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my brain has only been like 20% working this past month; i think i reread the first two chapters of this one book like eight times and still couldn't really grok it??? weird.

anyway in lieu of books i mostly devoured other things; here are some rambling thoughts on 'em~

The Bright Sessions (podcast)

Radio play-style podcast, structured as "recordings" of therapy sessions between Dr. Joan Bright (a normie human psychiatrist) and her "atypical" patients (who have a range of powers—one's an empath, one's a mind-reader, one's a time-traveler, etc).

The first season is charming and clever: fifteen minute episodes, tightly written. It's mostly a character show, and hearing these characters' lives unfold bit-by-bit while they lie on the proverbial couch is most of the joy of the thing. But the mild background tension of "so what's the therapist's deal" provides just enough interest to propel the plot forward. And the voice actors, imho, are all very good; I was so drawn in just listening to them.

Season two proceeds along swimmingly enough, even though one of the main romantic subplots was starting to curdle from "cute" into "cloying", and even though enough of the plot was being revealed that some gaps/shoddiness were starting to show. (The "logic" behind why Dr. Bright is beholden to the people she is, in the way she is, didn't entirely make sense to me; there's a season finale that relies on a little too much idiot ball for my liking.)

But by season three, the episode length starts creeping... upward... without enough material to justify that length. We start getting episodes where it feels like characters are repeating themselves a great deal, and also episodes where it doesn't entirely make sense why certain conversations go on as long as they do—why one party didn't simply storm out halfway through, for example. The early episodes are solely therapy sessions, so there's enough scaffolding that it makes sense that people stick around even when a conversation is tense; the later episodes vary in format, but still seems to think its characters are trapped in rooms together. Augh.

And it doesn't help that, due to Plot Shenanigans, by this point most of the atypical characters are bro-ing out all BFF style together, in a way that just felt a little too cute, a little too cast-of-a-sitcom-y. I don't really... care for ~*~super cozy found family~*~, particular when it's all way too easy, and it is too easy here—feels like we're sanding off some potential sharp edges of characters, and also manufacturing closeness where it really just shouldn't be there.

But I'm torn because season three also introduces some GREAT stuff, and some ALMOST great stuff. A certain Demented Road Trip takes up the first part of the season, and it's got some absolutely immaculate Dude Suffering material that's targeted squarely at me. There's a really cool subplot with a military veteran character who's beautifully acted and contrasts nicely with the cheerful teen/twentysomething bulk of the rest of the cast. And there's a yuriest-yuri-that-ever-yuri'd dynamic introduced early in the season, that on paper is DELICIOUS, and almost works in practice, like, when I stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la" it kinda works... but, ultimately, the writing/acting for the other villainous chick just doesn't work. We're told repeatedly by other characters that she's manipulative and dangerous, but we only ever hear her being obvious and loud and smarmy and predictable; it's super-easy to buy some pining between some version of these characters but not the characters that actually, uh, exist.

So yeah, I was willing to keep listening for the sake of what was working for me (the cozy found family stuff wasn't all bad, even; it would vary from charming to cloying depending on the episode), until I started having this uncomfortable feeling that, uh, the whole "everyone hates Damien so much" thing wasn't just a weird collective blind spot on the part of the characters, and was in fact the authorial opinion, and uh how far are we going with this exactly, are we pulling a repeat of Corbin's treatment in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, so I skimmed ahead and...

...yeah that's absofuckinglutely where they went with it. UGH.

so yeah, fun ride while it lasted, but s4ep8 was absolutely where my journey ended lol

also agent green was such a NOTHINGBURGER, UGH, why was he even IN this show

but yes mark and damien are great i am pulling them close to my chest and hovering over them like a brooding hen

In Treatment (TV)

The show's setup: Paul is a psychotherapist. Each episode is a half hour, and corresponds to one appointment with a patient. There's five episodes per week, Monday through Friday, and each day always features that day's patient (so Mondays you see Laura, Tuesdays you see Alex, etc). Also, on Fridays, Paul goes to get some therapy himself, from his old boss/mentor, this badass retired lady, and okay sorry I'm editorializing right now in what's SUPPOSED to just be the summary but suffice to say Fridays are extremely interesting lol.

