#joni degroot

[live-fast-pet-frogs]

The Good Lawyer: a surprisingly positive experience

So if you remember my last post about ABC’s backdoor pilot “The Good Lawyer”, which is also the 16th episode on season 6 of “The Good Doctor”, you know I was very skeptical about the representation of someone with OCD, especially with the wording they used in the early synopsis of the episode.  I thought I would share my thoughts again AFTER I watched the actual episode, and let me tell you I think it was a lot better than I originally thought. Just in case it wasn’t obvious I have OCD, and have had OCD since I was 2 years old, and I have been in treatment for it since 2020 and am scheduled to come off my meds soon as my compulsions have become essentially non-existent and my intrusive thoughts are quite manageable with only occasional meltdowns (so basically nothing I can’t handle). I am also a film student about to get my masters degree this autumn so this review I’m writing will hopefully come from an informed place, but since I am not a medical professional there might be some misinformation. Feel free to correct me if I got something wrong about OCD, I am basing this off mine and my friends’ experience who are/were also struggling.  1. The myth around OCD=tidy gets debunked really early on in the episode where Shaun tells Lea about hiring Joni as his lawyer for his malpractice trial.

Shaun explains to Lea that people with OCD are not, in fact just neat and tidy, but they suffer from intrusive thoughts and manage them by carrying out compulsions. I was happy this got addressed, even though it is kind of the bare minimum.  2. Joni’s OCD.

Joni exhibits typical compulsions for OCD which emphasize her obsession with the number 3, and tapping different objects three times. We find out that she developed OCD after she lost her father at a young age, and later on it became her coping mechanism as her mother struggled with alcoholism.

Not only do we see her compulsions, as an audience we also get to “get into her state of mind” when she experiences the intrusive thoughts.

When Joni gets intrusive thoughts, the space around her seem to get distorted and narrow, loses colour and the camera pans closer and closer to her face, emphasizing the panic, anxiety and loss of focus. I find this super relatable as I really tune out the rest of the world when I get my thoughts and I can even stop midway through conversation, losing my train of thought (which happens to Joni during trial as the plaintiff’s lawyer’s chair squeaks as he leans back on it). 

Joni also experiences a fair share of health anxiety, which is actually how she gets introduced in the episode, worrying about whether she can develop cancer from the material of her wooden workdesk.

She even goes as far as covering bits of her furniture in plastic and taking her “outside” clothes off in a bag the moment she gets home.

While the health anxiety I find relatable (because I totally don’t ask my bf whether I got a TBi every time I hit my head even to a small degree), I am not sure about the plastic bits. It seems a bit excessive to me, and I don’t see the point behind the plastic “doorways” in the house. If we get a proper show out of this I hope it gets explained what Joni’s health anxiety is triggered by because at this point it just seems like something to be added to “haha person with OCD is a neat freak”. 

Another thing I also was unsure about, is the way the intrusive thoughts went in Joni’s brain.

“Fix this or bad things will happen.” 

What bad things? Not to be a hater, but since my OCD doesn’t allow me to say certain trigger words out loud, “or bad things will happen” is the really toned-down version I give to my friends. With OCD, the bad things can be anything. In Joni’s case, since we saw her doing compulsions in the flashback scene in hopes that it will stop her mother from dying, it might be related to the health of her loved ones. Maybe if they varied, like “Fix this or mom will die”, or “Fix this or my client will go to prison”, “Fix this or my sister will get into an accident” it would have been a lot better. 

3. The people around Joni

So from this episode we gather there are two significant people in Joni’s life: her mentor and her sister. 

Her sister is also her carer in a way, but it also seems like she is enabling her and indulging her in her compulsions. This is very realistic that when your loved one has OCD it seems easier for you to accomodate their needs by giving reassurance or even creating an environment for them where they can carry out their compulsions. This is the wrong approach, and again, if the show gets green-lit I hope it gets explored. No blame on people supporting their loved ones with OCD but it is important to get the word out that this behaviour is damaging and can stall the problem or even make it worse on the long run. The best help a person with OCD can get is therapy, meds or both. 

Joni’s sister also seems to believe the current situation is better for Joni, since she doesn’t need to “hide her rituals”, to which Joni quickly reminds her that she isn’t happy this way, because her coworkers and boss treat her as an embarassment and hide her from the public eye, in a small closet-sized “office” where she can do “research” and not interact with others so nobody can see the state she’s in.

Joni’s mentor, Janet is what you would expect: a stone-cold career woman who absolutely cannot tolerate mistakes. (at least on the surface). The only reason she hasn’t fired Joni yet is because the latter threatened to sue the law firm for firing a disabled employee in a discriminatory way. Janet regularly belittles Joni, calls her out for her public rituals or meltdowns over intrusive thoughts.

However, she is also protectice of Joni and believes in her ability to be a good lawyer. Idk, I am not sold on Janet yet, she seems very much like a J.K. Simmons from “Whiplash” kind of mentor who bullies her protegees only to then take credit when they manage to thrive.  We also find out the reason why Joni became a lawyer is because Janet was assigned to one of the court cases on whether Joni and her sister would get taken away from their mom and go into foster care.

So yeah. I am curious to see their dynamic in the future.

4. OCD being a superpower

My biggest fear was that after reading the synopsis where they referred to Joni’s OCD as a “superpower”, we would get her to have scenes like Shaun, where he just randomly comes up with solutions because he is autistic. I cannot emphasize more that autism and OCD are two completely different conditions that may have similar symptoms but are VASTLY different. OCD is a mental illness, autism isn’t. OCD is treatable, autism isn’t because it is not an illness. 

but this also gets debunked quite quickly, Joni is simply a smart and detail-oriented person, who works well despite her diagnosis, not because of it. She explains to Park that her brain, unlike most people’s is very focused on details, which can be true for an individual who has struggled with OCD since childhood. It might be why I’m good at finding clues and solve every escape room and riddle, I don’t even know. 

