Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleLatte
What he actually said was "I'm gonna go punish myself, if that's ok."
I hate myself for even thinking about it, but you may have a point. What disturbs me about Wilt is his eagerness to punish himself and convince himself that he deserves it. Like in "Crime after Crime", he was actually agreeing with Mr. Harriman's punishment of going early to bed without dinner and then trying to make it worse on himself by proceeding to stand in a corner like a preschooler. Skipping dinner and feeling hungry for it probably doesn't qualify as inflicting harm on oneself, but it's a start. I remember my Human Development teacher talking to us about an abused child he had taken in who did not eat or drink anything until he had done his homework. That was how this kid received his punishment from his severely disturbed mom. I'm not 100% convinced that Wilt's origins were abusive and cruel, but that attitude and personality of his could definitely raise a couple of shrinks' eyebrows. Who knows what else Wilt would be willing to do to right whatever "wrong" he did. He certainly has an easy time giving himself misery.
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One of the theories I've had(and it's not the only one, mind you, so it's far from being etched in stone)is that Wilt's willingness to help others even at the cost of his own comfort, safety and well-being, as well as his chronic apologizing, and his apparent low self-worth, might stem from him actually having done something horrible in his past, or at least something HE thinks is horrible. His behavior might be a form of atonement, the Wilt equivalent of Earl Hickey's List, and Wilt's way of avoiding "bad Karma". Like Earl, Wilt might have been injured(Earl got hit by a car and wound up in the hospital, fortunately with no long-term disabilities)as a result of something bad he did, perhaps to survive after being abandoned, so he figured out that if you do something bad, something bad happens to you, so if you only do GOOD things, good things happen to you. Unlike Earl, though, Wilt is not forthcoming with the events of his past, but keeps them buried, and they're starting to really fester their way to the surface, like a splinter. As a result, we are seeing a gradual, but noticeable, deterioration in his emotional state, which makes him feel that bad things are STILL happening to him, and that therefore he must not be doing enough good to stop them, and that causes even more anxiety.
I do believe that Wilt's line(spoken to Mac)in "I Only Have Surprise for You", in which he berates Mac for not talking about his problems, but taking them out on a little Imaginary Friend("Artie"), was a deliberate and ironic allusion to his own emotional/mental state, a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black!
pitbulllady