So, yeah, I was watching this show For Research TM and then wound up devouring like half a season in short order. Which doesn't sound like a lot until I add that a season is forty-three episodes oh my god what (I mean, they're half-hour long episodes, but still!). This shit is engrossing! And also, uh, long-term exhausting (you are, in fact, seeing patients at their worst pretty much all the time, and wow full sympathy to therapists who do this for real), so it's really not bingeable, hence my taking a break before I finish the rest of season 1.

But I'm liking it a lot! Overview of each the patients and my rambling thoughts on them:

LAURA: wants to fuck Paul. Yawn. They manage to make this character a little more interesting than I expected at first—her actress is great, and she behaves in this uncanny valley between manic-pixie-dreamgirl and normie that's interesting from time to time... but hers is the weakest narrative, I think. (And yeah, sigh, Paul does want to fuck her too and is probably going to eventually act on that, tale as old as time, etc)

ALEX: omg Alex. i want to crawl inside this man's brain and live there. i want to study him in a lab. i want to sit next to him at a bar and ask him rudely personal questions while he gets increasingly drunk. i want to spot for him at the gym. he is SO FASCINATING

Okay so let's just talk about his first episode, right? Alex shows up, and he emphasizes that he's chosen Paul as his therapist because he checked his fuckin' sources and Paul is the best, and Alex would not go to a guy who is not the best.

Okay, cool, Paul says, and then: what's up?

And Alex says, so, I'm a fighter pilot in the Navy, you might know me from that ghastly headline where the military blew up a madrassa, right? Yeah I was that pilot.

Oh, wow, says Paul, how's that feel.

And Alex is like bro, that's not the point, god you're not going to fuckin' be one of those bleeding heart types, are you? They gave me my target and I hit the target and that's war. It's fine. Anyway. I've been on leave since that mission, and the other day I was out running with my gay BFF, and I got so into running I had a literal heart attack

Wow, says Paul, that sounds pretty intense—

Yeah whatever (Alex rushes to interrupt) that is also not the point, the point is, I'm thinking of going back to the madrassa.

Paul's like... the one you bombed?

And Alex is smirking like: Not too swift, are you, doc? Yes, the one I bombed, what do you think.

And Paul tries (a little desperately) to do the whole psychotherapy thing, sayin shit like, what makes you want to go back there, what do you think that will accomplish, what do you feel when you think about the madrassa

And Alex is having NONE of that. Dude is like, sir I am asking you a simple-ass question, is going back a good idea, yes or no. And you better answer fast because I've got a flight to catch.

And at this point Paul is TOTALLY lost, and meekly asks: ...a flight?

And, yeah, turns out Alex has already decided he's going back to the madrassa! He's hitched himself onto some kind of church group that's touring/volunteering in the area! Which begs the question of so why is he asking Paul's opinion at all, but, Alex INSISTS he wants an ANSWER damnit—

Paul finally breaks out of therapy mode, saying, dude your face is on literal wanted posters out there, that region is a literal war zone, and aren't you supposed to be on military leave, I don't think this is the best idea—

But TOO LATE. Alex is already OUT THE DOOR and God only knows if he'll even be alive next week let alone show up for therapy.

