Law and Order

After I woke up on Monday morning and discovered we had a snow day (!!!) I could not fall back asleep.  I stumbled into the living room and turned on the TV.  Floored by the tough decision to choose between Dora the Explorer, The 700 Club or Law and Order: Criminal Intent, I automatically turned to the legal drama and relaxed as I became intrigued in the show's dramatic plot.  The episode tells the story of a man who graduated at the top of his class from Brown Medical School, but performs illegal surgeries on mentally ill patients.  An opthamologist who believes mental illness is caused by physical aspects, such as eyes, conducts inhumane treatments on his patients.  However, he himself suffers with schizophrenia, but his denial that his genius brain could betray him in such a way leads to his awful and illegal needle-through-eye treatments.  He also uses his patient's illnesses to his advantage, as he knows that their label as insane will prevent their family and friends from believing their complaints of inhumane treatments from their doctor.  Thankfully, detectives Goren and Earnes arrest the law breaker, but after the episode ended, I thought about it's similarities to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  Bromden lives in the mid-20th century when treatments for the insane were obviously inhumane and society treated the mentally ill in an ignorant and repulsed manner.  In this episode of Law and Order, the victimized patients are also treated like children when they complain, and the ill doctor seems blinded due to his own illness.  Overall, after I watched this dramatic episode, I could not wait to continue reading Kesey's novel.