In the next few episodes of The Bright Sessions, we continue to follow therapist, Dr. Bright, and her sessions with both new and returning patients. Episode 2 centered around high school footballer player, Caleb, and his ability to feel others’ emotions. As he rants to Dr. Bright, as listeners we learn that there is a boy in his English class named Caleb, and all his other classes. who feels sadder emotions. This in turn suppresses Caleb’s own emotions and he begins to have trouble balancing all the different emotions. On top of this, when the Caleb sees some bullies harrassing Adam, he makes the comment “leave him alone the dude’s sad enough as it is,” claiming he made things worse for Adam. After listening closely to the podcast, I realized that you can tell a lot about how someone is feeling through their intonation or the tone in which they talk with. From the moment Caleb started talking to Dr. Bright, you could immediately tell that he was hesitant and upset about something. You could also tell that there was a sense of comfort between the two, allowing us as listeners to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t their first time meeting, and that the two had been in a routine by now. I think it is an interesting narrative choice that as a listener, we do not learn about the patient’s actual power until about halfway through the podcast. This leaves us pondering and making guesses as to what it may be, and the conversation doesn’t give too much away.
I also listened to episode 4, skipping episode 3 because episode 4 is the second session of the girl featured in episode 1. It was interesting to listen to this one because I feel as though by the end, her problem was close to being solved, leaving me wondering what they could talk about in the upcoming sessions. The thing that stood out the most to me in this podcast where at the end, when Dr. Bright finishes by leaving herself a little memo about important details of the “case”, she mentions “… the things that could be possible” with the girl’s time traveling powers and that it reminded her of a mysterious character “Mark”. I think it was interesting that we, as listeners, have not been introduced to a “Mark” character and it may be because they are trying to foreshadow something in the near future.
Comparing both episodes, I think the first one was very surface level, understanding the patient and the learning how the podcast works but with this episode, the suspense and “on edge” elements are more present, maybe because of the amount of sessions there had been for this patient previously. While this is the case, I think a common theme that runs through the podcasts I listened to thus far is that all these kids seem to come to Dr. Bright with the intention of getting rid of their power. They have all had bad experiences with their power and will do anything to get rid of it.
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