Daz wrote:
Ben was definitely the highlight of that season. Great character and very well acted. And I actually liked the therapist.
[spoiler]I've got a mate with bipolar back in Perth who's entering a manic episode at the moment—getting "up" as Ben does in the show—and sending me conspiracist messages, trolling his friends online, and generally losing his shit. He gets into an elevated state around this time every year, for two of the past three years he's ended up getting involuntarily committed after a serious real life altercation, in the first instance with his then romantic partner, in the second with the members of his Tamil community—he's a refugee from the civil war who also suffers complex PTSD.
I think it would be hard for people with bipolar to watch Ben, and they might have a few objections to raise, as his trajectory and his outcome is a fatalistic one. For those of us who have friends or family members who suffer from this illness, though, some of the stuff depicted would have been sadly familiar and it felt like plausible representation to me.[/spoiler]
