ABC's Black Box Season Premiere Review

With the Thursday 10 p.m. slot open after Scandal's season finale last week, ABC presents Black Box.

Doctor Catherine Black "secretly" has bipolar but repeatedly goes off her medication in the hope that she can "feel alive" again.  The drinking game begins as soon as you press play, so read the rules prior to watching the episode!  I have a feeling that the rules will hold up in the upcoming episodes...

Start the episode off by chugging whatever is in your glass.  Trust me.

Drink every time:

1.) Catherine goes off her medication.

2.) Jazz music is in the background.

3.) Catherine hallucinates.

4.) Catherine has sex, sees sex, fantasises about sex.

Take a shot (and quickly refill your glass) every time:

5.) Catherine mentions her mother.

6.) Catherine cheats on her boyfriend.

7.) Catherine mentions her profession.

Finish your drink at the end of the episode before you have a chance to shout any more obscenities at your television screen.

REVIEW:

Desperately piggy backing on the viewers of Grey's Anatomy, Black Box should be put in a box and pushed under your bed like most things you want to forget about.

The constant resounding thought throughout the episode is, "Should they have been medicated into mediocrity?" "They" being the great artists: Hemmingway, Sylvia Plath, Vincent Van Gogh.  All of which suffered from mental illness and ultimately took their own lives but are considered great minds.  Dr. Catherine Black is a neuroscientist but she has a great appreciation for art and those who are suffering from mental illness.  She suffers from bipolar disorder and constantly deviates from her medication in order to explore her creative mind.  She sees herself as a great artist as well.

This move is a common move from those suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because patients often report a lack of being able to feel emotions because of the mood-stabilizing medication.  Often times, patients report skipping their medication because they feel better and that they no longer need medication.  This is not entirely explained in the episode as Catherine's bipolar depiction is better suited to her having a ton of promiscuous sex and dancing to jazz music that is playing in her head.

Will, Catherine's boyfriend, proposes to her but it leaves her unsettled.  She consults her psychiatrist and ultimately decides to accept Will's proposal.  In a conversation with her niece Esme, Catherine talks about how her mother who also had bipolar disorder killed herself.  Her mother ripped page out of Virginia Woolf's book and committed suicide with rocks in her coat while walking into the ocean.  After Catherine tells her all of this information over coffee, she asks Esme to be her maid of honor at Catherine's wedding.

After dumping her medication, Catherine goes over to Will's apartment and tries to dominate him but he refuses.  She rips her ring off and throws it at him after he rejects her advances.  She then leaves his apartment with his clothes on and parades around the city.  All of this happens in a "manic" state and she dramatically calls her niece talking about buying a puppy for her.  The niece tells Catherine's brother Joshua who then has Catherine picked up by paramedics.

When Catherine becomes lucid again, she begs Joshua not to tell his wife Reagan because she's afraid Reagan will keep Catherine from seeing Esme.  In a visit with her psychiatrist, Catherine says she has only one thing to live for: her daughter.  Turns out, her niece is really her daughter.  Her brother's wife agreed to raise Esme, but it seems as though Esme was not raised knowing Catherine was her biological mother.  When Reagan refuses to let Catherine see Esme after Catherine's episode, Catherine calls her psychiatrist Helen asking desperately for a reason to live.  Helen tells her that her work is her reason to live, the people and the lives she can help are the reasons for Catherine to live.

With this, Catherine goes back to work.

This show needs to be cancelled for a number of reasons.