On the subject of Wheelchairs

Perhaps one of the most annoying plot devices that comes up in bad sitcoms and most teen drama shows is the “You Think You Have It So Tough” story. In this story one of the central character’s quirks or disabilities – usually something like blindness or being in a wheelchair – is “simulated” by the other lead characters, who end the experience with a renewed respect for the disabled character and a deeper understanding of the adversity that said character has endured.

The first season of ABC’s Fox’s Glee is going to have a story like this. I know this because I’m an extra in that particular episode. A bunch of the characters wind up being told by a teacher that they have to spend the whole day in wheelchairs to get a better understanding of just how rough the one character who is actually in a wheelchair has it. One of the scenes we filmed involved one of the able-bodied characters rolling down the corridor in his loaner wheelchair for the first time, getting his head pushed, prodded, poked, whacked, wholloped and banged by the various other students who were apparently totally oblivious to the fact that the fucking High School Linebacker (or whoever) is now in a fucking wheelchair.

Those sort of stories bug me for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s been done to death. It’s the sort of story that writes itself because the writer has invariably already seen it done somewhere else. That isn’t what makes it lazy writing, though. What makes it lazy writing is that it never deviates from the established formula. Nothing changes. Nobody has ever done anything interesting with the concept. I can’t think of a writer other than Joss Whedon who might decide, for example, to have a Horrible Accident occur during the One In A Wheelchair that actually leaves one of the other principle characters permanently in a wheelchair for some reason.

Secondly, the characters don’t learn anything. At all. As in the comic above, they can get out of their chairs at the end of the day. Wheely McWheelerson, the Only Disabled Kid In School, can’t.

I forget how I was going to end this rant, so I’m going to stop typing now.