Order and Disorder: Rational Acumen and Emotional Incompetence in the Television Detective Story

‘Order and Disorder’ examines the relationship between emotional disorders and the exquisite rationality of contemporary televisions detectives as portrayed in such series as Monk (USA), House (Fox), and Cracker (ITV). Television heroes who combine both emotionality and rationality would seem a more integrated form of human characterization. However, the permitted configuration of emotion and reason is highly constrained. Theirs is an ongoing struggle between thinking and feeling, in which rationality is their gift and emotionality, depicted as illness, is the constant curse that both threatens and enables their gift. These characters’ conflicts become a barometer for contemporary attitudes about emotional disorders, which continue the common Western motif that intellectual or creative genius must suffer simultaneously from emotional madness. Such characters raise important questions. How, precisely, is mental illness able to aid and abet powers of rationality? In what ways can one be brilliant but ‘emotionally incompetent’? What are the mechanisms by which emotional disorder can exist simultaneous to but without disruption of consummate rational professionalism? Using textual analysis, this chapter explores how such questions are addressed and managed in these television series.