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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The actor who played the father (Stephen Graham), who was also a co-creator and producer, just appeared on Morning Joe. It was interesting. He says they purposely revealed at the end of episode 1 that the boy was guilty, so the series would not be a “whodunit.” Rather, he wanted the focus to be on “why.” His concept was whether many parties (e.g., [b]social media, the government) share culpability. [/b]

He says they wanted to give new talent the opportunity, so they considered more than 500 boys for Jamie’s role. The first scene with him that they shot was Episude 3 (with the psychologist). He said the boy has no acting training but he thinks he is a once in a generation talent.[/quote]

So political goals?

Nothing to do with consulting psychologists or mental/personality disorder profiles?

They left that part out entirely in order to try to pin it on social media and government???  Not even the parent misbehaving the same way (net of knifing murders). [/quote]

You did not even see the segment, yet you are on your soapbox. Of course he mentioned parents (do you know what “e.g.,” means, vs “I.e.,”?.). An entire episode was spent with a psychologist! You are the one with an agenda. [/quote]

DP but agree. Did the PP watch the series? The third episode is all about Jaime's psychological profile and he is clearly deeply disturbed, frequently engaging in splitting -- he would totally lose it in a violent tirade and then one minute later be incredibly polite, asking for more hot chocolate (because he trashed the first one when he lost his temper) but saying "no you don't have to" as though in apology for his behavior. Just these wild swings from acting like a totally normal kid, even kind, and then going into a violent rage. It clearly depicts a psychological issue and the show doesn't make it seem like this is easy to address. The therapist is clearly distraught at the end of the episode and I thought the implication was that she knew he was a lost cause.

And there is a very moving scene in the last episode where the parents discuss how each of them may be culpable, talking about how there were red flags that they failed to investigate, how they knew his temper was an issue and knew it was a problem that he was staying up all night on his computer, but they didn't do anything -- didn't call a therapist, take him to a doctor, didn't force the issue. They clearly carry around enormous guilt.

But you can also understand why they didn't do anything, because you also see that they are working class, don't have an abundance of time or money. As the parent of a child with special needs, I know this dance so well. When you think your kid could benefit from an intervention but you don't know where to start and it takes a lot of time and effort to figure out what that intervention would even be. And sometimes you take your kid to a doctor or even a specialist and they say "no, seems fine" or kind of condescend to you that xyz is developmentally normal and seem to think the real problem is that you are being overzealous as a parent or trying to pathologize "normal" behavior. As a parent you are often stuck between worrying that your child has issues that are too big for you alone to fix, but also not having access to other resources that would help.

And that's what the creator was saying. When you have a kid with serious mental health issues, and the parents know he needs help but don't know how to connect him to the help, and when the medical community and schools and therapists can sometimes be dismissive because they don't trust parents, and when the influences of screens and social media offer an easy way for these parents to placate their kids when they can't deal with them and aren't getting other help, then yes, this is a society-wide problem. If you believe the problem is mental health and parenting, they you should be looking for ways to get better mental health care for kids and to support parents who have children like this in finding solutions. That's the point.[/quote]

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