Last week, I was watching an episode of this new comedy show, Call Me Kat. (It was season 2, episode 2, if you're curious, and it airs on Fox and streams on Hulu.) In this particular episode, one of the main characters named Randi, played by Kyla Pratt, tells her current love interest that she got her tattoo during a time when she was really struggling with depression.
As soon as "Randi" brought up her mental health, I felt myself bracing for an inappropriate joke about mental illness. I'd seen this sort of thing too many times in comedy shows and movies. I expected "Carter", the love interest, to make an awkward and insensitive joke to "lighten the mood", or I expected "Randi" to make a self-deprecating joke, to beat "Carter" to the punch. But...the joke never happened.
"Randi's" love interest simply asked her if it was any better now. Then "Randi" replied and told him that it was better "most days" and that finding a great therapist and the right medications helped her. And, still, nobody made a joke about it. "Carter" didn't make any unkind remarks, act uncomfortable, or make a joke about her admission that she took anti-depressants or went to therapy. He simply accepted the information and was only concerned with making sure "Randi" knew he cared. I let out the breath I'd been holding. The whole mental health disclosure moment was handled with respect, compassion, and understanding. I had to go back and watch it again.
In all the years that I've been old enough to watch comedy TV for a "grown up" audience, I'm not sure I've ever seen a comedy show handle mental illness in this way. I mean, we're probably all familiar with shows like Monk and that infamous episode of Friends in which mental health is treated as a joke. The disclosure of the mental illness or mentioning of the symptom has been, more often than not, treated as the opening of some unkind or awkward joke made at the person's expense or by the actual person in an attempt to be self-deprecating to beat the other person to the punch.
Call Me Kat could have followed in the same footsteps, but the creators and the writers deliberately chose not to do that. They deliberately chose to make that one scene in the show in a way that was compassionate and understanding and filled with kindness without losing any of the fun and humor throughout the rest of the episode. They chose not to make the joke because, I like to think, the way people think about mental illness is slowly changing. I also think that, if more comedy shows stopped using mental illness as the awkward punchline and started handling it with more openness and compassion like this episode did, it would go a long way toward ending the mental health stigma.
I'll end with this: For as long as I can remember, the entertainment industry has used mental illness as a joke in comedy movies and shows. Every time someone brings up mental illness in a show or movie, I find myself bracing for the joke, and I'm always still disappointed when the writers go on to make the "easy" joke. It was honestly a breath of fresh air and SUCH a relief when Call Me Kat chose instead to bring up the topic of mental illness and then treat it with the kindness, compassion, and understanding that it deserves. If more shows and movies took the same approach as Call Me Kat, I think it would be a step in the right direction to help end the mental health stigma.
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