Pierce's character is well written, so well that it resembles some people who are actually suffering from some kind of mental illness, people i know. No, i'ts nothing like "A Beautiful Mind", in which the character had these hallucinations, and other episodes not related to reality at all. On the contrary, Pierce's manifestations are connected to reality, to his perception of reality. So this show is about the quite interesting relation reality-perception, not even about madness. And that is one of the most interesting subject of psychological and philosophical history. I've never seen a show like this, entirely from a so called "crazy" person's perspective. And, i insist, his own, unique form of perception. It reminds me of English idealism, a philosophical theory about the way we access reality and more important,how can we determine what reality is.