The Wirey Psychaitrist Mendel Weisenbachfeld and Why He's Not As Awful As You Think: A Novel
Hi I'm squipipip and I'm here to explain to you why Mendel isn't as bad of a psychiatrist as everyone thinks.
And I'm not saying he's great, either.
He does some things well, and some thing horribly. That's what makes him interesting.
So first off: let's explore Act One.
When we first see Mendel outside of the opening number, he's helping Marvin with some self discovery and relationship issues. Marvin doesn't understand his and Whizzer's relationship, and he's unsure of it and of himself. In part one of "Marvin at The Psychaiatrist" Mendel asks him sort-of scaffolding yes-or-no questions that explore his relationship with Whizzer. These types of questions are easy to understand and to answer, and help to organize thoughts and events to make things less chaotic. This is actually a really good way to help people figure out complicated things in their lives that they don't understand so Good Job Mendel
Yeah we all know everything he does in Part Two of Marvin at The Psychiatrist us just really bad and inconsiderate of him and I'm aware of that. That just makes him terribly unorthodox, which does make him a not-really-that-good psychaiatrist, but it doesn't reflect on his capability of helping people.
In "Jason's Therapy", though some of the stuff he says seems like some weird Zen junk that doesn't make any sense, if you think about it a little, it starts to make sense. "If you count, it's alright, you can figure out the world, you can add and subtract at will, you can cover up the past, you can kill the pain very easily" is actually some solid advice. He's telling Jason to look at his life, and count up the good things, separate the good and the bad. He's telling him to emphasize the good, which is something a lot of neurotic people tend to not do, they more often emphasize the bad. Mendel is doing something similar to what he did with Marvin, attempting to help Jason out things into perspective. Putting Jason in the mindset to look at his life in third person. Once he does that, he can "add" the good and "divide" the bad and "subtract" what doesn't matter, which will help him again, to emphasize the good and look at life with more optimism.
Now, let's have a looksie at Act Two:
In "A Day In Falsettoland" Mendel and Trina sing together their mantra for pretty much all of Act Two. "Everything will be alright." Which, is actually a good coping skill, especially for people like Trina who are often very disoriented and scattered, and sometimes just complete wrecks. It's a healthy compulsive behavior. Something one can repeat until they calm down and eventually believe that everything will be alright. So here, Mendel is helping to give her a coping skill. (side note for this song: yes, he ended that lady's session once she asked something sensitive or serious, that's one of Mendel's many flaws as a psychiatrist, he's "frightened of questions"- but that's why I didn't say he was good, I just don't think he's awful)
In "Everyone Hates His Parents" Mendel connects with Jason and forms a deeper bond between them, all the while comforting him and making him not feel guilty for the things he's feeling (the anger towards his parents). Although this song is very comedic, he's helping Jason to not feel like he's alone and telling him that this is something many people deal with, even biblical figures from back in biblical times. He is letting Jason know he understands him. Also, he tells him "This too shall pass" which is some solid advice, he is letting Jason know that this fighting and this back and forth nonsense isn't going to last forever.
In "Cancelling The Bar Mitzvah", Mendel says some serious truths about life and it's one of those moments I don't really need to get into, just listen to the song if you don't remember it's pretty straightforward.
If you have any love and support for Mendel and his career, please make sure you add it we all love Mendel Weisenbachfeld.
Mendel is a horribly unorthodox and wirey, neurotic psychiatrist who is very very flawed, but nonetheless, can still help people in his life with his skills and gets better at this over the course of the show.
Flawed characters are good characters
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