Transcript for:
Exploring Autism Representation in The Good Doctor

a few years ago a therapist said I should watch The Good Doctor because it would make me feel better about me autism diagnosis That it would teach me that autistic people can do anything up to and including being a doctor She wasn't a very good therapist but then what did I expect from BetterHelp That's a therapy outfit short for Better Help can be found literally anywhere else I still took her advice though I watched The Good Doctor twice and how it made me feel may surprise you [Music] The Good Doctor is a 2017 American medical drama series based on a South Korean show Good Doctor which aired in 2013 It follows an artistic surgical resident and savant Sha Murphy in the US version and Bakshion in the original series The South Korean original ran for 20 episodes and we'll be talking about that later whereas the US version ran for seven seasons having only recently concluded It was quite a popular show with adaptions aired in Turkey Hong Kong Thailand and Japan which I did not watch Sorry Maybe you've seen the show Maybe you loved it or hated it Maybe you've never seen it but you've heard some of the criticism However I would wager that as a person online in 2025 you're at least passingly familiar with this scene I am a surgeon I am a surgeon Dr Hunt that scene was from an episode in season 2 But before I talk about that scene and what's happening there and the response to it I'd like to draw your attention to another episode episode 16 of season 5 titled The Sha Show In this episode Sha and Leah are participating in a reality show about atypical couples hoping to be an inspiration to others but mostly because the producers offer to pay for the wedding Very quickly however they realize that the showrunners are more interested in creating a spectacle out of Sha's autism I didn't expect you to make a highlight reel out of his most spectrumy moments I'm not manufacturing anything Both Leah and Sha are worried about how this will come across to a mainstream audience Will the general public respond negatively towards Sha Will his career as a surgeon be placed at risk if there is significant push back against his most spectrumy moments If people saw Sha having a meltdown how would they react I am I am a [Music] surgeon Dr I am a surgeon Dr Han I am a gin I am a surgeon I am I am a surgeon Maybe not great then But while that episode aired in 2019 it didn't become a meme until 2023 So what's going on here Let's turn to our trusted explain this meme websites to find out I am a surgeon Dr Ham also known as I am a surgeon refers to a scene from the ABC drama TV series The scene from season 2 of the ABC series is taking the likes of Tiptop and Twitter by storm An autistic surgeon and the show's protagonist loudly stating "I am a surgeon." over and over again while crying It shows our protagonist Dr Sha Murphy passionately shouting "I am to have at least one scene of the lead doctor absolutely losing his shit." Taken out of context the scene has become viral on TikTok Dr Murphy's outburst comes from an episode titled Breakdown in which he confronts his boss the hospital's chief of surgery Dr Jackson Dr Han is concerned that Murphy's social awkwardness might be a liability While Dr Han is under the impression that Dr Murphy's autism and lack of social awareness could jeopardize the difficult procedure due to Dr Han barring him from this urgent team Why he's being excluded from a tumor removal surgery to exclude him from a tumor removal surgery After going viral the scene underwent a series of increasingly surreal edits Also people are stunning Dr Ham Even the Washington Post are keen to explain The doctor's voice rises each time he repeats the sentence crescendoing into a scream by the eighth repetition I am a surgeon Shawn Murphy yells at his chief of surgery who had boxed him out of helping with a procedure Wow So wait Shawn gets excluded from a surgery by sexy Chad Dr Ham who thinks that he can't control his emotions And so Sha responds with an emotional outburst just shouting repeatedly at poor old handsome Dr Han that he is a surgeon That's a bit much isn't it Like no wonder we all hate this show Like in my opinion that's just not realistic Like your boss said you can't do a thing so you start screaming and crying How did he even make it through medical school like that Was he never told no before I'm sorry but that just does not make sense No wonder the internet reacted accordingly We don't have meltdowns out of nowhere just because someone told us no This paints autistic people as tantrumthrowing children Except wait let's let's go back Who the fuck is this Dr Sha Murphy character anyway What is the deal with this guy who some have called the most annoying lead character ever Some said the character of Murphy played by Freddy Hymore is depicted as an unfortunate assemblage of stereotypical behaviors rather than as a full human Others felt the protagonist fairly represents some autistic adults but offers no insight into the experiences of many others I fucking hate this show I can't even sit through it It's such an offensive off-putting stereotypical way of representing autism in a working environment and it feels like a godamn cash grab Over the course of its first six seasons The Good Doctor failed autistic people by depicting Sha as more of a hodgepodge of autistic stereotypes a cardboard cutout of what people believe an autistic person should look like as activist Lydia Brown put it in her Washington Post article than a fully realized character Dr Murphy often behaved in ways that didn't reflect who autistic people are and how we interact with the world In one particularly egregious example Shawn demonstrated a level of ignorance and transphobia towards a patient that the show seemed to chalk up to his autism Given that TMS and non-binary people are up to six times more likely to be autistic his response made no sense The writers in this show are absolute menaces to society Every time I've tried to sit down and watch the show I found myself cringing into oblivion because of how cliched and exaggerated the main characters Hollywood's obsession with portraying autistic people like this is disgusting The good doctor is obnoxious offensive BS See he's a non character Completely onedimensional This is one of the worst portrayals of autism I have ever seen Well shit that Yeah that's uh that's pretty bad Pretty black and white Kind of cut and dry What on earth am I going to talk about for over an hour now I'm autistic and honestly when I watched it I really liked it It was a bit exaggerated of course as any character in any show is but it was good for what it was I have absolutely no idea why people are hating on this show so much It's good A lot of the mannerisms Shawn have I experience especially his tone during social interactions It hurts so much to see people making fun of it in saying it's bad representation As an autistic person I really like Shawn I relate to Shawn a lot in how he communicates As an autistic person who actually works in the medical field I have to say it is relatable to me No it's not offensive to me I actually really like it I'm diagnosed autistic and I find this show to be relatable in many ways It's one of my comfort shows because Freddy's portrayal of autism makes me feel understood Sean reminds me a lot of myself and I have autism When I first watched it I fucking cried because I finally felt represented I haven't found it offensive I have ASD and can find Sha relatable even though our symptoms are different I can relate in his struggles to fit in Having to explain himself and people not getting him I'm female and I sound like Freddy Himmore My mom describes it as robotic with very little tone variation I really relate to the way Sha communicates how long it takes him to say things I can't organize my thoughts very well once I start talking and I think that was quite realistic I'm on the