I feel like OCD is an accessory illness in pop culture. It’s tacked on to characters to augment their plight but then removed for the majority of the story. You see individual scenes/eps depicting symptoms & then they just vanish. It’s frustrating. Example from @euphoriaHBO: 1/5

Rue in @euphoriaHBO is diagnosed with OCD as a young girl in one of the first scenes of the show, and then it’s never explored again...ever. It gets a brief mention in the finale but we don’t see it impact Rue even once. She shows no symptoms. And no treatment is mentioned. 2/5

I think this kind of token mention actually does more harm than good re: chronic illness. OCD isn’t a 2 day or 2 hour thing. It’s a lifetime thing. Just tacking it on like an ornament to Rue’s character does nothing to serve the story & invalidates everyone in our community. 3/5

I feel like The Aviator does a good job of depicting how these things shape a life. And that last scene in the Michael J Fox episode of Scrubs hits on the unseen weight of it. But I can’t think of a full time television character being written well when it comes to OCD. 4/5

Anyway. If a character has an illness, it should actually exist in the story. It should serve the story. Rue’s doesn’t. 5/5