Jesus God, I never thought I'd wake up this upset. I didn't even want to write anything today, with so much salt in the wound.

I've been looking forward to the 2-hour season premiere of House for weeks now: in which the crusty, heartless, brilliant, Vicodin-hooked doctor lands in a mental hospital for detox and psychic realignment.

Well, we all knew it'd be weird. We knew it'd be extreme. We knew Hugh Laurie's new prison-issue hair cut would be stark.

But who'd-of known they'd use a set more antiquated than the bleak walls of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which took place some time in the 50s ? Who'd-of known there would be wire reinforcing the glass window panes, catatonic patients sitting in corners, guys gesticulating and yelling, losers in baggy sweats, and the kind of general unhinged hubbub I haven't seen since the awful Gothic horror The Snake Pit from the 1930s?

Welcome to the wonderful public perception of mental illness. Yes, welcome indeed, for to the vast majority of people it's the only perception they'll ever have. Completely unquestioned, not even examined but carried around subconsciously, it's guaranteed to provoke a few powerful reactions: (a) raw terror, (b) pity, (c) contempt, and (d), total dismissal.

These people (ah, "these" people - lovely, isn't it?) have supposedly been written off as so defective they can't even live outside bare-walled, howling, inhuman institutions. I like to think mental hospitals haven't looked like this in 40 years, but how do I know? I'm Canadian, and God knows what the system is like in the States, especially for people who have  no money and no support of any kind. Are they warehoused in rotting old buildings, drugged and unplugged, do they indeed shuffle around in a useless doped-up haze? Is there really a padded cell (padded cell?!) for naughty boys like House when he acts up?

I didn't watch this episode in its entirety - I kept saying "stay with it, stay with it, stay with it, it's gonna get better" - until at about the half-hour mark, I felt such nausea and anger that I shut the damn thing off and watched Hoarders instead. At least these particular mental patients are allowed to make independent decisions, no matter how dysfunctional.

See, I'm one of "these" people, technically anyway, and my brother was definitely one, with his schizophrenic delusions and inability to make a living. I don't remember clanging doors and bare walls and screams, though I do recall some disorientation and odd behaviour. The ward looked exactly like any other hospital ward (depressing, paint-peeling, glum). The staff  tried, they really did, though a few of them were sanctimonious, judgemental bastards (more than one of which told me to "go home and behave myself").

As one who swung in and out of this system infrequently at intervals, with maybe five brief hospitalizations in almost twenty years, I'm more seasoned than most. I know what goes on, at least in my country. It's dull. It's not very dramatic. The object ISN'T to drug the patient up to the gills to render him/her docile and easy to manage. We DON'T stump around stiff-legged like Frankenstein or set fires or cut people's throats.

No, the people who do that - and there are people who do that, just read the papers - are still walking around, to all appearances technically sane.

House, I ain't gonna watch you any more, compellingly bugging blue eyes or not. I've always had mixed feelings about you and only started watching you because my best girl friend loved you. It was somebody's idea to present the mentally ill in the most appallingly stigmatized way possible: a bunch of losers who probably deserve their fate. I really don't care if this turns out to be only one of House's famous hallucinations, like Wilson's dead girl friend Amber trailing him around like a succubus.

Somebody was responsible for this. Somebody cackled over this, slapped their knee, said, "I've got it."  Some goddamn writer, reaching down inside his/her psyche for the worst, most damning and hurtful stereotypes possible. Or maybe someone interested in a very tasty, very cheap ratings grab. Hey, let's put the brilliant doctor in the cuckoo bin, the nut ward, the funny farm, the (you get the idea, there are millions of names for it, all horrible and hurtful and never once questioned) and see how he outsmarts them all. Could it get more degrading than this, a far worse punishment  than prison? Could it get more extreme:  a virtual guarantee of viewer schadenfreude? "Oh man, that's awesome, he's in the nut ward!"

All of this only feeds the public's gross misperception, based on. . . well, I already told you: raw terror, contempt, pity, and total dismissal. Let "the system" take care of "these" people: we don't want to see them, and let's face it, if they really tried they could pull themselves together. They're a drain on the system and don't contribute anything to the economy.

Never mind the goddamn lilies of the field. Get them out of my sight.