autism spectrum and I really like The Good Doctor because it feels good to be watching a television show where I can really identify with the main character Personally I find the meme offensive It's been all over my for you page I love the show It's one of my favorites and I can relate to a lot of situations that Shawn finds himself As a neurody divergent person I am just like Shawn I don't get why everyone is laughing at him I honestly love Shawn and relate to him in lots of ways How is it funny I actually like Sean regardless because even a nice young man who wants to help people Critics are just doing what they're complaining about the show doing They are making generalizations about all autistic people while complaining that the show makes generalizations about all autistic people Oh Um okay Something's not right Let's let's go back to the beginning Who even is he And what led to that meme I mean scene Born in a small town Sha was relentlessly abused by his father who never understood Sha's neurode divergence He beat him his brother Steve and their mother He denigrated and heranged Sha for his differences and made no secret that he was utterly ashamed of him even denouncing him as a son up until and including on his bloody deathbed Steviey's death wasn't my fault It was yours The wrong kid died Sha was bullied by other children horrifically They would play cruel pranks on him tease him and physically assault him The only comforts that Sha had in this world were his brother and his pet rabbit One day in a particularly nasty rage his father grabs hold of his rabbit And brace yourselves it's bad throws it against the wall My bunny went to heaven in front of my eyes Shawn brings his beloved pet to a doctor desperate to save it but it's too late Knowing that another meltdown might result in Sha being beaten again or worse Steve decides that they should run away Shawn and Steve then live for a while unhoused sheltering in an abandoned bus scamming people for food money His brother ensures that they survive while always affirming that Sha is worthy of love and respect It's at this time that Steve gives Sha a toy set of surgical equipment including a plastic scalpel Shawn had developed an interest in medicine and anatomy after being powerless to save his rabbit His brother made sure that Shawn knew that he was the smart one who could do anything One day Shawn and Steve join a group of other kids to go and explore an abandoned warehouse or railway yard or something This is a happy moment one of the rare instances in which Sha gets to play unbullied with the other kids But um yeah brace yourselves It's bad Steve slips off a train and hits his head dying instantly My brother went to heaven in front of my eyes So now Shawn has absolutely no one or nothing And he calls the only person he can think of the doctor who once tried to help his bunny Dr Glassman Now Glassman is going through some stuff himself at this point His teenage daughter just died But he helps Shawn and keeps an eye out for him while he's in foster care Shawn spends some years in the foster system moving around from one guardian to another A highly traumatic experience for any child let alone an autistic one All right so uh rough start then But with Dr Glassman's help Sha gets into and completes medical school In the first episode of the show he's on his way to start his surgical residency at the prestigious San Jose St Bonaventure Hospital of Good-looking Doctors where Dr Glassman is the president of the hospital not San Jose However not one to let a moment pass without trauma On the way to the hospital Shawn encounters a freak accident in which a young boy is seriously injured Shawn jumps into action saving the boy despite almost being shot by security He maggyver himself a one-way valve out of a whiskey bottle and goes with the boy and his mother to the hospital in an ambulance where despite knowing that he's a doctor who saved the boy's life the emergency responders are super skeptical when Sha insists that there is something wrong with the boy's heart because he's a bit weird At the hospital they refuse Sha entry fail to listen to his pleas to get the boy an echo cardiogram remove him by force and leave him out in the rain because he's a bit weird This leads to Shawn starting his medical career by having a meltdown outside the hospital He thought that being a doctor at a prestigious hospital would mean people at that hospital would listen to him about medical stuff but no not when you're a bit weird Meanwhile Dr The glassman is in front of the entire hospital board trying to convince them to hire Sha The board who know nothing about Sha are highly skeptical of hiring him on the account of his autism and nothing else Just that But don't worry Dr Glassman says because while he might be autistic he's high functioning but also thank God a savant There's a bit where the hospital bosses are questioning whether he could show empathy or not while he's literally outside crying because a patient might die So the board votes no No thank you to an autistic doctor because he's autistic Also a bit because he missed his interview But anyway before they could let Shawn know the footage of him saving the boy at the airport had gone viral It was on the news and everyone thought that he was a doctor already working at the hospital Oh no But also yay free PR So they give Shawn another chance to prove himself to them in an interview Shawn explains that he has wanted to be a surgeon ever since he lost his bunny and especially since he lost his brother Their lives were cut short and Sha wants to dedicate his life to ensuring that other people get to live full lives of their own and build loving families So they say yes and the adventure begins He is now a surgeon His career up until that infamous scene is peppered with ableism both from patients but mostly from colleagues in cases I would say they outright bully him I'm looking at you Morgan Do you respect me No not really You use your autism as a crutch So to speedrun the first two seasons Leah moves in next door and they become friends Shawn is in a shooting in a store for which he is blamed During an armed robbery Shawn stumbles in his responses to the gunman who in frustration with Sha fires his gun hitting a young woman Shawn gets little support and is made to feel guilty including by his mentor friend and father figure Dr Glassman Glassman in fact uses the incident as a reason why Sha is incapable of looking after himself and needs an aid despite Sha's adamants that he would in fact hate that Glassman goes ahead and gets him an aid anyway and this leads to him running away on a road trip with Leah on which he falls in love with her after which she tells him she's leaving forever So she fucks off breaking his arm only to later come back out of nowhere after her plans failed expecting him to be her sole emotional support for some reason In the meantime Shawn had made a new friend Kenny who had turned out to be using Shawn taking advantage of his kind nature while excluding him from his actual friend group Boo we hate this guy Shawn and Leah move in together as friends so that they can have a bigger apartment And Shawn watches as the woman he loves dates other men But in fairness he also cracks on with trying to overcome his romantic feelings for Leia by dating someone else Glassman gets a brain tumor We think it's inoperable but Shawn insists on researching the shit out of it and eventually finds a treatment much to Glassman's annoyance Glassie is kind of mean to Shawn through this season but that might be due to the brain tumor so I forgive him There's an unexpected outbreak of SARS in which a bunch of workers get infected and the rest of the team are locked out and Sha is left alone in the emergency room with everyone shouting at him and a light buzzing overhead and he has a meltdown Well he has a breakdown He spends a brief period on the floor before a nurse distracts him and he