As noted in my previous articles on the CBS TV mystery-drama series Eleventh Hour (here and here), the show consistently presents interesting, intelligent, and fair-minded discussions of science issues in a dramatic (if often farfetched) context. In addition, the show doesn’t portray business as the catch-all villain, giving a much more balanced range of motives and miscreants.
Last night’s episode, "Medea," ended the program’s first season on a high note in terms of the ideas and attitudes it expressed. FBI science consultant Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell) investigates the case of a woman who appears to be suffering from delusions caused by schizophrenia.
Naturally, given that this is a drama, there’s a good deal more to the story than that. The woman (Melissa Sagemiller) has had an affair with a very powerful married man who wants to keep it secret. She claims to have had a baby recently, fathered by him, but he denies it, and at his instigation she is institutionalized and put on an anti-schizophrenia drug regimen.
Two interesting angles arise. One is that the powerful man tried to talk her into having an abortion, but she refused. In the course of the drama we see a powerful depiction of the natural bond between a mother and her child, and the show refuses to make any obeisance to feminist notions that if men don’t show strong attachment to the children they father, women shouldn’t either.
On the contrary, the episode makes a strong case for individual self-sacrifice for other people’s good, regardless of whether others are willing to fulfill their obligations. That certainly accords with religiously based moral codes and Christian teachings in particular.
The second laudable aspect of the story is the fact that the villain is, as in some other episodes of the series, a government employee, and in fact a very powerful one. This person uses his power in government corruptly, employing it to personal ends in trying to keep his extramarital affair from being revealed.
This vivid depiction of the powerful temptation for people to abuse government power is a welcome cautionary tale noting, as many wise thinkers have pointed out over the years, that a government powerful enough to do you much good is a government powerful enough to do you much evil. And as this episode points out, governments, being run by human beings, naturally manifest all the sins to which the flesh is heir.
—S. T. Karnick