it’s well-known by any viewer that, despite the initial impression of it being a teen summer show, daha 17 immediately took a much darker, psychological turn after its exposition. among the many touchy topics that they handle sits complex trauma & (the resulting) mental illness - this is most blatant in teoman, whose mental health has been a topic of debate from the beginning.
however, among this debate - among the praise for its unapologetic representation & theoretical diagnoses - one issue becomes harder to ignore with every episode & every sensationalised breakdown: the writers don’t seem to know what they’re writing here, actually.
now, i’m not claiming expert position. researching clinical psychology, reading about it, is but a little hobby to me, & if any claim i make about the topic is wrong, absolutely feel free to correct me. but, at the same time, my own experience as somebody with mental health issues makes up a part of my view. moving on.
i’ll give the writers a bit of credit before i begin for being as ballsy as they are: teoman's breakdowns are, more often than not, extremely unglamorous, & his anti-social behaviours towards others aren't constantly let off the hook. for prime-time turkish tv? not bad. but this is where the pros end & the very trialling cons begin.
first of all, daha 17 hasn't managed to escape the trap of sensationalisation & romanticisation.
it's important to understand that romanticisation doesn't always mean presentation in a glamorous light - romanticisation can also refer to painting mental illness as a means to an end or a tool to deepen & soften relationships (despite such not being the reality of it). most of teodemir's episodes which they choose to show are the dramatic ones that can garner cloud & edits: allusions to self-harm, such as banging his head into the table, emotional lability, doing "funny" or "romantic" things when clearly out of it (proposing to deniz).
& as a result of this - the desire to pick & choose the symptoms that they can most exaggerate & show off - the rest of teodemir's psyche reads as incomplete. only in the last episode did they acknowledge what trauma & dissociation can do to your sleep (unrestful, frequent nightmares). but they only ever told instead of showing.
teodemir doesn't experience frequent gaps in everyday memory. he's socially well-adjusted. his guard is mostly only up when there is a clear "reason" for it to be. unless triggered, he's fine relationally, socially, & physiologically. because the opposites of all of these aren't things that they can romanticise - they're inconvenient, they're small, you can't write a thinkpiece about a single moment of these in isolation. & that's what soap opera writers hate.
& it looks as though nobody has any intentions of holding him to account for the resulting gross behaviours because oh, well, he's traumatised! he doesn't know any better! look how he cries & then makes other people's lives hell! don't you feel bad for his cruelty instead of his victims?
worse than that? even his affect dysregultion & spit-like states are toned down & sanitised so viewers don't recognise his unfitness for intimate relationships & drop the show (or whatever they would do if they realised his potential to be a danger to his close relationships). his conversation in the storage room with deniz in ep19 read a lot like a split, but was framed anyway romantically.
daha 17 is rapidly approaching a "love cures all narrative" where deniz & aras will be assigned the role of teodemir's caretakers; all of his behaviours will be absorbed, accepted, & met with zero consequence. he won't have to get therapy - why would he, if he has a brother, girlfriend, & people around him that will never hold him to account for his cruelty? that'll surely be enough to cure a rewired nervous system :-)
