There was a scary moment, as the credits rolled on the Season 1 finale of “13 Reasons Why,” when I worried that TV would never be the same. Having just watched the infamously graphic scene in which Hannah Baker dies by suicide — the scene was cut from the episode, two years too late — I felt acutely nauseated and chronically unsettled. The show, I concluded after finishing its whole first season, was terrible, yet it was immensely popular, sparking lasting discourse throughout the middle school cafeteria. I worried, would this be the future of young people’s television? Unfettered brutality for clicks?
Most critics got it right — The New Yorker condemned the show’s “smarmy, disrespectfully pedagogical aesthetic”; The Independent, in no broad terms, called for its downright cancellation. And yet the show, marketed toward teenagers, was renewed for three more excruciating seasons. When asked by Vulture about the show’s inclusion of particularly graphic scenes of sexual assault, the show’s creator Brian Yorkey, responded with a statement advocating for the show’s mission of “telling truthful stories… in unflinching ways.” As if a story were a thing without implications, whose life ended when it was told.
Since “13 Reasons Why” appeared on Netflix in 2017, discourse surrounding depiction versus genuine representation of mental illness has only become more pervasive. Today we ask more of media: to tell stories with care and respect for the communities they draw from. Mental illness is an elusive theme to represent well, as it exists in different forms across different spectra of identity. Careful portrayals acknowledge and uplift this variety, taking precautions not to allow mental illness to in any way reduce a character.
Take the title character of “Ted Lasso”; a straight white man who is, absurdly, improbably, nice. Ted, a Kansas City football coach and vehement optimist, is invited to lead an English football club by its newly divorced owner, who hopes the move will lead her ex-husband’s beloved team to relegation from the Premier League. The strategy works, but we nearly don’t notice the team’s failures; the bulk of Ted’s coaching takes place between matches, as he subtly coaxes vestiges of patriarchy out of the men of Richmond FC. In one scene, Richmond veteran and team captain Roy Kent asks Ted for advice: Roy’s girlfriend Keeley admitted to having slept with another member of the team—Jamie Tartt, Roy’s enemy and narcissistic tormentor. Their suggestion to Roy? Get over it. Ted’s advice seems to stick; in season two, Jamie admits his persevering love for Keeley, even as her relationship with Roy becomes more and more serious. Roy, upon finding out, confronts Jamie, and without Ted’s help, forgives him. It’s an endless stream of satisfaction, as toxic tropes are, one by one, killed with kindness. Over time, though, we are made to wonder whether this kindness, so capable of killing, is rooted in something darker.
In the second season of the show, the curtain is raised on the inner turmoil that makes Ted’s bubbly personality appear all the more frantic. We learn that Ted’s father died by suicide when Ted was young, and his struggle to process that fact is complicated by his anxiety, which manifests itself in panic attacks: one during a tense football match, one at a karaoke bar, one at a funeral — which we assume reminds him of his father’s. The season, truly unflinchingly, concerns itself with mental illness in every way that “13 Reasons Why” does not. There is no gratuitous sensationalization of the most graphic, TV-ready morsels of mental illness. Depictions of Ted’s panic attacks are sympathetic, and in-show discussions of mental health follow careful and meticulously researched guidelines. It helps, of course, that most of these discussions come from a licensed therapist, Dr. Sharon, who is hired by Ted to treat certain members of the team, and who ends up treating Ted himself.
Some argue that Ted Lasso’s emphasis on the subject of mental well-being engenders lower-quality treatment of other themes, race especially. New Yorker writer Doreen St. Félix points out the closeness of Dr. Sharon’s character — at first unyielding to Ted’s theatrics, later more candid, but always professional — to the stereotype of the “competent Black woman.” Indeed, at times it seems as though Dr. Sharon’s sole purpose is to fix Ted’s self-repression, as she is the only character immune to his happy histrionics. Her scenes can often feel restrained by that fact, her movement through the plot sterile and utilitarian. With his family overseas and otherwise semi-estranged, Ted’s final stronghold of power is the football club, and Dr. Sharon stands as an obstacle to the outlet of that power. We know this phenomenon all too well — a man whose authority is challenged is a dangerous man.
Luckily, a scene in a pub at the end of Season Two sees the solidification of a real friendship between Dr. Sharon and Ted: Ted, his guise laid bare by Dr. Sharon’s X-ray vision, is for the first time fully vulnerable, and Dr. Sharon admits Ted’s positive impact on her practice. There is a satisfying release in their display of mutual love, previously hidden behind walls of professionality. The audience relaxes; tensions ease. And the show insists: It is in these moments of raw, mutual vulnerability that the most productive and healing conversations concerning mental well-being occur. We come away from the new season fully convinced.
But a question remains: Where are the Ted Lassos in the real world? Can such a man really exist? TV today is, somewhat predictably, dipping its toes into a new subject: that of the vulnerable man. In a world in no way cleansed of patriarchal violence, is this believable? Is it responsible?
The men of “This Is Us,” namely Randall, Kevin, and Jack Pearson — two brothers and their late father, respectively — are no Ted Lassos, though the recent season occasionally works against the myth of the unfeeling man. In one particularly important scene, Randall calls Kevin from his office on the debut night of Kevin’s play, telling him he got caught up at work and won’t be in attendance. Kevin knows something’s up; he sprints to Randall’s office, where Randall is on the floor sobbing, suffering a panic attack. The brothers embrace. When the curtains rise, Kevin’s co-star is alone on the stage.
Male sweetness runs throughout the show; Jack Pearson, the kids’ kind yet imperfect father, is shown lovingly in flashbacks to the ’80s, when Randall, Kevin, and their sister Kate were kids. But even in their adulthood, after his death, Jack’s memory wields a powerful, near-mythological influence over the family. Kevin’s co-star, just before the play begins and after the call from Randall, asks him what he’s thinking about. He replies, “I’m thinking about what my dad would do.”
And of course, Kevin does the right thing. And so does Ted Lasso, throughout most of both seasons. And yet, shadows of patriarchy are still inextricable from each show’s discussion of mental illness. We wonder why it takes a mythic, martyred father figure for Kevin to do the right thing, for Ted to behave with kindness. We wonder why, in each instance of male vulnerability, a woman is stood up, reduced, or put in a place to be villainized. In today’s TV industry, a predominantly male one, discussions of men’s mental health — perfectly healthy and necessary ones, I contend — consist of men behind the scenes influencing men on-screen. This kind of television, though educational to boys and adult men, should not wax remedial to patterns of historical masculine brutality. Media projects representing vulnerable men, in order to prevent their own complicity in a patriarchal system, still must stress diverse and gender-inclusive practices in hiring not just actors, but writers, directors, producers, and showrunners — the wizards behind the curtain.
Surely, life and art circle each other in endless mockery; it’s impossible, and frankly unimportant, to distinguish who is imitating whom. TV’s handling of mental illness, then, should project a hopeful image for the future without ignoring today’s state of affairs, no matter how unpalatable. TV writers who want to spark discourse concerning mental health have a unique responsibility: not just to represent current circumstances, but to lay blueprints for new ones.