gets up and saves a life But the whole thing was caught on camera and so is obviously used against Sha later on particularly by new chief of surgery Dr Han So this is the situation we find ourselves in when that infamous scene occurs Dr Han has a nononsense approach and no time for dillydallyers and he immediately thinks Sha should not be a surgeon On Dr Han's first day A patient asked Sha if her specific medication might have caused her newborn baby's medical problems Sha answers honestly that some studies have shown that it's possible The next thing we know Dr Han is raging Did you tell the mom that she caused her baby's birth defect No Would you ever have said something like that to a patient as a resident What the truth When a direct question is asked about a specific thing what would you have him do Han Just say no Tell her an unsafe medication was safe Yes apparently because Dr Han transfers Sha to pathology He is an excellent diagnostician and he can use his savant skills in the lab he says So Sha moves to pathology and works there for a bit Does good work too because of course he does That's his whole thing But he hates it All he wants is to be a surgeon But he does it He goes to work every day and does his job well And everyone around him Leah and Glassman none of them show any empathy at all for what he's going through They just try to make him feel better about the career change No matter how many times he tells them that he is a surgeon not a single time is he allowed to feel validated in his grief to work through his emotions and pain of losing his entire purpose for living Not a single time did they realize that he is talking about his identity not his job And I thought it was also who took things too literally Leah reminds him that people don't usually get to do the job they wanted to do as kids As if that's all this is As if it's not the only way he has ever found a place in this world As if it's not the only thing keeping him connected to his brother You don't understand You don't understand But he continues to do good work pathizing or whatever it is they do in pathology trying to prove to Dr Han what an asset he is In one scene they show that he's been reading up on social skills and psychology memorizing tips and helpful passages trying to show that he can overcome the parts of himself that everyone is so worried about Specifically trying to work on the points which Dr hand singled out as why he could never be a surgeon Then on the day of that infamous scene Shawn is simultaneously saving the day on two separate cases both of which have the hospital's best surgeons stomped While operating on a patient with an enormous tumor Dr Han hits a problem Out of ideas he's about to give up on the procedure when it's suggested that they call in Dr Murphy who can see things Sean we need you in the O So they go and fetch Sha and he comes in and tells them how to do the surgery allowing them to remove the whole tumor and save the patient who probably would have ended his own life if the surgery had failed And the whole time by the way people are telling Sha that if he really wants his old job back he should stand up for himself go and ask Dr Han directly So that's what he does That's what he is there to do in this scene He says he has proven himself time and time again But Dr Han said that all that was proved is that he was right to transfer him See all the effort that Sha had put into his work had only made Dr Han feel more validated in his decision You keep doing well and over time we can build to you having more responsibility he said after literally being unable to complete a surgery without him Sha gets upset demands his job back says he's not going to leave until he gets it back Tears forming in his eyes Clearly he's upset This only makes Dr Han angry You realize that you're proving my point or showing that you don't know how to communicate and you can't control your emotions Everything that Sha had tried all the things his friends had told him to do had only had the opposite effect His hard work his standing up for himself all of it was seen as proof by Dr Han that he was right He would never be a surgeon Dr Han then threatened to have him escorted out of the hospital and fired That is when Sha snapped He was done It was over and he knew it I am a surgeon was communicating that he doesn't care anymore That if he can't be a surgeon they can throw him out Nothing mattered to him anymore In that moment with those words he was quitting What was a career choice for some was the only thing that gave Sha's life any meaning at all And now in that moment he was giving up on all of it The next scene Sha is in the locker room and the reality of the situation is dawning on him The toy scalpel which had been his constant source of emotional support and comfort isn't working to calm his nerves anymore because that dream is now dead His purpose has gone His entire world had crashed and burned and the breaking of his scalpel signified that end And let me tell you that even as I wrote this part of the script I had tears in my eyes Those scenes they didn't make me laugh or cringe or get mad about bad representation They made me ugly cry like an infant The next scene of Sha he's in a bar drinking alone completely unlike him But through this time the only person we see actually there for Sha is Cla I'm sad and angry and confused and I don't know People tell me that I have to move on but why can't I just be sad Well I guess because the internet will mock you relentlessly If defending the good doctor is the thing what gets me cancelled I will never live this down Here you are Look for the hole you're about to dig yourself Okay But the thing is it seems to me that the meme explainers and the critics of that scene are just wrong Like I am mad that you're making me do this frankly but people need to stop lying about that show That meltdown was months in the making Months of being dismissed Months of everyone assuming they knew what's best for him Months of watching the woman he loves date other guys Months of watching his relationship with his mentor crumble of watching him get cancer Months of being constantly second-guessed of having every single one of his mistakes held up as proof as to why the autistics are unhirable months of being forced to do a job he never wanted to do That's not He started shouting because he was barred from a surgery In fact Dr Glassman did bar him from a surgery And you know what he did It just kept working carried on with his job In fact there was numerous times where he was told to leave the O and he just carried on working getting on with his job In fact in that episode when Dr Han dismissed him from the surgery he just carried on working It was only later that evening that he confronted Dr Han It's not the show that made him look like a tantrum throwing baby man It was the meme It was the people who didn't even watch the show going on about how bad this makes autistic people look Like honestly a lot of the criticism of this show is kind of lazy At best shallow at worst kind of abbleist itself Oh come on What are you going on about The critics are abbleist What about the show They hired a neurotypical actor to play a stereotypical portrayal of autism They made him racist and trans phobic and then implied it's the autism what made him like that The man looks like a robot for fuck's sake That's not what autism looks like There's a reason why when I critique autism representation in media I don't say much about the portrayal itself I didn't talk about Maddie Zaggler's portrayal of music in the film Music for example although a lot of people said it was a childish portrayal that it was offensive and infantilizing And while I detested that film despised the writing hated the lack of characterization could not stand the soundtrack was incensed by Sea's response to the community and angry at the choice not to cast an autistic actress But I would never say that the