Israel’s hit show from 2020 finally hits ChaiFlicks, featuring an outstanding Roy Nik as a young columnist battling mental illness. Courtesy of ChaiFlicks.The depiction of mental illness onscreen is just…so peculiar. Truly. Now, I’ve never been to a psychiatric ward, so I have no idea if what we’ve seen onscreen is accurate or not, but I think we can all agree that mental illness is a mixture of quirky, funny moments and deeply dramatic ones. I’ve seen a lot of documentaries about it, a lot of movies where characters do and say outlandish things because their brains just can’t comprehend what they’re doing. Sometimes it’s oddly humorous, but then at the snap of your fingers, that comedy disappears out of nowhere. Something VERY intense can emerge, something that throws you for a huge whirl and forces you to understand, “No. Mental illness is extremely serious.” It’s an ILLNESS, after all! If you’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), you may know what I’m talking about; a movie that’s both funny and utterly heartbreaking.
For a while, it felt weirdly difficult to portray mental illness onscreen in a way that wasn’t insulting or unintentionally demeaning. It always felt like if a character suffered from some kind of mental illness in a movie or show, they were the “clown” of the program, the quirky, comic relief whose illness was simply a funny distraction. Then there are shows like American Horror Story: Asylum (2012-2013) where everyone in the hospital is either violent, depraved, or a psychotic murderer.
NORMAL (2020), on the other hand, throws every previous depiction of mental illness on its head. This eight-part miniseries, now streaming on ChaiFlicks, delicately avoids the common routine of treating mental illness like comic relief and shows every capricious side of it. As we see on the show, you can’t ever predict what someone with mental illness will say or do. No matter how hard you try to protect them from comical or dangerous outbursts, there’s just no say in what will happen. Long story short, mental illness is extremely annoying.
First released in 2020 in Israel and created by Leore Dayan (the son of In Treatment creator Assi Dayan) and Asaf Korman, Israel’s latest to its always-growing, outstanding work of television finally premiered on the “Jewish Netflix” last year. The show is a tough watch simply because every character is so battered emotionally that you just want to reach through the screen, sit them down, and tell them that everything will be alright. Personally, I was floored by every episode of NORMAL. EVERY episode. What I appreciated was the uncompromising nature of the story. As a viewer, I expected the screenplay to go a romantic route or end with a little bit of promise for its lead character. It doesn’t and it shouldn’t because living a life with mental illness isn’t predictable like that. People may argue that NORMAL just becomes more and more depressing by the end and ponder what the point of it all is. A part of me agrees, but I also believe that the point of the show is not to feel depressed. The point is to question yourself what you believe the best future for its lead character is. In my opinion, the best kind of shows have some ambiguity.
The lead of NORMAL is Noam Ashkenazi, played outstandingly by actor Roy Nik. He’s a 25-year-old, scrawny-looking, hard-working newspaper columnist who loves to talk people’s ears off. In episode one, we see Noam vigorously writing his column at night in an empty office. He has writer’s block, so he gets Ritalin from his dealer, snorts a bunch of pills, and then the writing comes out like magic. He then snorts another pill. And another. And another…
Things become progressively worse. It’s not long for Noam to become completely paranoid that the guard at the office is spying on him because of something he previously wrote. He then marches over to the home of his ex-girlfriend, Hila, with a fire extinguisher in hand, enters the apartment, and sprays her and her new boyfriend. He goes back to his office, hides under his desk, and tearfully calls his father as colleagues enter that early morning.
In comes Udi (Rami Heuberger), a loving but – as we see later – very difficult father. There is a very tender moment where Noam’s father finds him under the desk and warns everyone in the office not to look at him or judge him while he leaves the premises. Convinced, and it’s very obvious by this point, that his son is suffering from paranoid psychosis, Udi sends him to a psych ward.
When we get to the ward, the thing that Dayan and Korman (who directed all eight episodes too) do is force us to stop differentiating ill people from being “normal” or “crazy.” Besides, what does being “crazy” actually mean? In this ward, no one is chasing anyone with a weapon or anything. Some patients look quiet. Some love to talk even faster than Noam. There is Heli, for example, who jokingly convinces Noam that she is a staff member and removes his shoelaces for his own safety. Karin (Shiraz Lanciano) is another quirky character, a rebel who sneaks pizza into the ward at night. (A romantic interest to Noam, there’s a funny sequence of events where she tries to make him aroused in a shower.) Does any of this really seem like “crazy” behavior? Exactly. Everyone, just like Noam, is sick, but they are human beings too. There isn’t a single character in NORMAL who doesn’t have some speck of humanity and kindness deep in their souls.
Without giving spoilers, I’ll say that throughout the show, Noam slowly begins to wonder whether he feels better situated in the ward after all. At first, he hates being there, but as we soon see, Noam’s life in the “real world” is a complete mess, fraught with two incredibly flawed parents who can think of no one but themselves.
“I’m not normal enough to be outside,” he says in one episode, questioning whether he is healthy enough to continue living with his mental illness without a hospital for a home.
As Noam, Nik gives a heartbreaking performance that will stay with you for a while. I am amazed at how some actors can just instantly cry on command. He does just that. There is a scene early in the show where Noam calls his father, pleading for and crying to him to pick him up, promising he will “get clean” at home. His inner child comes out, and it’s simply gut-wrenching to watch.
NORMAL is addictive, fast-paced, and perfectly planned with its number of episodes, a show that doesn’t require multiple seasons. At times, it is very funny. At times, it is simply super frustrating to watch Noam continue to mess up his life as his doctors try to improve his health. However, whether you suffer from mental illness or not, this series will undoubtedly move you. The actions committed by the characters are meant to annoy you because that’s what mental illness is like. There is no one to blame but the brain. Everyone, regardless of their mental health, is human at the end of the day.
NORMAL is now available to stream on ChaiFlicks.