You should probably watch this episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia — “The Gang Reignites the Rivalry” — particularly for its choice Good Will Hunting references. Charlie “pulls a Good Will Hunting” on some guys at a frat party they are crashing. At this frat party they have had their bodies painted by hot girls.
Listen to part of what you can look forward to.
I wanna be a shepherd. I wanna move up to Nashua, get a nice little spread, get some sheep and tend to them. — Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting
… I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. — Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye
While Will’s response to Sean’s “what do you wanna do?” question is laced with bullshit, I always thought there was real sentiment in the ache for simplicity his statement suggests. “I wanna be a shepherd.” It always reminded me of Holden Caulfield.
Years ago, on an emotionally complicated evening, I found myself full of longing for the sort fantasy space Will and Holden speak of.
I wrote to a friend, in an email:
… [A]fter going on a nice long walk down to the Store 24 in JP at 3 in the morning to get a coke, in the strangely warm, windy, rainy evening… there I was, sitting on my balcony at 4am…. It was a very Catcher in the Rye feeling evening, with the walking, wandering, feeling of isolation, and as I looked down at the street the wind was blowing everyone’s discarded Christmas trees (as it was trash day the next morning) around, some rolling into the street, and I thought of how nice it would be to just save the Christmas trees and keep rolling them back into the sidewalk, staying up all night and directing traffic around the trees, just like the Catcher in the Rye would catch those [kids].
I’ll never forget the response I received:
If I were home, I would give you my biggest hugs, and we would probably fall off your balcony and then someone like Holden would have to catch us….
Last weekend I gathered with friends for some holiday-time viewing that included Die Hard (yeah, it’s a Christmas movie), A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Office Christmas Special (BBC, duh), and the Chrismukkah episode of The O.C. I bring it up because this holiday O.C. is also the episode where Marissa attends her first therapy session (and befriends in the waiting area an obsessive sociopath, so, that’s not great for her)
We were struck by Marissa’s vehement opposition to seeing a therapist. It recalls Will Hunting’s persistent refusal — he mocks one alternative-y, hypnosis-y therapist, ”Look into my eyes. I don’t need therapy.”
Marissa is allowed to move in with her cheery and lovable father (and out from under the roof of her shrewish mother), but her part of the deal is she has to go to therapy — because she overdosed in Tijuana, the latest in a series of drug/alcohol abuses. Will is allowed to stay out of prison (and do math), but his part of the deal is that he has to go to therapy — because he beat the crap out of a guy who picked on him in kindergarten, the latest in a series of violent encounters.
It seems weird, kind of… why such refusal? It’s odd to realize how strong the stigma is for many, though if Tony Soprano can go to therapy, so can Marissa. (Though I suppose Tony didn’t go extremely willingly either.) Is it sexist/classist to assert that it makes more sense for Will to react this way than Marissa? Ryan is a very Will-like character, and his encouragement is what gets her to go — as if the out-of-control woman needs to be in therapy but the out-of-control men do not.
That two such different characters should react in this same way, against their best interests, speaks to the varied perception of the value of therapy and the necessity for a dramatic protagonist to be (unrealistically?) resistant to positive change. It is only an ultimatum that gets them to that session, and to the next turn in their stories.