acting itself was offensive because who am I to know that a bunch of autistic people don't see themselves in the portrayal And I know that there are a lot of autistic people who see themselves in Dr Sha Murphy who feel comforted by the character and well represented by him I see myself in Sha I don't act like this when I'm not filming a video when I'm not delivering lines that I have practiced Most of the time I look more like this than this I even share some of his movements like that that arm thing he does you know where he sort of like that I do that I even share a bunch of his behaviors that people have called exaggerated So thanks guys Like how he goes to seemingly unreasonable lengths to avoid situations that he finds uncomfortable for example sleeping at work to avoid going home where his unwanted aid is waiting for him I've definitely spent at least some of my life hiding in cupboards Or the way he described his ostensibly perfect date with Carly as a disaster simply because he hated the experience of a date That's so me And I don't particularly see Shawn Murphy as a particularly onedimensional character either if I'm honest I think it's remiss of any critic of the show to forgo mentioning his trauma his wildly neglectful childhood the fact that he never got any professional or even consistent psychological support through the kinds of stuff that few people would survive after watching the entire show twice I think that his foibless shall we say the mistakes what we think he shouldn't be making that they are better explained by his background than his autism And it's also my opinion that this is the intent of the show He has regular flashbacks especially at times of emotional distress Hey [Music] what Sean Sean His character is so very rooted in the past His decisions can be better explained by his very much founded fear of being left alone In fact at one point he outright states that this is his biggest fear Like yeah sometimes he's a bit clingy with glassmen and Leah but can you blame him That's not the autism doing that That's the being abandoned by your family and watching your loved ones die before your eyes What's doing that He's also coming straight out of a small conservative city Casper in Wyoming if if that means anything to the Americans in the audience That's also where he went to medical school So in the first two seasons of the show this is like the first time he has been anywhere else So not only was this lad's past full of the things that few of us would have survived there were Republicans everywhere too This is all in the show too Like from the very beginning they make all of this very clear This is no head cannon And so it's a little strange to me when people take all of his perceived flaws all of the the traits that they don't like all of the problematic things that he does and says and then say like "Oh they're saying this is what autism is." Autism doesn't make you ignorant No it doesn't But being an unhoused child in a small Republican city with no access to support or society might I don't know maybe and he's not the only one He's not alone in judging patients or having outdated or problematic views He's not the only one to say inappropriate things or struggle to control his emotions at work Basically all the other doctors do all that stuff too There's an episode where Clare racially profiles a patient Jared assaults a colleague in a thoughtless display of machismo after that colleague harassed Clare Asher is extremely outspoken in his beliefs He honestly states his judgments of others He often talks out of turn and he explains that this is due to his sheltered fundamentalist religious background and Morgan Morgan She's consistently rude blunt insensitive judgmental She argues with her superiors She hides a chronic wrist problem for a while endangering patients And she doesn't seem to realize when her bluntness hurts those she cares about Aaron glassy he has angry outbursts He shouts at work He oversteps boundaries Jordan struggles to keep her personal beliefs out of work She makes patients feel bad when they act in ways that are counter to her religion Like Sha isn't a problematic autistic anomaly in a sea of perfect and ethical neurotypicals And so to assume that every time Sha makes a mistake that the showrunners are somehow saying it's the autism what did it I that's bizarre What a bizarre assumption to make You're the one creating a one-dimensional character by attributing everything he does to his autism and autism alone That's not what autism looks like they say But first sometimes it is as is proven by the hundreds of autistic people writing about how they relate to Sha I saw one critic say that autistic people aren't that robotic and if they are then they wouldn't expect to be able to be a doctor Oops Lot to unpack there cuz you know autistic advocates have long been talking about how we can feel like we are living in the uncanny valley which is a phrase coined to describe how people often react to robots When robots or animations appear almost but not quite real When there is a narrow chasm between their seeming almost human and human they can evoke feelings of unease strangeness and even creepiness The uncanny valley has been cited by autistic advocates to describe the effect of autistic masking When we're trying to appear neurotypical in public but just not quite getting it right the neurotypicals when pled do not respond well to it It's always dangerous to look at an autistic trait and then claim that that's not what autism looks like You're one step away from all the people who tell me that I don't look autistic But also the show never claims that that's what autism looks like Sha repeatedly states that autistic people do not all look the same And every single time that somebody suggests that Sha might get on with another character just because they're both autistic he makes it very clear how silly that is and that no he probably won't And there are other autistic characters in the show and they're all very different people with different mannerisms speech patterns behaviors interests None of them look anything like Sha You can't just take all of Sha's negative or problematic personality traits or even just the stuff you don't like and then go "Oh my god they're saying that's what autism is." especially while ignoring all the other autistic characters who look nothing like Shawn all the non-aututistic characters who are also doing the same stuff as Sha and also all the times that Sha does the opposite stuff Many times he shows more awareness thoughtfulness emotional sensitivity and respect towards his patients than those around him Sometimes he is the only one who can provide comfort to his patients because they appreciate his honesty I've seen a number of critics now critique the show and the character just by simply listing all of his negative traits A lot of those negative traits are things like he speaks in the wrong tone or he interrupts people which is literally what autism looks like sometimes But also you can't just ignore all of the characters positive traits His passion for helping his patients his commitment to his wife and son his willingness to help others Last week I had to diagnose and file over 200 slides But when I told Shawn he came down and he helped me get through them until 3:00 in the morning going out with him cuz he's a great guy who treats me well Or the fact that his entire reason for being a surgeon is entirely people focused and rooted in his need for connection with others That reviewer who I'm not going to name cuz I'm not here to have a go at autistic people for hating on the good doctor I'm here to provide some nuance but they said that the character has no arcs But in my opinion the character is nothing but arcs Even even his his his voice that everyone hates changes over the course of the series But his main character arc is that he went from being a young man crippled by the fear of being left