Wonderland

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.

Ditto AltonMann review. This new presentation is almost "too good" for TV. It does follow in Homicide's quality footsteps. I'm a psychiatrist by trade and can attest to the show's accuracy and realism in the chaotic ward/emergency scenes and the feeling tone generated in the action (which wondrously persists as a realistic backdrop to the personal conflicts of the principal charactors in the drama). The group therapy sessions were terrific and revealed even more depth in terms of the principal's personality and professional attributes. These are great actors, and I'm extremely impressed with Peter Berg's writing and directing skills. I wish to add my appreciation for the inclusion of Ted Levine to the fine cast. I sincerely hope this show can outlast the scheduling maneuvers and dilemmas. NYPD BLUE finally made it, Homicide died too fast (and never found a large audience), and the superior West Wing apparently is finding an audience and may surprise us by sticking----perhaps Wonderland will survive--hope so, but experience tells me not to hold my breath.

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.

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.

With the departure of the superb Homicide series last year, I did not expect to see another show that would be as dense with detail and as intelligently written again, never mind anytime soon. Well, it has aired only one episode so far, but Wonderland is a remarkable piece of work. The pace is faster than Homicide and the storylines are perhaps even edgier (given the setting is an urban psychiatric hospital, this was, I suppose, inevitable). It is great to see the remarkably talented Michelle Forbes working again. Ted Levine and Martin Donovan (remember Hal Hartly's Trust?) are two of the other fine actors who make up this talented ensemble cast. Like Homicide, the characters are multi-faceted, vulnerable and living on the edge in very stressful lives. The opening episode shows a central character who is pushed to an emotional breaking point by events that result in a reaction not unlike one of his patients. It is as if someone had seen Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor and decided to make a Homicide style series out of it. If the first episode is an accurate indication, this series will be a keeper.