 So I was finally able to sit down this weekend and binge watch Ozark season three. And by far my favorite character was Ben, which was played by Tom Pelfrey. And in this video, I wanted to break down his character as well as the mental illness that he struggled with. And if you haven't watched Ozark season three yet, there is going to be a little bit of a spoiler. Well, quite a few spoilers, if I'm being honest. So go check out season three and come back. Or if you don't care and want to learn about mental illness, helping someone with mental illness, stick around because we're going to dive into it. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. And something I haven't done for a while, but I love doing, is taking different characters and situations from TV shows that depict mental illness. And I like to break it down and dive deeper into it. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. All right? And yeah, I can't believe it took me so long to watch Ozark season three with all the craziness happening in the world. I just kept forgetting, kept forgetting. But yeah, my beautiful girlfriend, Tristan and I, we sat down and we binge watched all season three this weekend. This is probably my favorite season so far. It was so dang good. But yeah, my girlfriend hasn't even seen season one or season two. So as we were watching, I was just kind of catching her up to speed with the characters and the storylines. And everything like that. But yeah, we're gonna be breaking down Ben, what happened to him and everything like that. So the first thing I wanna say, the first thing I wanna say, anybody else who saw season three, like that picture, that picture in the beginning that set him off, like obviously now we know that he has bipolar disorder and everything like that. But I was hoping at some point they would say what that picture was. But we never find out and that kind of bumps me out. Anyways, yeah, eventually we find out that Ben has bipolar disorder because he stops taking his meds. This is actually quite common for people with mental illnesses to do for a variety of reasons. So in Ben's specific situation, he was struggling with a very common side effect for men when it comes to mental health medications, which is erectile dysfunction. All right, and yeah, it is like I was telling my girlfriend yesterday, like the mental health medication pharmaceutical industry, like if they could figure out some things like ED, weight gain, like these side effects, like more people might be taking their damn meds, all right? But anyways, Ben decides to stop taking his meds because when he tries to sleep with Ruth for the first time, he can't do his thing, all right? So anyways, his sister, Wendy, she realizes that he's off his meds and she knows how dangerous that can be. One thing that I found interesting about Ben's character is usually when they depict bipolar disorder and they show mania, like they show the kind of grandiose thinking and the kind of just being very hyperactive and just like go, go, go. It's almost like someone's on a drug like cocaine or meth. But with Ben's character, they show the aggression, right? They don't often show that. Like my beautiful girlfriend, Twisted Eye, we've been watching Shameless and they do a great job of bipolar disorder in that as well, but it's more of just like the typical mania you see. So I enjoyed how they showed like the aggression part because Ben is just constantly getting into fights and everything like that. So the first thing I want to talk about is Wendy sits down with Ruth and explains to her that Ben has bipolar disorder and that it is a sickness and he needs to get back on his meds and she's trying to encourage Ruth to encourage Ben to get back on his meds and Ruth doesn't understand. She doesn't fully understand, right? You can tell that she's like trying to understand at first and I thought, you know, it was gonna go well. I thought she was going to like try to get Ben back on his medications and everything like that, but she really didn't. She started to see some of the signs that Ben was, you know, acting a little differently, acting a little bit strange, but the signs are very subtle, especially like if you're just meeting somebody. But the first thing I want to talk about, this is why I do the videos that I do. They're not just, you know, they're not only to help people who struggle with their mental health, but it's also to educate people and increase awareness. Like I always try to encourage people, like even if I'm doing a video on a mental illness that you don't personally have, I try to learn about it, right? Because we never know who we're going to come in contact with. And I think that was one of the biggest pitfalls of what happened with Ben's ultimate demise is that Ruth didn't understand his mental illness. She didn't understand how bad it could get. She didn't understand what somebody with bipolar disorder off their medications might do. Even after it started to progress and the symptoms started to get worse. So if you have somebody in your life who struggles with a mental illness, I don't care what it is, anxiety, depression, trauma, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, whatever it is, try to educate yourself. Like I'm a big nerd and I read a bunch of books, but just read some articles about it. You know what I mean? Just like browse through. There's plenty of YouTube videos out there. A lot of people share their experience with various mental illnesses, right? Like I come from the realm of addiction. I've been cleaning this over for over seven and a half years and I worked in a treatment center for three years and something I always tried to do was educate the family members. Like when we did like Family Day, I would try to educate them about the disease of addiction, what to expect, how to help, how to support them, how to set boundaries, and all these other things. Because a lot of people just don't know. You know what I mean? So anyways, as we go on, and Ben starts acting more erratic, he starts making some mistakes, about to blow up their whole spot and everything like that. And he ends up getting in that fight in Kansas City. He gets committed, right? Like Helen, you know, they get the sheriff to like get him into a mental hospital, right? And he doesn't wanna go. Like Wendy, it's breaking her heart and she hears Ben crying saying he doesn't wanna go back. And she keeps saying he'll die in there. And listen, it's difficult. It's difficult to go in and get help. There's a lot that goes into it. One of them is when you're not in the right state of mind, like it's hard to see that this is something that's gonna help you, right? This is not a punishment. It's not a bad thing. It's not a terrible thing. You know, it doesn't mean that you're weak or anything like that. Mental illness is just like any other sickness, you know? And basically