alone This fear turned him into a control freak He wanted to be able to fix all the problems save all the people but he learns by the end to put faith in others to let go of his fears and the need for control that they brought This is the theme of Leah's pregnancy He starts off wanting to design the entire pregnancy and birth because he is utterly terrified of losing her and his medical ability is the thing that keeps him from crumbling and always has been But in time he relinquishes control putting faith in Leah and her doctors And if for some reason you still missed it he outright states all of this in the final episode when he's willing to give up his entire career to save Clare He is no longer afraid of being abandoned He no longer needs to save everyone He no longer needs to be a surgeon It literally comes full circle I don't understand He realized that all he needs is to spend as much time as possible with the people he loves and to strengthen the relationships he has He realizes that the mistakes he made along the way were all rooted in his trauma How is that not an arc I don't get it I honestly think at this point that some of the critics are just saying what they think the internet wants them to say Like what do you want Do you want him to be perfect Do you want him to never fuck up Do you want him to be pure of heart and mind No I don't want him to be perfect I just want the character to make sense Like the critics say he should know not to be transphobic of all things He got through medical school didn't he He's doing one of the highest pressured jobs that you can do And he's supposed to be some big genius but still doesn't know how to talk to people or that his actions have consequences If he's supposed to be so smart then that just does not make sense doesn't it though Like I'm sorry but the argument that like oh if he's so smart he should know everything is just silly In that episode with the young trans girl which I will be talking about later don't worry He even states that care for trans patients was not a part of his or any of the other residents training pointing to a rather huge systemic issue within healthcare He was a homeless child He was in foster care for years The only time he had any stability whatsoever was when he was in college and then he was busy memorizing all the books He knows about surgery and anatomy because that is what he has studied since he was a child That has been his source of comfort and stability throughout all of it He doesn't know about other stuff because he never had the chance to learn He's learning as the show progresses It's like one of the main themes That is what we are all there to watch Sha learns stuff It's basically a coming of age piece He starts off a raw and vulnerable wee first year stepping into the world for the very first time and ends an accomplished surgeon and mentor a loving and supportive father and husband and a friend to many And then everyone literally claps And yeah sometimes it can be frustrating to watch sometimes even cringe But if we can't have some patience for a disabled young man who has seen more trauma in a couple of decades than most people see in a lifetime then does that say more about the character or us And also like are we mad that he's a genius or mad that he doesn't know enough stuff Please make up your minds Do we really want Shawn to be able to somehow magically overcome his environment and past to simply know things that he never had the chance to learn or unlearn for that matter Is that what you want Because if that's what you want then it seems to me that you want Sha to be even more of a magical savant genius stereotype than he already is If you want autistic savant characters to be omniscient then I'm not really sure you're challenging stereotypes rather enforcing them into [Music] absurdity Yeah I'm going there I'll also be going somewhere else in a bit so please don't cancel me yet The cast of The Good Doctor is pretty diverse The story lines of The Good Doctor are pretty diverse And this is also true of a lot of the main recurring roles not the main role We'll do that later Wait But it's just I think it it's weird because like it does seem as if the showrunners do understand the importance of representation which only makes some of their other decisions more confusing Decisions which we will get to But Shaun isn't the only autistic character in the show As I've said I've counted five others There could have been more There were certainly more autistic coding characters such as the radiologist that Sha had a crush on and Dr Glassman There I said it But confirmed autistic characters include Liam West played by Kobe Bird Lana Moore played by Vered Blonstein Javier Maldonado played by Alex Plank Dr Silus Chambers played by Christian Clemenson and Charlie Litis played by Kayla Chroma All but one of these characters are played by openly autistic actors At least as far as I'm aware Christian Clemenson isn't autistic However he did play an autistic character on Boston Legal apparently So um make of that what you will Also Alex Plank founded Wrong Planet which was an early autistic forum back in the day And just a a bit of trivia there for you We love some trivia The trans girl in the bad trans episode is played by Sophie Gianam a trans actress and the trans man in the other trans episode that nobody seems to ever want to talk about for some reason Sha is insensitive to him as well Anyway the character Rio is played by trans actor Emmett Presiardo And sure they are side characters they're nonreoccurring except for Charlie And oo do the fans hate Charlie I can't stand Charlie I'm hoping she grows or is in the background because I almost turned off Sean tried to make himself fit into his place Charlie tries to make the place conform to her She plays the ASD card constantly Shawn never used it as an excuse Raise your hand if you also hate Charlie I loathe her so much I agree Can't stand her So she has ASD That is not an excuse to be rude and interruptive She makes no effort to listen and learn and hides behind I have a disability and it's so freaking annoying She was arrogant I almost stopped watching the show because of her Charlie isn't a doctor yet She's a medical student there to observe She is much less experienced than Sha was in season 1 And yet she is overly confident even going so far as to rearrange the supplies covered without asking anyone She's argumentative and she asks people inappropriate questions Kind of like Shawn did But even I while watching had so much less patience for Charlie than I did for Shawn And I kind of feel like I need to unpack that Charlie didn't come from a traumatic past Her family were largely supportive She even called her father her greatest advocate while Sha asks inappropriate questions to understand the world around him She admits that she's just trying to build a rapport Unlike Sha she is not shy in demanding accommodations She is proud of her autism My autism is awesome And she openly states that her employers simply need to be understanding of her neurodeiverse communication style She's not a savant and isn't limited in some of the ways that Sha is For example she can drive where he cannot While she idolized Sha he was put off by her requests for accommodations and constantly referencing their autism In one scene Sha says that it's unfair because nobody provided him with the accommodations that Charlie requires Now Dr Lim rightly pushes back against the implication that Shawn got no accommodations This episode touches on something which is all too common Sha never felt supported He felt as though he had to fight and constantly improve to never ever stop working on himself so that he could be allowed to be a surgeon And people enforced this feeling by giving him so many tips on how to change himself for the better But then here's Charlie just outright saying that this is unfair that nobody should have to change who they are just to be respected in