And it's just. What. WHAT even happened in that session. WHAT is this man's deal. EVERY SINGLE EPISODE with him is like that, just nonstop brazen bizarre decisiveness and random un-elaborated-upon bombshells that are constantly knocking you off-kilter. My worry when plunging into ~the therapist show~ was that all the clients would be kinda samey—depressed waifish types—and my dude Alex is a lot of things but he is ABSOLUTELY not that.

tbh even if the other patients sucked i would still watch the Tuesday episodes just to see whatever the hell Alex has going on

(i have no idea if anything i wrote about Alex was coherent, sorry. i gave this pitch while drunk at a wedding a few weeks ago and i think now i just cannot talk about him in a normal way lmao)

SOPHIE: Teenage girl shows up in Paul's office. She says she got in an accident where she got hit by a car while riding a bike, and apparently the car's insurance is demanding she gets checked out by a psychotherapist. Other car says she came out of nowhere—clearly they think she was trying to off herself. So, she says pointedly to Paul, can you sign off on this, because this is a distraction, I just need this done so I can heal and then get back to gymnastics practice. (She's a probable Olympic qualifier.)

It's true, the accident wasn't really an accident (this show's writing is good, effective, but perfectly predictable, haha). But we don't get the details of that til much later, and the patient, gradual way the show unfurls the contours of this girl's life—centering first on her, how present she is, intelligent, aware of every inch of her body in the way that all very serious athletes are—and then the messy shape of her life—those revelations are well done, satisfying. You're really pulling for this girl but my God can all kinds of dysfunction hide even in the well-off corners of suburbia.

JAKE AND AMY: Couple's therapy! (Clearly the show was aware they needed to change up the formula, introduce some dynamic that weren't just 1-on-1, haha.) These two are the most normal of the bunch, with the most down-to-earth, normal-seeming problems. Each week they frustrate me because it seems so obvious that they're mad for each other, and they really could reconnect and make their relationship work if they both honestly decided they wanted to do that—but if they're not going to do that they should just cut and run now rather than dragging this whole thing out, and... well, they sure are going to drag this thing out, right? No show otherwise.

GINA: okay i don't have much to comment here because their whole dynamic is WEIRD, but, how absolutely deranged is it to go back to your mentor and supervisor of [x]-many years to get therapy. paul there is something deeply strange about you underneath your sad, frumpy exterior. obsessed with whatever's happening here. (did i mention paul's accent is kinda hot this all helps)

anyway. bizarre show! having a great time!

Sick Girl by Amy Silverstein (book)

Memoir written by a woman who developed a sudden sickness at age twenty-four, leading to a heart transplant (& all the associated baggage that such a transplant entails).

This is the kind of book I more skimmed than actually read, and I only skimmed it because the Goodreads reviews were so wildly bimodal that I had to make a judgment firsthand: is memoirist Amy Silverstein the Hugest Bitch To Ever Exist, or, y'know, the opposite of that?

She's totally fine. It's interesting, honestly, the way she chose to write this memoir—there's relatively little interiority going on, and a hyper-tight focus on the occurrence, progression, and treatment of the illness itself—so you don't get a particularly rich backstory, or a ton of rumination on why she's acting or feeling the way she does. She just kind of lays it out there, Hemmingway-style.

So, like, does she have a tendency to reflexively judge people based on appearances (being put off by a doctor's yellowing teeth; categorically rejecting the first set of drugs that are recommended to her because she doesn't want the weight gain side effects, etc)? Yeah, for sure. But she's hardly the only person in the world who's probably kind of shallowly judgy, and it's refreshing to see her just put that out there without trying to elide or obscure how she feels for the sake of seeming more saintly. She gets super-pissed when she learns doctors don't know everything and make mistakes—well, hell, I don't blame her for being angry, she actually flatlines when a doctor fucks up her medication halfway through the book. (And this was before the internet, before it was anywhere near as easy to research your own illness—you really get a sense of how terrifyingly vulnerable that is, being told "these are your options" by a doctor who has objectively failed you.)

So yeah, final verdict is Not A Bitch, and it's an interesting read overall in the technical way that medical memoirs are. (Embarrassingly, I had no idea transplant patients had to be on immunosuppressant medications for the rest of their life, and had no idea how much those medications suck; getting a firsthand account of those mechanics was worth it on its own.)
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