Mental

When I first started watching, I wasn't sure if I liked it or hated it. After watching every episode, I've decided that I love it!

It's a really odd show. The style sort of reminds me of a reality show, and the characters are really strange. I'm a sci-fi fanatic, and I think the fact that the show is so weird is probably what appeals to me more than anything.

A lot of people have compared it to House, but it's so completely different. It's much more weird, and in my opinion, better. I like House, but every show is exactly the same. This show always surprises me.

Is someone forcing Chris Vance to over play the part of smart-Brit-in- America? One reviewer noted that he was ever smirking. I concur. Are we supposed to like his character or distrust him? It's hard to trust a character who is trying to manipulate the audience into believing he is always spot-on, with ready-made wise answers. Make the ossified American version of the BBC stereotype go away! The public watch BBC and PBS programming and expect a more complex protagonist, if only because he is not American. Give us the savvy consuming public(& Chris Vance) a break!!! Vance looks like a cross between a youthful Sting and Harvey Keitel. And sounds like Julian Sands to boot! Shine on, Chris Vance.

They copied every routine detail house series: - conflicts with female boss(Lisa Cuddy clone), - weird undiagnosed illnesses that others can't cure, - contradictory diagnoses, - giving orders to other doctors, - time shortage, - crazy-looking and unexpected behavior, - and even "braking and entering" but instead of coping movie's personality they should concentrate on more important factors such as: - quality acting, - quality camera-work, - quality sound... Oh yes and quality ideas... I surprised fox even showed it. Yes, I watched 1st episode to the last minute, I thought maybe they at least have an interesting idea, but no...

please tell me this wasn't the series finale.... .We watched as he walked away last night wondering if the entire cast was going to continue, or would just he pick up somewhere else.....We were waiting to see if the one doctor, Carl Bell. was going to be found out as the jerk and manipulator he was portraying, and if the pharmaceutical representatives would be seen as forcing favors on individuals and hospitals for the opportunity to use them as guinea pig farms. Would the department head Nora Skoff find enough funding to be able to toss them (Bell and the drug representatives) out on their whatever. There were so many unanswered questions hanging at the end of this episode, we're hoping that it will return with some slowly released answers as the regular stories emerge.

It just wants to impress, amaze and woo us from the start. It fails, since this approach is so last century. I want character development, colors, emotions. I don't want to rush into stereotypes: "cool boss" + "powerful female colleague"; two sexy interns, fresh from actors school in LA; hospital director that looks like a captain from some hardboiled cop show, but not someone with a medical background. Mental cases are interesting stuff to explore, but it fails here also, since it emphasizes on human relations, rather than subject of psychiatry itself.

Camera work is so bad it pains me to look at those Mexican soap opera style close-ups. Sound falls even shorter.

And yes, where are the writers of this show? My bet is, that it will end with this one pilot.