their workplace Sha's a bit of a dick to her treating her in the same way that he was treated until they learn to work together autistically to save some patients Yay But this instinct this dislike of the youngsters coming in here and demanding all the things that we could never have it's incredibly common and surprisingly hard to resist There is no reason for me to have less patience for Charlie than I did for Sha Maybe it exposes some of my unconscious biases Because while we might all agree that generally things should improve on a personal level it can sting to see others have an easier time than you did If you were raised to be ashamed of your autism If you had to struggle and adapt just to survive had to change who you are just so you don't stand out as much just so you don't get punished for being who you are Then to see some young upstart flouncing around proudly showcasing her disability making demands and taking up space that can feel conflicting to me These episodes highlight something very common something which is a source of conflict among autistic communities Should we force ourselves to adapt or should society adapt for us Can we use our autism as an excuse Charlie asks sexually explicit questions of a colleague and then states that that is just her neurodeiverse communication style I'm kind of glad that the show highlighted these tensions and I'm glad that they concluded by showing that these two characters have more in common than divides them That they could learn to get along and validate one another That Sha learns that yes actually things should generally improve That the next generations shouldn't have to suffer just because we did that progress towards a more open and welcoming society is good actually And I think that the dislike of Charlie among the fans is a reflection of this tension They see her doing the same things as Sha but without striving to overcome them It's interesting to me the conflict that that produces and I'm kind of glad the show went there I also warmed up to the character of Charlie and would have liked to have seen more of her I would have liked to have seen an autistic doctor succeed without magical savant abilities But Charlie only appears in the final season of the show in what unfortunately seems to me to be an effort to ease the criticisms of the casting Despite the fact that this scene caused a meme explosion and triggered an outpouring of abbleism from across the internet I'm glad it's there I'm glad that all of Sha's meltdown scenes are there I don't think it's infantilizing or unrealistic to show a grown man an accomplished professional having a meltdown at work crying shouting covering his ears hitting his head No I don't think that's infantilizing or unrealistic at all And if you do think that then I have some news for you It happens It has happened to me A few years ago I had a meltdown because someone shouted in my ear Sean's one of my comfort characters and I hate when he's made fun of I've seen the clip so many times because of the memes and as an autistic person it resonated with me I felt sympathetic and kind of disgusted it became a meme because meltdowns like that do not feel funny even if they look ridiculous to others I'd be careful saying some of these traits mean bad representation I have public meltdowns Sadly just last week I smashed my laptop on my head at work I've fallen flat on my face in public and screamed into the grass and other humiliating events And I've also been accused of being an android by people Stigma surrounding autistic meltdowns is so unbelievably dangerous Autistic people have been killed due to a misunderstanding of meltdowns Autistic adults have meltdowns They are not tantrums They are not emotions They are dangerous neurological events in response to an overload of stress on the system And having one does not mean that you can't control yourself In my opinion the fact that Sha has a few meltdowns throughout the show while always showing that this doesn't really mean anything regarding his professionalism as well as showing that these things almost always build up over time and are due to external stresses which can be adapted or avoided To me that's well Another one of Sha's meltdowns occurs after he lost a premature baby on the operating table only months after Leah had suffered a miscarriage The premature baby died due to the now privatized hospital allowing medication to go out of date Shawn had been trying for weeks to push back against the changes forced by the new owner who Shawn saw as putting profits over people because she was boo Salem While at the same time his relationships with Leah and Glassman were at an all-time low Leah had lied to him and Glassman had gone awall instead of being the best man at the wedding they were planning Everything in his life was changing and he was watching his patients suffer The death of that baby was the final straw It triggered his traumatic memories of failing to save his brother of losing his own child It shook his entire purpose in life once again What was the point of being a surgeon if your patients will die due to the incompetence of others due to the profiteering of capitalism The show lets us see how these things can build over time How those around Sha can fail to pick up on the cues How holistic people can fail to realize that they are the cause None of the meltdowns depicted in the show are tantrums They are not tantrums Like I even think using the word tantrum in any kind of critique of the show is irresponsible He's not just shouting around because one thing went wrong Like one thing happens that he doesn't like and he just starts shouting and crying No that never happens And yes maybe he does do things that I wouldn't do Makes decisions that I wouldn't make acts in ways that I think are unwise like touching a hand dryer if you want it to stop Another scene what got me'd And honestly the response to those scenes especially the I am a surgeon scene while upsetting while abbleist is not really surprising And it's a response that the showrunners seem to anticipate The fear that Sha and Leah have about participating in the reality show reflects this They know that when exposed to the general public Sha may not come across well They acknowledge that the general public might need their hands holding or else they will react badly to Sha That if he is observed in a candid manner the people will judge him That people might hate him that it might place him in harm's way And isn't that something that we all kind of feel as autistics Like deep down we know that sometimes people judge us make fun of us read our behaviors harshly when we never intended any harm I think that's something that we all feel regularly Watching the show one is forced to feel a little bit of what autistic people go through so often that people might react badly to Sha is like the sword of Damocles hanging over the entire series Not just when he has a meltdown but every time he responds to a patient in an atypical manner every time he inadvertently embarrasses a colleague we the audience are left afraid of the consequences Those meltdown scenes are so difficult to watch precisely because of the fear of what the outcome might be Surely this one this one will be the end of his career This one will be the one that pushes Leah away This one will be the one that ruins his life Anyone who has experienced meltdowns as an adult knows this fear well I know I do Surely now is the time that people turn away from me in disgust The casual viewers the ablest memers the people who never watched the show but still mock the clips They are responding in the exact way that we expect and fear in the way that the writers knew people might but they kept those scenes in there anyway because meltdowns are things that many of us experience and people need to be aware of that Do I think that those scenes were badly acted No not really In fact it's in the meltdown scenes that I actually