1.23 - Roland

Three years before Good Will Hunting would make janitors doing complex math problems even more famous, this cold open does it, and less successfully. Here we have bad acting, bad dialog, and no memorable visuals. It’s also over five minutes long and contains some unintentional comedy, but that might just be me. We see a scientist fly by an observation window, sucked into an off-screen death — not sure what it is with seeing characters fly by and/or off screen that makes me giggle so much.

Director David Nutter punched the writer in the face then pissed on him on day one of filming. Okay, not literally, but metaphorically yeah.

“Probably the weakest script from start to finish that I got,” is what Nutter said. I can guarantee that at least felt like getting punched and pissed on to writer Chris Ruppenthal, who didn’t have a great run on the show, penning only two episodes before moving on.

This episode is noteworthy for one reason alone: Zeljko Ivanek as the eponymous Roland. His performance carries the entire premise so expertly the more ridiculous aspects can be kind of ignored.

Obviously this episode has major problems with objectifying the mentally disabled and making it seem as if they need to be “fixed.” There’s a long history of using the mentally disabled as a plot point rather than people, and the “Rain Man” trope is a big one. A character who is mentally disabled (and not everyone considers autism a disability, I’m commenting on the trope, not the diagnosis) is also a genius or savant, the implication being: see, this person may not be “normal” but they’re still useful! It’s gross and unsettling for a lot of reasons.

I think David Nutter came out of the gate a little hardcore on the script, at least on the storyline front. It’s definitely not great, I’d say it’s just okay. Ivanek’s performance is so good it stops the episode from being altogether bad.