I'd never watched the show until last night. My brother called me yesterday afternoon to let me know about it and to post an alert here on JWN about it. During our conversation I said that I hoped the kid died, so that viewers would understand how serious the blood issue is. Well, hoping a fictional kid dies to prove a point was easy for me. But I burst into tears when the character did die near the end of the show.
The writers did a good job for the most part. Some of the parents' lingo was a little off, and the hateful HLC wasn't portrayed. But the friend saying he didn't even know the kid was a jw and the intern's questions about the relevance of a 19-year old's beliefs really hit home for me. A perfect portayal of the blood issue in movies or television should also include the fact that a patient of any age would be df'd and shunned for accepting a blood transfusion. The fact that the choice to deny bllod is always done under duress.