Another Crazy Woman
The End of the F***king world is a new Netflix original that takes teenage angst to the next level. It follows two teenagers, James and Alyssa, who are both seemingly incapable of normal social behavior. James is a self-diagnosed psychopath who has decided that he wants to kill Alyssa, a girl from his school. He decides to pretend to fall in love with her and, when she decides to run away from home, he joins her. They travel across the country to escape their various problems, and find nothing but trouble along the way.
While the show is being praised for its dark yet beautiful themes, there is one hugely problematic element to the show. This problem is the writers’ handling of mental illnesses with regard to their characters. Even though both characters have very obvious mental illnesses, only James is given a diagnosis — even if it is simply a self-diagnosis.
From the beginning of the series, James identifies as a psychopath and recognizes his own lack of feelings as abnormal. He takes delight in torturing and killing animals and is unable to form healthy bonds with his family or peers. He even admits that he once stuck his hand in a deep fryer just to make himself feel something. Instead of portraying him as crazy, the writers give the audience a clear label to place on him. While it is not a positively viewed label, it still gives the audience a context for his behavior.
However, Alyssa is not given the same rational explanation and is instead portrayed as crazy, moody, and overall toxic. There is no diagnosis to her behavior and the audience is given no context to understand her. This is significant given the level of social aberrance to her behavior. Alyssa distances herself from everyone around her and rapidly shifts between moods and relationships. In one moment she sees someone as her savior, and the next moment she sees them as a disappointment and rejects them. She also has absolutely no impulse control and frequently participates in high-risk behavior such as reckless driving and unprotected sexual activity.
These characteristics and behaviors cause Alyssa to appear incredibly crazy, though the writers easily could have given her a diagnosis. In fact, Alyssa shows nearly all the symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD), a common mental condition for girls with a history of neglect, trauma, and sexual abuse. Psychology Today explained one of the more common symptoms of BPD, which is an individual’s tendency to have “highly unstable patterns of social relationships.” This means that an individual with BPD develops “intense but stormy attachments” and that “their attitudes toward family, friends, and loved ones may suddenly shift from idealization (great admiration and love) to devaluation (intense anger and dislike).” (2018). This describes Alyssa’s behavior with incredible precision and explains the reasons behind her seemingly crazy actions.
Even when the writers begin to delve into the backstories of the two teenagers, James is given more of an explanation for his behavior. James was emotionally stunted after witnessing the suicide of his mother at a young age and being unable to stop it. This traumatic incident caused him to completely shut down emotionally and develop psychopathic traits. However, Alyssa was given more of a vague cause for her aberrant behavior. The writers reveal that she was abandoned by her real father and left with her neglectful mother and perverted stepfather. While this could certainly cause an individual to develop BPD, this is not explained well. Thus, the audience is left to believe that Alyssa simply cannot cope with her circumstances rather than believe that she is struggling with a serious mental disorder.
Finally, the way the writers of the show began to resolve the teens’ behavior enforces the same negative portrayal of Alyssa. James, over the course of the show, begins to develop genuine feelings for Alyssa and eventually realizes that he is not a psychopath and that he had just been traumatized at an early age. From that point on he begins to function more normally. However, Alyssa is never given a revelation such as this and her behavior is never really “cured” or “fixed.” She is never even given an underlying cause for her behavior that could eventually lead to her functioning more normally. While James was redeemed by love, she remains unstable throughout the series. This clearly reinforces the TV trope that women are inherently unstable and emotional without true cause and completely ignores the possibility of mental disorders.
