One Day at a Time’s depression episode is required viewing for people with mental illnesses
By Drew Koenig
One Day at a Time delved deep into depression and anxiety in an episode that so many should watch.
In recent years, we’ve experienced a surge of television shows interacting with topics of mental illness in interesting or compelling ways. This has come in a lot of forms, such as Bojack Horseman, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and You’re the Worst, but it’s also important to remember that these representations can’t stop. These stories always need to be told because, quite frankly, these are matters of life and death for some people.
This is a vital thing that the second episode of One Day at a Time‘s second season reminds us. These stories can’t stop, not ever, because they never do. Depression and anxiety aren’t conditions that will one day be cured or go out of fashion in some way. A large contingent of the population is always going to suffer from these, and other related ones, likely forever.
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That’s certainly the larger point of “Hello, Penelope.” Mental illness isn’t something that can be outrun; you can’t will yourself to being okay and that in itself is okay.
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The best thing that this episode demonstrates in a blunt, yet honest way that rarely gets shown on television is the way that your brain lies and tricks you when you’re having a depression or anxiety episode. They start as thoughts that feel natural, little seeds in your brain that say that you didn’t do something well enough.
You feel the way that your own behavior is changing, more harsh and mean than normal, and that sends you deeper along the path. Likewise, in this episode, you see the way that Penelope (Justina Machado) thinks that she is fine, that therapy and medication have run their course and she can finally not have to deal with them anymore.
This is, of course, fallacy that many with mental illnesses experience. It’s simply another way that your brain can’t truly be trusted if you suffer from something like this. What happens next is predictable, because so many of us have seen it firsthand, probably: she starts to unravel.
It’s not all at once because it never is. It’s small, like doubting how well you did with a presentation or feeling bad for a joke. Depressives often try to take that frustration and the unease and funnel it into something. In “Hello, Penelope,” it presents as a need to run a mile-and-a-half home. It doesn’t help, because of course it doesn’t and when someone, Schneider (Todd Grinnell), confronts her about it, she lashes out in the way that would hurt the most. Again, going deeper along the path.
Next is becoming insular and isolated and tired, insisting on sleeping because she feels fatigued. She blows off plans and lashes out further at anyone that tries to help.
Ultimately, you can only help yourself. You have to be the one to recognize the signs and want to fix yourself. With that in mind, Penelope records herself talking to herself and plays it back to herself and Schneider. She understands then, after hearing the frightening and jarring things that she said earlier, that similar to the way that Schneider can never, not once, have alcohol or drugs, she too can’t ever go off her meds, because what she has is something she’ll always have and she needs to deal with that.
That’s what makes the episode so essential for people suffering with this. You have to act responsibly with what’s wrong with you and to accept that part of you and not feel shame for it.
On the flip side, this episode also lays out how to be if you have someone in your life that suffers from mental illness. Whether it’s Penelope’s mother, Lydia (Rita Moreno), who doesn’t understand depression, anxiety or psychology in general, simply being there to help as Penelope tries to fix herself; Schneider, who is understanding, empathetic, and just willing to be kind and listen; or Max (Ed Quinn), who just makes it clear that she’s accepted by a loved one.
These are all essential attributes for people with someone like this in their lives and it’s a beautiful depiction of that.
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In the end, having depression and anxiety is just one stage of a much larger battle; accepting that you are this way and will always have to live with it is another, much more difficult one, but one that many people struggle and not everyone gets past.
Hopefully the very existence of this episode will allow someone to recognize these signs for the future and avoid it for their own sake, making this even more important than it already was.