Are you watching the new Fox series, Mental, starring Chris Vance's indeterminate accent and Annabelle Sciorra's cleavage? It's like House, but with a hunky heartthrob instead of an abrasive curmudgeon. If you're watching, you probably caught last night's episode in which a kid is deprived of videogames, and therefore invents one in his head.

But the problem is that the videogame he invents in his head sucks. It's presented in the show as an interface-less third-person action/adventure created by people who wouldn't know a videogame from an animated action sequence. So the kid ends up freaking out, hurting his mother with a knife, and then going catatonic. I know how he feels. I've played some bad videogames in my time, too. The kid's hands keep twitching as if he were playing a videogame. With a console controller, of course. "Elective mutism," Mental's supporting cast declares. "Early onset bipolar. Severe ADHD."

The situation is resolved when the sensitive physician with a lot of time on his hands guides his misunderstood patient through how to play the imaginary videogame. He suggests a backpack in which to keep stuff! What videogame doesn't have an inventory?

So during the climactic sequence in which the kid wanders through a perilous steel mill in the real world, he uses the motorcycle to evade the hyenas, the jet ski to evade the crocodiles, the jet pack to evade the crows, and the, uh, laser gun thingie to beat the final boss (pictured). All of these things were presumably in the backpack. Once he's beat the game in his head, he reconciles with his neglectful father and starts on his medication.

No word on whether he's allowed to play videogames anymore, but Mental implies that he can become a game developer.