Supernormal
1951. A young psychiatrist comes to an asylum in rural Georgia to learn hypnosis from his idol but gets a lot more than he bargained for - doctors who trust religion over medicine, institutionalized racism and sexism, cannibals, witch doctors, children in cages, peeping toms, and Flannery O’Connor. While the show’s a medical procedural with a new case each week, there's a focus on longer arcs. Think Grey’s Anatomy meets Deadwood.
Growing up in Georgia, one phrase could send fear into your heart: "I'll send you to Milledgeville." The word "Milledgeville" referred not to the town but its mental asylum, which has a long history of both medical triumphs and abusive treatment of its patients. I've been fascinated by the asylum for years and always wanted to write about it. While this is a fictional amalgamation of many institutions I studied in my research, not a direct depiction of Milledgeville, the spirit of the piece is firmly rooted in the place I was born.
I don't believe in the phrase "Southern Gothic," because to me, Flannery O'Connor's work is psychological realism. The characters in her stories are the people I grew up around, and this show is a way for me to share them.
“There is a relationship between the body and the mind. Yes. But you can’t remove part of one and expect the other to become whole again.”