think Freddy High's performance is pretty powerful You feel it You feel the fear the anticipation the complete loss of what to do for the best the complete loss of hope It's desperate And yes it's uncomfortable but it should be uncomfortable Meltdowns are they are horrendous things They are painful and frightening and exhausting and not something that any of us ever want to happen Nobody wants to see their autistic loved one having a meltdown because if they're having a meltdown then that means that they are in unimaginable pain It should be uncomfortable to look at It should be painful It should not not ever be the butt of jokes But this is the world we live in People will mock us like they mock Sha And I don't think that autistic people should be joining in No matter what you think of the show just because you don't like it or the character or the writing or whatever it is making fun of Meltdowns is just shitty I mean yeah it is I take your point but it's still a terrible show Like you can't think it's a good show It's full of bad writing and misinformation and terrible casting decisions Autistic people are right to be mad right Right Well actually no I'm joking It's [Music] bad Not today You would be counselors Extinguish your torches You can you can you can put your pitchforks over there on the left Also like it's just another autistic character who's a straight white male which like fine fine Let's have another one Put him on the pile But the casting is unforgivable I'm sorry but it is This is no reflection on Freddy Hymore's ability as an actor It's just that this is the autistic lead in a show which is claiming to be doing autism representation That opportunity should have been awarded to an autistic actor who would have done a better job So Freddy you're a fine actor Freddy but an autistic actor wouldn't have had to spend any time whatsoever learning what autism feels like or trying to create an autistic vibe It would have been more realistic We have enough examples of autistic characters being played by autistic actors to know that it just comes across better I'm sorry but it does I know people like to respond to casting criticisms with it's called acting Like yeah Yeah The autistic actor would also be acting I know what acting is But I also know that autism is pretty all pervasive There's a reason why so many of us say we can't imagine ourselves without our autism That's the reason why we typically prefer to be called autistic rather than people with autism If you removed me of my autism I couldn't picture what that would look like It fundamentally shapes every way that I experience the world And the way that we experience the world fundamentally shapes the people who we are physically and mentally It's very difficult to put into words and it's very difficult to imagine experiencing the world in a fundamentally different way It's like trying to imagine a color you've never seen That's a little bit too much to expect from acting in my opinion That's an awful lot of mental energy which would be completely unnecessary for an autistic actor And like come on we need this Autistic adults have an employment rate of whatever it is You wrote a whole show about the obstacles that an autistic doctor might face Even if he is high functioning and also a savant I too function high But it's almost as if you know that autistic people face barrier after barrier that even when they are highly qualified and actually able to get up every morning and go do a full-time job which many of us are not that even in those bestcase conditions it's still really tough So why would you go out of your way to train up an holistic actor to pretend to be one of us instead of giving one of us an opportunity In interviews the cast talk a big one about the importance of autism representation So you'd think they'd get it And you might argue that they did get it what with all those other autistic characters being played by autistic actors but no he's the lead I can forgive a thoughtful and well-written autistic side character played by an autistic actor Shout out to the brother in Mo played by Omar Elbert I fully assumed that you were autistic You absolutely got me But the autistic main character in the show about an autistic person being autistic what's trying to do autism representation and autism awareness and autism and stuff when the whole hook of the show is the autism of it all No it's not forgivable It shouldn't have happened and Freddy's acting skills have nothing to do with it Making an autistic actor the face of your autism representation even in 2017 is shady I think it's a shame whenever an opportunity for autism representation doesn't go to autistic creatives It must increase production costs too though like like if you have to spend a bunch of time and effort and money consulting on whether you got the portrayal right or not Speaking [Music] of it is known that Freddy Hymore has appeared on some Autism Speaks campaigning videos and Autism Speaks have published glowing reviews of The Good Doctor I did see somebody claim that Autism Speaks wrote whole episodes of The Good Doctor but I didn't find any evidence of that They just seem to have worked together on some mutual promotions If you didn't know by now Autism Speaks is very controversial among the autistic community It is a charitable organization which was originally dedicated to finding a cure for autism and it made several quite awful promotional videos They were designed to scare as much as possible about autism Their focus was on the harm that autism does to families and how difficult it is being a parent of an autistic child In one now infamous documentary a mother of an autistic girl openly talked about how she had considered murdering her child but didn't because she had another child who wasn't autistic who needed her She said this right in front of her young daughter speaking as though she wasn't in the room It's an extremely uncomfortable thing to witness Autism Speaks also promoted and funded ABA or applied behavior analysis which is also a very controversial practice One which in my opinion is entirely based on a pseudoscientific misunderstanding of emotions and motivation Thankfully it's currently falling out of favor in places like the EU But unfortunately in many places such as the USA it is still seen as a gold standard of autism intervention It focuses on using external pressures of punishment and reward to manipulate the behavior of autistic children If you'd like to learn more about the harms I've included some resources below from survivors Autism Speaks would say that it's learned its lesson It no longer seeks to find a cure and now there are autistic people on their board but they still engage in projects which are seen as highly suspect by the autistic community And so they remain one of the most controversial groups you could choose to work with And there are loads of autistic grand autism charities out there these days There really is no excuse for productions to keep turning to Autism Speaks But as far as I can tell the show's main autism consultant was Melissa Raina Reina or Raina One of them Melissa Raina MEED has her mers in special education and is a certified consultant in relationship development intervention RDI registered trademark Melissa is credited as the autism consultant on the top rated TV show The Good Doctor and is considered to be one of the top autism and behavioral consultants by leading pediatric neurologists and developmental pediatricians in Los Angeles and Orange counties First of all the autism consultant If none of your recurring cast are autistic and the whole point of the show is autism representation then I would advise having a couple of consultants I'd also advise that those consultants are autistic themselves which as far as I can tell Melissa is not I would also also advise that if you are doing a show which is based on an autistic character who is an adult then you do not hire a