Here’s a link to this week’s Media Mix, which is about the Fuji TV drama “Freeter, Ie wo Kau” (A Freeter Buys a House). For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a “freeter” is a “free arbeiter,” meaning a part-time worker who goes from one job to another. The show is more or less a domestic soap opera, but I mainly talk about what the story says about the income gap. I don’t really go into the quality of the drama itself, which is, like most serial dramas, not very good. My main complaint is the character of the mother, played by Atsuko Asano. She’s supposed to be suffering from depression, but she acts more like a borderline schizophrenic: paranoid, delusional. It makes a difference because one of the premises of the story is that she was driven into depression by neighbors who have bullied her; meaning, she could be “cured” by a change in environment. What she really seems to need is a bit of institutionalization.