Law and Order Hits Cruise

It's really bad when Law and Order starts using Tom Cruise's neurosis for characters in their episodes. Tonight's episode featured a rock star Derek Lord who encouraged fans to stop using their psychiatric medications. One female high school age fan Jamie Hoskins in particular stops using her bi-polar medications (she's on two) and she ends up accusing several male classmates of raping her. She runs over and kills a young girl and accuses her parent's of ruining her life-all while not taking her medications.
NFLUENCE - SEASON FINALE
10pm 2006-05-16 ALL NEW!

ARE PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS NECESSARY? - In SVU's season seven finale, former rock star Derek Lord (guest star Norman Reedus) goes on a national talk show and lectures about the abuse of psychiatric drugs. Meanwhile, an unstable young woman Jamie Hoskins (guest star Brittany Snow), who loses her virginity, goes off her prescribed medication, gets behind the wheel of a car, and mows down 10 people. As these events are played out in a highly charged way, the argument about prescribed "meds" is challenged. Mariska Hargitay, Chris Meloni, Tamara Tuni, B.D. Wong, Richard Belzer, Ice-T and Dianne Neal also star. TV-14 D

The episode the the young girl's trial comes to an end with the placement of the Tom Cruise like character being placed on the stand. This character then admits that he received treatment in a mental institution for depression and received shock treatment which helped him overcome suicidal behavior.

Tonight's show spent time debating the use of drugs, high amounts of treatment vs. smaller more helpful amounts of drugs. It confronted the fact that many people who seek help for their problems by using medications are made into social pariahs by their peers and penalized.

It also pointed out that the Norman Reedus (Tom Cruise) character had no college education-just like Tom Cruise-and that he had only 'read many books' on the subject of psychiatric treatment.

The obvious point of the show being that a celebrity with no medical education or training had no business advocating that fans give up medications and seek alternative treatments. I have to applaud NBC for going on a limb by putting this mock up of Tom Cruise into the the show for their Season Finale.

He just can't avoid the Matt Lauer/Brooke Shields debacle. If people are still talking about this in 10 years it will be an Exxon Valdez type disaster in the Entertainment PR world. Frankly, he deserves it for the irresponsible statements that he made.