what they were trying to do is just get him back in there and get him balanced on his meds. Well, in this specific situation, a lot of kept him in there a little bit longer so he didn't like, you know, reveal the whole drug cartel and money laundering thing. But yeah, they were trying to get him in there. But anyways, when Ruth goes and visits him, this is something that's extremely common, so, so common and it's guilting a loved one. When I was working at the rehab, I saw this happen all the time. And again, this is why you need to be educated about mental illness. And when somebody goes to treatment, like they will manipulate you and they will guilt you into getting out, right? And that's what Ben did, you know, intentionally or not because obviously Ben was struggling with his mental illness. He convinces Ruth to get him out of there. And this might be an unpopular opinion. I talked to some other people who watched this season. But at the end of the day, Ben's death, like I blame it on Ruth. Like I think Ruth is the main reason why Ben didn't survive the rest of the season, right? Like she refused to learn about his mental illness. She refused to understand the severity of it and what would happen. Even when she, you know, she finds out that he went over to Helen's house and like grabs a gun and is like, we gotta go. And she's seeing him kind of like spinning out, right? Like she still doesn't understand and part of it might be denial, right? So one thing that I think, and I don't know if the writers of the show really thought about this, but down in the South, it's not as common to get help for your mental illness. This is a part of, you know, it's part of culture to, you know, be a man to handle your own thing, right? You don't need help. All it is is like strength and you know, there's like this whole like manliness vibe. And this is something about like male culture in general, but I wonder if that played anywhere into it, right? Where it's like, oh no, he can handle this on his own. That's something that Ruth was thinking. So yeah, like he gets out and that's, you know, that set off the series of events that ended up getting Ben killed. And yeah, I feel bad for Wendy. Wendy kind of sucked this season and I might do some more character breakdowns. She kind of sucked this season, but you know, she was dealt a really difficult situation. Like as you saw, as much as she was trying to protect Ben, his mental illness was not letting him think straight. It was not letting him make the right decisions, you know? And he kept doing things that was putting him in danger. And you know, I feel that Wendy knew that it was just going to keep happening. And I think that was her way of controlling the situation. Almost like Mice of Men with Lenny, you know what I mean? So last thing I want to talk about. So I worked at an addiction treatment center. We specialize in dual diagnosis treatment. So people had an addiction as well as a mental health issue. But my girlfriend Tristan, she actually worked at a psych hospital in California. Okay? And something I asked her was like, why didn't they just Medicaid him? Why couldn't they just get him on his meds? Cause I'm curious, like I don't know how that process works. Like when people come into treatment, you know, typically they come in at the detox level and I can't remember a situation where somebody came into treatment and didn't want to take their medications. I can't remember one single situation. Now there were plenty of people where after a week or two they wanted to stop taking their medications but not like when they first got there. So I was asking Tristan, I'm like, so why couldn't they just like Medicaid him when he got there? And then she started explaining, I'm like, oh, that, that makes sense because somebody who goes in there, they can deny their medications. Like, so she shared some of her experience working at the hospital with me. So they'd come in there and they wouldn't want to take their medications. Almost like Ben, like the side effects or they don't feel like themselves or they feel like they're a zombie or whatever it is, right? So they don't want to take them and they can't just force you to take your medications. So just real quick, this is purely her experience from California. It's gonna vary from state to state but in order for someone to be forced to take their medications, they have to be doing a few things to be forced to take their medications in the state of California. So they have to first be refusing their medications then it might be that they're not going to the groups, they're not going to their sessions with their psychologist or their psychiatrist. Another one could be like they're acting out, right? Like if Ben was in there longer, just for example, and he was being violent, he was starting fights and everything like that, then they could force him to take his medications if he was acting out and being violent. But if it was ongoing and he was in there and refusing to take his medications and not participating in the actual treatment process, they can get an order, right? Especially if it's a state facility, they can get an order to hold him down and basically give him his medications, all right? And this is just to educate people out there. Like I said, I love learning about this stuff. I wanna know what people go through and everything like that. But one more thing, state hospitals, like they're usually not the greatest. Like I wish they would have been able to get him into like a private facility. Those are typically a lot better, especially like in the addiction treatment realm, like going to a state-funded facility sucks, all right? Like private places are a lot better and usually that's if you have insurance or money or whatever it is. And obviously, the birds, they have a ton of money but the sheriff and everything, like they ended up sending him to like a state-funded facility and usually those are lower tier, right? And that can give off that vibe that all these places are terrible and everything. Like you heard Ruth tell, I can't remember if it was Wyatt, like oh, it's a bunch of crazy people and everything like that, like listen, listen. Like one thing that people do is they're like, oh, all these people are crazy, but he's fine, right? And Ruth definitely should have seen the signs. But anyways, video is a little bit longer than I expected. If you want me to do some more character breakdowns of this season, there's a bunch of other topics I could dive into, but just wanna see if you guys enjoy this video or watched season three of Ozark at all. If you haven't watched it yet and you somehow managed to make it through this video, make sure you go check it out. It's a fantastic show. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at therewiredsoul.com and getting merch from the merch store. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.