I've been thinking about the Prodigy's reaction to finding out his father was secretly drugging him for years. The son immediately distances him from his father, uncompromisingly, because obviously the end doesn't justify the means. But this kinda left me in a split, because although I respect his vision, the secret drugging was the one thing that made is life possible, like, at all.
He was plagued by hazy thoughts and lack of clarity, to the point of being almost catatonic. Moreover, after the clinical trial ends and the supply of drugs stops, he reverts back to his old self. He gets to the point where he's willing to do anything to get the drug, even criminal behavior is justified.
Now how does this compare to the behavior of The Father? The man obviously had the wrong intentions, he only wanted to use his son to further the research on The Theory of Everything. He secretly put an experimental drug, which may have severe side-effects, in his child's food, and continued to do this for several years. Now, all of this is obviously wrong, but the results were stunning. The result of this immoral behavior is that The Prodigy could have a normal life.
I wanted to compare this to S03E03 of Lie to Me, in which a wife secretly puts antidepressants in her husband's food, to help him with the stress he's had working for NASA. One of the results was that he lost conciousness during a flight, and wrecked a plane, but she also asks him "be honest, how have you been feeling?" and he admits "better". They don't have a fight about it, because he admits that it was, in a way, justified to secretly drug him in order to make his life better.
If we compare this to The Prodigy's reaction to his father's confession, we pretty much have both ends of the spectrum. Does the end justify the means? In the case of The Prodigy, I'd honestly say it does, and I also think his reaction to his father could've taken the outcome of the situation into account. And that's even taking into account that The Father had no interest in actually helping his child, and was just using him to get closer to The Theory. Well, I guess The Father would've done best by letting his son in on the secret, in hindsight anyways.
This also makes me think of S04E03 of House, in which Dr. Foreman makes a choice to irradiate a patient without permission of the hospital's Dean of Medicine. He ends up saving the woman's life, and then is promptly fired because it wasn't his place to make the decision. The Dean says he "confused saving her life with doing the right thing".
I guess there are a lot of takes on whether the end justifies the means. And I also think everyone has their own take on this, so maybe the Prodigy cutting ties with his father isn't even that much of a stress.
My story has unravelled a bit, and I guess this was what I was going for, but I'm out of thoughts, so I guess this is it. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!