, and then one day turn up as a victim of suicide.

Acceptable alternative to shock treatments? This goes along with the idea of treating the mentally ill differently – only here, it’s the system deliberately being more aggressive in dealing with them in potentially dangerous situations. I understand that officers may have a hard time differentiating between a schizophrenic and someone on PCP but I don’t think that excuses this blatant over-reaction on a regular basis.

Insanity defense seems like a copout to most of the public – even in cases like this where it seems obvious that something was going on. The other problem here is that mental illness is blended with substance abuse problems, again bolstering the notion that mental health is simply a matter of better decision making. There’s a chicken/egg problem here – most people want to blame psychological problems on the substance abuse, but usually the opposite is true. Many people who don’t receive medical treatment for long-term psychiatric problems end up self-medicating with alcohol and/or drugs. But rather than trying to help these individuals, it’s perfectly acceptable to blame them for their current circumstances – funny how it’s not okay to point out that many diabetics and those with heart disease have often contributed to their conditions with poor diets and lack of activities.

I’m about done Probably the worst problem facing the mentally ill is poor medical treatment. Insurance companies generally cover a smaller portion of mental health visits than of traditional medical treatments. This means that people have to pay more out-of-pocket to take care of their health issues. The irony here is that fiscal well-being is often inversely related to mental health – people with psychiatric issues generally aren’t as financially stable as “normal” (I hate that word) people. So in order to cover this gap, some communities have tried to encourage sliding scale or free clinics specifically focused on mental health. Having used such services in the past, I can say that you get what you pay for – care is inadequate, spotty and often misses things that more expensive treatment facilities can pick up on quickly.

The idea of mental health parity is one of the main reasons why I support health care reform that moves towards more equitable care for everyone. I’m sorry if people think that universal health care is going to be a tax burden or is just another form of welfare for lazy bums or whatever – I think it’s time that everyone has access to the same quality of healthcare. Failing the approval of such measures, I wish that people who oppose them have to rely on the slipshod care provided to the poor for at least a year. I suspect if the wealthy had to wait six months to see their doctors or that their children remained ill because there were no services available for them the system would change in a hurry.

It sucks to be poor!! But it’s worse to be poor and mentally ill – the uphill battle to get out of poverty is compounded by the 200 pound millstone of psychiatric problems. Not everyone makes it out – and even those that do, like myself, feel less adequate or capable as their healthier counterparts.

Okay – rant off! Sorry for length of the ramble, but this is one of my biggest pet peeves. Talk amongst yourselves or tell me what you think. I can take it – good, bad or indifferent.

*** Danielle

 

Virginia Tech Shooting

Virginia Tech Shooting

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Since I’m off to bed, I can’t give this the commentary it needs, or the rant that I need to get off my chest about this mental health thing coming up again. Tomorrow afternoon, after the swimming with my best friend and her kids and my son, I will be back with not just more to say but some additional links.

Let’s just say, media attention on mental illness DRIVES ME NUTS! and I know of what I speak

*** Danielle

 

My Man Does It Again!!

I’m sure some people think I’m nuts for being an American Idol fan but I should explain that the number one reason for my continuing obsession with the show is that it spawned one of my favorite artists – Chris Daughtry. The moment I heard him sing during the audition week, I told anyone who would listen that win or lose, he’d be the biggest thing to come out of season five – maybe even the entire series (yes, even bigger than Kelly Clarkson). After his debut album ended up as the bestselling album of the year, I tried to keep my “I-told-you-so”s to a bare minimum – but I did rub my mom’s nose in the fact that her favorite, Taylor Hicks, who actually won season five, had barely been a blip on the airwaves. So sue me – I can be petty sometimes

Looks like I’m getting proved right again – check out this little blurb from EOnline! via Yahoo. Not just bigger than other Idols – he smacked down Michael Jackson from the number one spot this week!! I’m extremely stoked – and to think, I haven’t even managed to pick up my copy yet

*** Danielle