Mental – CliqueClack Preview

I’m not sure why Fox kept Mental back for the summer; it premieres tonight at 9 pm (EST). It’s basically House, only with mental patients instead of medical ones. In fact, coupled with House, it could very well be the next big hit for them. It’s certainly a well put together medical procedural.

On House, more often than not we don’t understand anything of what the patients are suffering from; here, it’s mental illness. It’s certainly easier to understand schizophrenia, or someone believing they’re pregnant when they’re not, or that the pool is full of sharks than half of the illnesses Dr. House diagnoses. Plus, Dr. Jack Gallagher (Chris Vance) is so likable in the lead, he’s fun to watch.Gallagher, the new head of the psych ward at a prominent hospital, is British, unconventional and prone to dropping his trousers on his first day. Actually, that’s just part of his doctoring technique. He believes in getting right in there with the patients, not only making yourself a part of their delusion but making them a part of their own treatment.

Granted, he’s not a dick lacking in all social graces like Dr. House, but he is an unorthodox doctor with a team of reluctant followers and a pretty hospital director (Annabella Sciorra) who has to decide whether to allow his crazy antics because he’s just brilliant enough to pull them off, or to rein him in because he’s just crazy enough to get the hospital sued.

I screened the first two episodes, and in the second one we had Dr. Gallagher staging a fake C-section with real scalpels and medical equipment in a real O.R. just to pull a man out of his delusions about his wife’s pregnancy. The dangers involved are astronomical, but he was right and the “stunt” worked. Sound familiar?

Still, procedurals work in the modern television landscape. They’re easy to watch, you can drop in and out of them without having to worry about missing anything, and they’ve got enough mystery to pull you through 42 minutes of story. Plus, it helps to have engaging and enjoyable characters.

Mental is all of these things, and the characters themselves are interesting, and not just one of them. Though the mystery of Rebecca, the mysterious sister of Dr. Gallagher who calls him and then just breathes on the phone, is really the only thing left unresolved, there are already personality issues galore.

Maybe Mental can find a big enough audience to score a place on Fox’s schedule in the upcoming season. I’m sure there are a few flops on the horizon with some of their new shows. After all, Hole in the Wall was on there at one time.

Some other quirks I noticed:

• Everybody smiles an awful lot on this show, but not all of them smile all the way into their eyes.
• If the zipper on the forehead segue is used every time they go to commercial it’s going to get old real fast. The show hasn’t even officially premiered and I’m already tired of it.
• Kudos to the creators for not making Chris Vance fake an American accent in his role.
• Seeing Jacqueline McKenzie makes me miss The 4400 even more. But she’s good here, too. I guess.
• When Dr. Carl Belle (Derek Webster) smiles, your heart stops for a moment. It’s like an alligator or a shark saying it wants to be your friend. You run. You run for your life.
• Kudos to casting Silas Weir Mitchell (“Haywire,” Prison Break) as a schizophrenic; he plays crazy so well.

I’ll be interested to see if any ongoing plotlines develop, other than the mystery behind Rebecca. They’re already setting up some marital problems for Dr. Hayden-Jones (McKenzie) and power struggles between her, Belle and Gallagher. But then again, maybe this won’t be that kind of show.

Clacked by Jason Hughes
on May 26, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT