To Be Continued: Serial Narration, Chronic Disease, and Disability.

Abstract

This article explores the representation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease in the television series The Good Wife and The Michael J. Fox Show. We suggest that serial narration offers intriguing ways to rethink the function and meaning of narratives in health contexts, and that the episodic narrative form of television series may afford insights into the structure of medical encounters. Specifically, we examine to what extent serial narration, with its focus on continuity and repetition, might help reimagine the typical narrative of decline, which is implicit in the terminology of neurodegeneration, as well as the narrative of (premature) closure or finitude that often accompanies a diagnosis such as Parkinson's disease. With the dual perspective of a literature and film researcher and a medical practitioner specializing in neurology, we bring serial narration into conversation with the representation of chronic illness and disability on one hand and actual clinical encounters on the other.