But it seems like it was just the synopsis of the episode written by an absolute knob, and the actual portrayal of the character isn’t “OCD Ex Machina”.

Overall, I actually liked this episode and really hope it gets a show because the main character is quite interesting, is played by an actress with OCD (Kennedy McMann who also campaigned for the character’s illness to not be portrayed as a superpower) and I am actually curious to learn more about her and the people around her. There is potential and I do think people with OCD could and would enjoy it.

[seriesluticons]

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[mari--lace]

I don't know if I would have loved it anyway or being in the Daredevil fandom changed my brain (well, it most certainly did), but I really loved "The Good Lawyer"!

For now it's just one episode inserted in The Good Doctor's s6, but I hope they do make it into a whole new series. It was a pretty interesting trial, imo, and I'd love to see Jony deal with more trials.

She's a young woman with OCD, which makes her really good at noticing small details (for one thing) but also poses big challenges to being in a court and talking to a jury without getting distracted.

[pluckysidekick]

Hello, Drewds! It’s been a while since Nancy Drew filming wrapped. Am I the only one who couldn’t have imagined being almost two full weeks into January and still not knowing when Season 4 of Nancy Drew was premiering? Me either.

In the meantime, some happenings:

The big headline is of course Kennedy McMann is starring in ABC’s massively popular ‘Good Doctor’ series’ spinoff The Good Lawyer as a young lawyer, Joni DeGroot, with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - which Kennedy herself suffers from - opposite Felicity Huffman.

In the backdoor pilot airing March 13, we meet the “brilliant, funny and self-aware” young lawyer living with OCD, whose “attention to detail allows her to see cases through a different lens.” Sound familiar? Here’s to hoping Joni likes checked blazers and patterned scarves. If only her law firm also had a quirky tech guy…Congrats, Kennedy!

Speaking of Kennedy, she along with the writers and Riley came on Twitter to commiserate in solidarity with us on the lack of a premiere date, and to confirm that those fake episode titles (e.g. “The Whispers of the Grim” 😂) were bogus.

We also got SEASON 4 EMOJIS, her favorite scenes (in Ep. 3 and 13 after some clarification), and assurance that we will cry hard at the end of the finale.

Besides Cupid’s arrow (hopefully NACE and not some alternate love interests we have to suffer through), looking forward to the Hardy Family Hannukah Dinner, Game Night! (see below), camping out in that cool Airstream, road trip (PLEASE LET IT BE NANCY AND ACE), BABY (Carson and Jean’s perhaps?), curse breaking via a spell book Bess finds perhaps, and FIRE (oh no). Also Nancy’s gonna give some more blood, but we knew that already. I wonder if Ace is the latest blood donor….

Speaking of Game Night, here’s a little seen BTS photo from DP Nick Thomas I never posted from back in late September - Game Night is ON at Icarus Hall, and probably in the same episode with the earth shattering Nace photo Kennedy posted the same week. Does anyone recognize what game they’re going to be playing?

Next, the hit horror film M3GAN with the creepy life sized American Girl doll killer helped the CW pay the bills with a cross promo with ND that gave us a tiny bit of S4 footage.

We got to see Bess performing some kind of ritual? on Nancy with a weird contraption (mask? Ghost goggle type lens?) and Nancy vomiting black ick. They’re doing this in the in the Drew house, which is strange since Nancy seems to have moved into Icarus Hall. Ace’s voiceover where he questions Nancy’s eating habits has been debated to death of whether he’s actually in the scene or if it’s audio from the Tom Swift episode (inconclusive).

Based on Nancy and Nick’s (who’s behind Bess) wardrobe, and Kennedy’s mention of filming an episode with a ‘Burning Bride’ comedy vibe back in an early August podcast, I believe this scene is from Episode 2, and related to the cause of whatever humorous curse is going on in that episode. Anyway, Ew. But still nice to see actual S4 footage.

We also saw some of our actors on much deserved vacations, with Maddison and Leah both enjoying tropical vacations with their bfs (in Mexico and Costa Rica respectively).

This will probably be my last marathon post for a while. I do still owe a breakdown of Riley’s post from the last day of filming in the Claw set with baby shower props (!). Also, I finally reached 100+ notes with a short post of just fantastic cast BTS photos.

I’ve been hard at work on Part 2 of No One Mourns the Wicked, my Secret Sleuth fic with a Season 1 AU where the crew put on a summer stock production of Wicked. It’s almost done and it’s a doozy. I will probably split it into multiple parts to make it easier to consume, as it sort of turned into a multi-chapter extravaganza. Whoops. Speaking of which, I’ll be jumping right back into The Space Between (S4 spec fic) as soon as I’m done - there’s still a lot of insanity planned for the crew post curse breaking. They still have a mystery to solve…

Thanks for sticking with me, waiting impatiently for the S4 premier date along with everyone else. Bye for now!

[pluckysidekick]

New promo photos for The Good Lawyer, Kennedy’s backdoor pilot in the March 13 episode of The Good Doctor!

The locket!!!!

The daughter of Carson Drew, Esq!! I know, I know, she’s Joni DeGroot.

I’m so looking forward to this, especially as we wait 3 more months for the S4 premiere…

Photos by @jeffweddell via the goodlawyerlovers