Mental - You'd have to be what six letter word to watch it?

The question with Mental isn’t whether it’s a bad show or not; because it is bad. The question is: just how bad is it?

There are certain shows that roll along where you go ‘woah, Big Bang Theory is a bad show’ but that’s not ‘train wreck’ bad. That’s not ‘yikes this show is awful... yet hilarious because of that’ bad. Mental aims to be a train wreck, and very nearly gets there, but instead it just pulls into the station of ‘amusingly awful’.

Mental takes place in a mental hospital, the cleanest looking mental hospital TV producers can build. It follows the adventures of the new head of medicine who is, stop me if you’ve heard this one, a rebel who doesn’t play by the rules.

His name is Dr. Jack Gallagher and he’s British (broken rule #1). The show starts with a patient going mental and stripping naked, then somebody, just some random person from the line leaps out and gets naked to help calm the man down, who could this mysterious stranger doing these weird and wacky things be? Well if you’re the one person who actually was shocked when he turned out to be the new director well then you probably should be one of his patients.

Because there isn’t a cliché that isn’t ticked (stuffy guy in a suit who doesn’t like the new directors unorthodox ways, the head of the hospital who’ll give him ONE LAST CHANCE, the lady doctor who doesn’t believe his unorthodox ways but will learn to love them AND him...) the show becomes a sort of running drinking game.

Take a shot every time Dr. Jack doesn’t “play by the rules”:

Dr. Veronica, as played by Austraila’s own Jacqueline McKenzie (you know, blonde girl who got eaten in Deep Blue Sea) has a group of patients in a room for some very structured learning. She leaves the room. Comes back. They’re gone. Dr. Jack has them outside dancing to a random band that just happened to be playing in the Hospital grounds... for some reason.

SHOT.

If this were a movie Dr. Jack would be played by an excruciating noise making Robin Williams.

Take a shot every time Dr. Jack shows off one of his “quirks”:

He rides a bike, which means he’s always walking around with the front wheel of his bike... apparently bike chains aren’t enough for this guy. It also means that he travels everywhere by bike. At one point he leaves the hospital to visit a patient’s home... lucky the patient lives nearby or that biking montage would have taken forever.

SHOT.

If there are rules around Dr. Jack is liable to break them. If you have any conventions its best if you keep them at home because he’ll break those too.

Another example (oh there are so many rules he doesn’t play by):

The doctors hold a staff meeting. Dr. Jack thinks that’s whack, he calls in some of the patients to sit in “because it’s their hospital too”. Some goth chick walks in and says “hi” and the scene fades to black... there’s no pay off. Just a scene of him breaking a rule and then fade to black.

Dr. Jack even breaks his own rules. “Patients will now sit in on staff meetings” yeah, except when he calls one later in the show and no patients sit in...

Mental is probably one of the dumbest shows ever written. This is an actual exchange of dialogue between Dr. Jack and a woman who wants to put one of his patients in an institution:

Dr. Jack: I have 72 hours to examine him. It’s only been eight.

Woman: Well, I’ll see you in 64.

She did math right there in here head for all of us to see...

Is Mental a bad show? You betcha.

Should you watch the pilot anyway? Well, only if you’re like us and you enjoy yelling out “he’s breaking the rules again!” and then laughing at the TV.

Good, Average, Bad or Ugly?
Bad.