AV CLUB: Why Syfy’s superhero series Alphas is TV’s best show about mental illness
by Todd VanDerWerff
October 22, 2012
TV has always had trouble tackling mental illness as a topic. The idea of doing a series about depressed, manic-depressive, or schizophrenic characters is daunting: Where is there room for the semi-standard weekly moments of uplift? HBO’s In Treatment took viewers through several weeks of intensive psychotherapy with a variety of patients, but it never delved too deeply into actual mental illness; instead, it focused more on people with debilitating problems in their past that could be overcome with diligent talk therapy and lots of focus. (To its credit, the show never suggested these people could be “cured” in a matter of weeks, but it did speed along the process leading to their breakthroughs.) The Sopranos and Homeland revolve around protagonists with mental-health issues, but this is a color around the edges of the show, an element that informs the other stories going on at any given time.
TV’s best current show at tackling the topic of mental illness (and many other issues as well) is a science-fiction series that seems, at first, to have nothing to do with the subject. Syfy’s Alphas, ending its second season on Monday, October 22, appears to be the most successful superhero show in many years, though it never calls its characters superheroes, or involves them in typical comic-book stories. For the most part, it’s a superhero procedural, in which the central “team” of Alphas use their powers—everything from super-senses to the ability to read the electronic waves floating all around us—to track down villains who are using their own abilities to evil ends. The show’s second season ties this all together into an overarching narrative about the team’s battle with the seemingly immortal Stanton Parish, who wishes to wipe non-Alphas from the Earth. Which may sound a little like an X-Men plot, because it is.
Yet Alphas contains a surprising emotional resonance for a series that seemingly aims to be just another Syfy case-of-the-week show. Alphas is good at bread-and-butter sorts of things, with teammate banter and action sequences that are a cut above other Syfy shows. Yet the show is capable of moments of superb feeling and beauty, and it’s always striving to do much more than simply tell superhero tales in a modern setting. After just a superficial look at the show, it becomes clear what it’s really about: a group of mental patients coming together to work through their issues in a group-therapy setting. (It’s no coincidence that the show’s ostensible protagonist and team leader, played by David Strathairn, is a psychologist...)
... Alphas hasn’t yet figured out how to escape the dilemma of all series whose leads have mental illnesses—namely the idea that such illnesses make the characters such super-bad-ass crime solvers that their powers become enviable. (For an execrable example of this, check out TNT’s Perception from earlier this year, about a crime-solving professor with schizophrenia.) This is, perhaps, the sort of thing the series will never escape, given that superpowers will always seem cool on their surface. Yet the series has committed so successfully to portraying how these powers line up with real-world mental illnesses that it mostly sidesteps this question. Yes, there are cool moments, and yes, there are moments when the guy who seems least likely to save the day does so, but there are also the dark hours of the soul, when all seems lost and nobody knows what to do. At its core, Alphas is a series about healing, but it also realizes that all healing is only temporary. These people can—and will—always be wounded again...
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE EPISODE TRAILER FOR ALPHAS' 'GOD'S EYE'
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