Wonderland

and severe depression and an innumerable amount of anxieties and I was not offended by this series. Sorry. And you know what I attribute this to? The mere fact that I can differentiate between the functioning mentally ill and the non-functioning mentally ill. Yes, there are both, no matter what NAMI or any other extremist group wants us to think. There are places like Bellevue. They're called state hospitals. While I can't say whether Wonderland depicted them to a -t-, I will say that I did have family in one such state hospital for a brief time and yes, there are people who act in very extreme manners. You must remember that these are the extreme cases and more often than not they cannot simply be cured by a few days of hospitilization and therapy and a prescription or two. Sometimes it takes a lot more time to find the appropriate treatments, and sometimes they simply don't have the funding to take on a single patient's case that long. And that's why it's a vicious circle, why the same people may go in and out again and again. These such people in particular were the sum of who was portrayed on "Wonderland". They were not me. They were not the kind of people that NAMI claimed to be defending. They were chronic and "non-functional". Apparently NAMI doesn't want their stories told...

Some people complained that a man was having a silly hallucination of a tiny rhino walking across the floor. They said that it was a silly stereotype, the mentally ill having hallucinations. Has anyone seen "A Beautiful Mind"? Why didn't anyone bitch about that? Probably because Ron Howard was given enough time to tell the whole story, to explain what fueled it. Unlike the ill-fated "Wonderland", which wasn't given enough time to tell that character's story. It was wildly misjudged and done a great disservice by getting stopped in its tracks. And for that, I think that NAMI shot itself in the foot. I don't think that isolating a whole segment of the mentally ill population, (no matter how big or small), is going to make their stories go away...or help us get any closer to understanding them.

If they really wanted a sympathetic portrayal of the functioning mentally ill in the media, they should've just shut their mouths about this show and waited for it. Because you know it's only a matter of time since it's becoming more and more apparent how very many of us are walking around.

This show was quality. I only saw 2 episodes and I feel cheated. I *loved* the Ted Levine character and wanted to know what happened with his kids. I wanted to know what happened to that woman's baby, how she dealt with her trauma and if she got back to work. While not a pleasant show to watch, it sure felt dirt real and rough. As it should have...

I hope they release all the episodes on DVD someday.

Heightens my awareness, empathy, and knowledge in how close each of us are to that "fine line." The drama is intense, and detractors will say stereotypical. The acting is superb, the plots heart-pounding, and the outcomes gut wrenching.

Hmm..... I still don´t know why they stopped Wonderland. I mean, isn´t the series about the fact, that we are all mentally ill in some way or another, that the line to mentally illness is very thin? Sure, it´s not a boring series, there are still jokes in it, but I don´t think they are meant to hurt mentally ill persons. Wonderland is really the best series I EVER saw on TV. I saw the first 8 episodes and I hope they begin to think about there decision to kick it off television. Well, that´s just my thougts I had after the last episode.

Imagine my disappointment earlier: I sat down to watch Wonderland via the VCR, and rather than Wonderland, I had taped some slickly-produced canned news program.

Yes my fellow reviewers worries about Wonderland have, unfortunately come true. E! online reports that ABC has pulled the show, faced with a drop in the ratings, and an apparent campaign against the show by a group who felt that Wonderland unfairly stigmatized people afflicted with mental disorder.

Was this show too gory? There were some scenes depicting violence and its aftermath, e.g., The shooting of bystanders in Time's Square by an actively-psychotic man; later, a struggle that ends when a pregnant psychiatrist is stabbed with a hypodermic needle which may have impacted the unborn's cognitive functioning.

Any gore was incidental to the storyline which was intense and compelling throughout. Writing and directing were superb. The viewer is horrified by the atrocity of a killer, yet cannot help but identify with Dr. Banger's (Ted Levine of The Silence of the Lambs) guarded empathy for this man who is likely to be committed for many years to a secure psychiatric hospital.

The staff and the patients were subject to the same stressors in life, to varying degrees. Anger, impotence, fear, self-loathing --all are possible responses to stress. When slapped by the news that his unborn child would most probably be grossly impaired, Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), the consummate professional, nearly strangled the perpetrator. He later thought he saw his wife exposing her abdomen to this same man.

This was the show at its most powerful. Dr. Bangor refers to this as the "dark side" of the human psyche. We all walk a line of "normalcy." At stressful times that path is narrow and razor-sharp. At such times it is our ability to adapt and to transcend that keeps us from falling off.

Sure the shooting in Time's Square was disturbing, but slasher flicks on TNT or TBS toss gore by the bucket load, rendering this violent act all but tasteful. Viewers are made to identify with the travails of "normal," even trained people who are nonetheless subject to the same experience as their patients. This casts "sanity" in a particularly fragile light.

This very exploration of fragility is what crystallizes Wonderland's greatness. It also may be alienating to a demographic that wants to be entertained rather than made anxious.

Then again maybe Wonderland's ratings would have been better had some numb programming executive (speaking of cognitive impairment) not have placed a program of this magnitude in a time slot opposite ER.

When people would ask what I wanted to do for a living I used to have to explain what forensic psychology was and that it did not involve gathering hair at a crime scene. Now I can just tell them to watch this truly amazing show. After just two episodes I already find myself wondering if this could be the best show I've ever seen. Both episodes left me emotionally drained and wishing for much, much more.