In two hour grand finale fashion, we said goodbye to Mental this weekend. And it was … odd. Maybe it was envisioned as a season finale, in which case it almost works. As a series finale, though, it’s incredibly unsatisfying. Of course, I say that as someone who enjoys dark and twisted things.
I generally hate when a movie or television show wraps up everything in a nice, neat little package with a bow on it. Everybody falls in love, the family business is saved, the sick kid wakes up, all that crap; and yet I’m disappointed at this ending. But I think I’m disappointed for a different reason.
The problem is that Jack just gave up. Whether you win or lose, you shouldn’t give up. He let Carl orchestrate his downfall and practically handed the department to him. What’s worse is that Jack’s shown incredibly poor judgment since his sister was found, both in his handling of patients and colleagues.
And about that, Jack’s schizophrenic twin is the main thrust of his coming to LA (so I guess with that in mind, him leaving does make a bit of sense), but he kind of just gave up on her when she agreed to go with his parents.
At the same time, we were given no reason to think that wasn’t a good decision for her, so that was a mixed conflict. I guess it left Jack feeling kind of restless. Now he had no real reason to want to stay at the hospital, or even in that city.
His focus had been on his sister for four years, so taking that away left him a psychological mess. Less clear was if he’d really lost his mind when he was acting as his own psychiatrist, “talking to himself” as he put it (a little lame that once we, the audience, saw it was him he reverted back to his regular voice — I’d figured out it was him long before that reveal).
So the moral of the story is that big pharmaceutical wins, represented by Carl? And Jack’s on the road again, just a vagabond in the wind.
But what about his stuff? Surely, he’d at least ride his bike. Remember when he was going to buy a car? All happened kind of abruptly. Kind of like conveniently closing the entire mental wing of the hospital to justify the entire main cast being in Jack’s apartment when Wolfman stopped by. Had to rush and put some closure on this one, I guess.
To be frank, I’m kind of done with Mental. If that’s the ending, fine. I can live with it. The real problem is that in thirteen episodes, I never grew to really care about any of the characters. They only bothered to flesh out Jack beyond the second dimension, and even he was just a smirking enigma.
You can get away with mystery in your main character if we can connect emotionally with someone on the show. Anyone? Yeah, when Jack left Nora’s office I really didn’t care what happened to any of them with him gone. Or the show gone, for that matter.
At least I won’t have to watch that damn zipper on his forehead anymore!
Clacked by Jason Hughes 
on Aug 17, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
You just put everything that I thought about this show in this blog post more than I could ever express.
The first few episodes, I thought that the show had potential but after a while, it just lost its magic for me.
When I watched the finale, it seems so rushed that it gave me the impression that the show is going to be cancelled off.