Dean's Mesosystem and Ecology Map in Bad Boys
One of the many mesosystems I could identify in a TV show was in the Supernatural episode Bad Boys. In the episode “Bad Boys,” Dean received a call from an old friend, Sonny, who helped him out during a tough time when he was a teenager. Sonny calls Dean looking for someone to help with his current situation when one of his workers at the boys’ home was mysteriously murdered by a piece of machinery that has not worked in years. When Dean returns to the place he stayed at and called his home for a few months, he begins to remember his time there and how he got there in the first place when he was picked up for shoplifting a loaf of bread and peanut butter at the market. A mesosystemic interaction in this episode would be when Dean is at the boys’ home about to go to prom when his dad shows up to pick him up. This is a mesosystemic interaction because the microsystems of Dean’s family and the people he knows at the boys’ home are colliding. The interaction of this mesosystem impacted Dean by realizing that he could not live the kind of life he was living at the boys’ home and escape the abuse he was going through because he did not want to subject his brother to it. Another mesosystemic interaction in this episode would be the interaction between the officer bringing Dean to the boys’ home and Sonny. This interaction would be considered a mesosystemic interaction because the microsystem is colliding with the microsystem of the boys’ home along with Dean’s own familial microsystem when the officer mentions to Sonny that Dean’s dad said that he could rot when explaining that his son was picked up for shoplifting. This mesosystemic interaction impacted Dean because it allowed him to realize that his father did not care for him unless he was useful to him, but other people did care for him by not wanting him to be put in the system.
