I just saw a commercial for it on TV. I guess we'll see soon enough. Place your bets...
i felt cold, watching that.with the tought that could be our future.
even if it a very slim chance as some say.
I felt so angry watching that.
Shawn, the guy who can heal people, "healed" an autistic boy.
i dont have cable but i was wondering was this the epiode with actor cameron bright?
No, the episode with Cameron Bright was 4.01:
"Wrath of Graham ". The concerning episode is the next one:
"Fear Itself".
Excerpt from the summary:
(At the Powell’s apartment Ryan is trying to get them to leave and Ryan tells his wife about giving their son the shot. She freaks out and Ryan explains he thought maybe the shot would help him somehow.
When Tom and Diana arrive at the Powell’s, Ryan informs them his wife and son are already gone. He explains what it’s like living without Brandon being able to respond to him. He tells them his wife didn’t say where they were going and accepts the blame for injecting Brandon with the promicin. He defends he wasn’t trying to kill him, only help him.
...
They take Brandon to NTAC medical and give him the inhibitor, and decide to have Shawn try and cure Brandon’s autism. Shawn is cautiously optimistic, stating his luck with developmental diseases in the past hasn’t been so well.)
The reason this episode might have a double meaning:
-Father injects autistic son with promicin to try to "cure" him
-Son doesn't become any less autistic under the influence of promicin, but DOES develop the ability to bring the worst phobias of the people around him to life
-This causes mayhem, for obvious reasons
-Shawn does *something* to the boy to stop this; it's unclear whether he does anything to "cure" or even affect the
autism - as he says, his attempts to do anything about developmental "diseases" haven't worked very well.
I don't recall NTAC giving the boy the inhibitor.
-After the "treatment": the boy's phobia-evoking abilities stop. He does say his father's name when he'd previously been nonverbal, but that in itself isn't proof of an autism cure.
One could also interpret this episode as saying:
1) Autism would be difficult, maybe impossible, to cure.
2) The parents' attempt to cure it not only didn't work, it made things worse in entirely new ways for the boy and everyone around him.
Who knows if the writers meant any kind of double message - probably not - but it's interesting to look at the story from another viewpoint.
Especially if you remember that the whole show is about a minority who are "different", who have abilities and problems other people don't have, who are feared and persecuted and targeted for cure or elimination....
I think the episode "Wake Up Call" (opening double of seaon 2) is much better at depicting neurodiversity.
Summer Glau in the role of Tess Doerner, an Aspie/paranoid schizophrenic (as her character in The 4400 is not entirely Aspie), who develops a friendship with a HFA patient in a mental hospital (played by Jeff Combs). Combs' character is a scientist who lost his verbal ability several years before the episode, and in the episode at hand, a contraption is built from all bits and pieces of scrap lead by Tess. (Tess, a 4400, posesses the ability to convince anyone in her vicinity to do what she wants). The pulse was eventually emitted but ignored by NTAC because it did not leave the atmosphere, but returns verbal ability to Jeff's character.
That's intresting about Summer, she also played an Aspie on Firefly/Serenity. I don't understand the 4400 at all though.
That's intresting about Summer, she also played an Aspie on Firefly/Serenity. I don't understand the 4400 at all though.
Summer DID NOT play an Aspie on Firefly/Serenity. River was the way she was because she was experimented on, did you not see the episode where Simon says 'they cut my sister's brain open'. She was brain washed and lomotised.
Just because a character acts weird in a show does not mean they have AS, some people actually thought Erik per Sullivan had AS because 'Dewie was acting weird in some early episodes of Malcolm in the Middle'
^True. I don't remember a great deal about "Firefly" and haven't ever gotten the chance to see the movie, but IIRC River was left over from a program trying to create super-soldiers, or something like that.
Did anyone here see the "4400" episode a couple of weeks ago where Shawn used his ability to cure Tess of schizophrenia as well? Meh. Seems like clumsy, overly convienient storywriting to me.
Q: How many 4400s does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None - we'll just throw Shawn at it and get him to "heal" it.
)