Two Households

In different ways, both of these programs begin where you don’t know what to say; when only truth will do.
Your life is singularly beautiful, deep in trauma, perhaps, and also in joy. Every so often your uniqueness is challenged by television that seems to know exactly what you’re going through; a finger-snap recognition that you are witnessing something that is real and true and looks like you. Mainstream viewers may take a while to notice, but programs that tell new kinds of stories have tremendous impact and influence, winning acclaim if not quite earning longevity.
I’m writing about two shows, the Norwegian Skam and the Australian Please Like Me because they speak to a variety of themes important to me, including bipolar disorder, antidepressant medication, suicide, sexuality, and the impact that all of these things have on the dynamics of family and friends. Both shows managed four seasons in relative obscurity in the States, and they are being recognized by growing numbers of critics and appreciative fans as “important.” I am better off for seeing these programs, and that is why I want to share this analysis. I also want to offer an alternative to the popular Netflix program 13 Reasons Why, in which suicide is depicted as a that’ll show ’em power-grab. Drawing a line too easily between suicide and bad things that happen denies the root psychological issues at hand, and these issues are gorgeously rendered by the young creators of these two shows.
Skam (English, Shame) is a Norwegian teen drama web series. Innovative in its distribution, Skam appeared as social media clips and invited conversations as the show was airing. Series creator Julie Andem spent time interviewing members of her target audience for insight on how to tell the stories well, determined to achieve honest representations of serious matters. Each of Skam’s seasons orbits around the journey of one character. Season 3 follows the popular but solitary Isak. He is probably the most homophobic main character, and there is a growing awareness that he is protesting too much. Enter the charismatic Even. He’s charming, present, and enthusiastic. He is the kind of acquaintance who can intuit the desires of those around him. One moment Isak and Even are getting to know one another, next they’re in Halloween costumes, biking across childhood landscapes headlong into an underwater situation ripe for kissing (one of several visual nods to Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet).
It is a high romance, with the kind of rapid events of significance that are the essence of adolescence. It is over the top, but melodrama is not the reason. We realize, in painful synchronicity with Isak, that Even is in the middle of a manic episode. In a typical gay romances, someone’s heart will be broken or somebody will have to die. Skam’s choices are more devastating in its boring realness; the characters have to embrace complications that they were not expecting. So what is this high romance? Is it a product of Even’s illness? Isak has to research, learn, and ask questions. The young people are mostly up to the task of taking care of each other (which is useful in a series when adults only appear in text messages or silent glimpses). Isak learns that this love will be no less marvelous for being complicated.
Please Like Me covers the semantics around myriad hot button topics, and it is not fearful in demonstrating what PC really is; people learning how to use respectful and inclusive language. When characters fail in this endeavor it is comically useful, instructive, and true to life.
The show gets going quickly from episode 1, Rhubarb and Custard (food is an emotional device in every episode). Protagonist Josh is dumped by his girlfriend Claire and he meets a boy later that day (as Claire predicted). This first gay encounter would be momentous enough had it not coincided with Rose’s (Josh’s mum) first attempt at suicide. Waking to the news, Josh, his friends, and family, are thrust toward unwanted maturity. As the situation with Rose sinks in, priorities are adjusted. Josh’s friends and parents may be wrapped up in their own things, but they are quick to give him support. Nobody gets extra credit for doing the right thing because these characters are in the middle of heavy shit.
Both of the shows handle the coming out of a gay central character with a refreshing brevity that is neither falsely easy or naively optimistic. Parents and friends say kind things and are willing to challenge the prejudices of their religion and upbringing. The bigots exist, but they are given their rightful place in the far, far margins.
Please Like Me is bold from the start, and remains so for four seasons. I imagine that Josh Thomas, both as a writer and actor, can be a turn-off to some. He laughs when things are bad, and cries when things are good, and this is precisely why I think he’s among the most important writers of his generation. I’m not certain how to insert the appropriate spoiler and/or trigger alerts, save to say that for me, a survivor of suicide, this show has been essential in my own catharsis. When the show goes into dark places, it does so with a steely responsibility to the characters, rejecting a moralist agenda that would otherwise deny the viewers from learning from the situations portrayed. It is a marvel how we are able to care for the characters without judgement, and yet acknowledge that their actions can be wildly self-destructive and damaging to entire circles of friends and family.
As with Skam’s Even, Rose is bipolar, and there are times when a nervousness hangs heavily over every mundane occasion. This dialogue from season 4 between Rose and her roommate Hannah (Hannah Gadsby) is one that I’ve heard countless times, yet the writing is crystalline in its expression of the double-edged sword of treatment.
Rose: Do you have trouble being interested in sex when you’re on antidepressants?
Hannah: Sex is a chore I always try to avoid.
Rose: What about love then? My emotions are so flat, how can I tell if I have feelings for someone?
Hannah: I know it is not ideal. You take medication to take yourself out of a dark hole, and you end just up a display home on an empty street.
Rose: I wanna get off the medication, Hannah. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling the same way at a friend’s wedding as I do at their funeral.
Hannah: Yeah but you know you feel like you’re ready to come off the medication because the medication is working. You know it stops working when you stop taking it?
Rose: Yeah I know.
Hannah: Thing is, I just took myself of my medication and I’m fucked. Fucked. Like, bad. Started hitting myself again.
Rose: What? Hitting yourself?
Hannah: We’ve all got our things. You try to kill yourself, I tenderize.
Rose: Hannah, I’m so sorry what can we do abaout that?
Hannah: Its fine. I’ve been taking my meds again and I’ll be beige again soon. It just really hurts to know that I need to take pills simply to function. Really painful. I can’t wait to be beige again.
It’s a short dialogue of great consequence. One day you realize just how paralyzed you’ve been. Your survival is an unquestionable achievement. When your instincts for trust, risk, and depth of feeling are missing, you deny this of the people around you. The day you emerge from the dark, it may surprise you how long you’ve been in there.
In their different ways, both of these programs begin where you don’t know what to say; when only truth will do. Hope remains an ingredient to suffering when we are young, and it makes sense that young adult fiction can be so honest. The challenges that harden grown-ups can make the young more soft and capable. To maintain hopeful, it is necessary to push through the ceremony of normalcy that stands in the way of living in our truth. Anyhow, in this way we are all young adults. Our loved ones with mental health disorders bring their own special light; they have wisdom more consistent than their behavior. The hope they return to is the hope many of us can’t confirm in the best circumstances. When Isak tells Even to take things one minute at a time, he is talking to himself. This minute right here, is perfect just as it is. Remain.