pediatric specialist to consult on the character It's not infantilizing to show an autistic adult having meltdowns But it sure as hell is to think that somebody who works almost exclusively with children would be the right person to consult Autistic adults aren't just big kids or at least not any more than anyone else is But I suppose we can at least be a bit thankful that the US show is nowhere near as infantilizing as the original series If we want to talk about infantilizing autistic characters then look no further than [Music] Bion Bakshion is a rather different character to Sha Murphy Good Doctor is a rather different show to The Good Doctor though to be fair There's a lot more focus on romance and interpersonal drama in the OG series There are like bad doctors trying to undermine the good doctors with capers and shenanigans and just like an awful lot of physical assault It's slapstick and has soap opera vibes But they repeatedly describe Shion as having the mind of a child He works in pediatrics too because he can communicate better with children due to being on their level They consistently compare him to a child At one point even having him play Peter Pan in a play Like I cannot stress enough how much they lean into this whole he's like a kid thing Even the theme music is like some toy box lullabi type thing And to make matters worse the theme of the show is can Pacion be cured of his autism Spoiler yes he can At least he can overcome his disability And it's only at that point once that it has been stated out loud by his boss that he has been cured enough that people start to treat him with any respect When the love interest starts viewing him as a love interest and not a baby brother or some kind of injured duckling the Dr Blasment character during the board meeting scene rather than assuring them that he's high functioning He tells them that he can eventually be cured of his level three autism because he is able to memorize all the things which he needs to know in order to care for himself meaning that we have a character with ASD3 but no care needs which isn't a thing High care needs is what the three stands for in ASD3 Must say though he absolutely nailed my natural posture with this though That that is so me I also kind of love these two and this guy style icon Original screenwriter Bach Bomb praised the US version for including a diverse range of writers stating that it inspired him to promote diversity in his own writing rooms So I guess there is a little bit of awareness there Perhaps the US version did come some way from the original material but maybe not quite far [Music] enough Okay so I do have a few things to say about the portrayal itself that thing he does with his eyes Like I get it I get what he's trying to do Sometimes we autistics we look as if our eyes are just sort of darting about randomly I know I do When I'm being normal and I'm not fixing my gaze into a camera lens I'm like um okay I'm going to try and do it I'm going to try and be normal and like don't quote me on this I'm not actually a doctor despite appearances but I think it's to do with us having monotropism It's a narrow field of focus So like literally when I look around the room I'm only ever focused on a very very small part of it at a time And so to take in the whole room I have to look at hundreds of different points That's just my natural subconscious way of seeing and always has been It means I'm very good at Where's Wally But it means I always miss it every time writing pops up on the screen when you're playing a video game because I was looking over there not there Like how am I supposed to see something all the way over there So this is what I think Freddy is trying to portray when he looks like this But it just feels off right Doesn't it Yeah I think because it feels like he's not actually looking at anything Like he's literally just moving his eyes around It's not so much that he doesn't look autistic but that he does look like he's acting And this is what I mean too with the casting Like old Freddy is like cognitively doing that In every single scene part of his focus is on making sure to move his eyes around whereas an autistic actor might just naturally have monotropism and so can put that mental energy onto more important creative things I don't know It just bugs me And you know there's actually one thing that I like more about the Korean OG series It's that they gave him an inner monologue Well I guess we can hear it So technically it's outer but you know what I mean We can hear his thoughts And that is a bit cheesy It is I can completely understand the creative reasons for not going with that Exactly But the thing what's good about it is it lets the holistics see behind the flat affect And in my experience they need help doing that This is another area where I do agree with the critics I wish that we had been given a glimpse into the emotions that a real life autistic person would have been struggling to process Autistic grief is painfully misunderstood and this could have been an incredible opportunity to dive into that issue for educational and dramatic purposes While I do actually think that they put some effort into portraying autistic grief like the way he intellectualizes his losses how he approaches his emotions as problems to solve and when he finally accepts that he will lose Glassman and then when he finally does he cataloges and collects the things that Glassman had taught him keeping a notebook of his wisdom close at hand and repeating the things he had said I've lost people and I am feeling all of this I don't know about it being quote unquote correct but it's relatable to me The meltdown scenes are also usually an indication of Sha's delayed emotional responses Again something highly relatable if you ask me We get many scenes of Sha just standing there after something huge just happened still silent rigid and that in itself isn't like an incorrect portrayal I do that I've been known to just when I'm overwhelmed I just think they could have done more to indicate that there's not silence in this man's head We often get a scene later where Shawn explains to whoever it is how he really feels But in these moments when he's just standing there people might assume as many characters in this show do that there's just note going on up there Now you might say it would be ableist to assume that there's note going on up there Like Leah just rejected him Of course there's something going on Just because he's not saying anything one should not assume that head empty But people do Autistic people often face that problem My own mother said that as a child I didn't have any real emotions because I had a flat affect and couldn't communicate well emotional like Sean I'm never quite sure what you're thinking Many things But if we're trying to do some basic 101 type autism representation for a general mostly audience then I think we can probably do more to show why that's a wrong assumption to make because people do and will make it All right Okay So sometimes I do find his flat effect a bit funny He always looks like his boomer aunt just sent him an adorable yet confusing AI Tik [Music] Tok Like my flat effect is a perma frown Resting grump face That's what I've got You'd just think a man with a past like gaze would have a frown line or two That's all I'm saying And like my face my flat a effect wouldn't be an inappropriate face to pull while you're telling someone that they're dying This is the face of someone about to give you some very bad news And I get the feeling that this face was chosen on purpose I mean it was wasn't it Freddy Hymore doesn't look like that all the time They must have workshopped it a bit But I think that maybe possibly allegedly by me that maybe they picked a positive countenance on purpose to add conflict to the scenes in which he's giving people bad news And I don't like that Autistic people can and do struggle to know what's going on on their face I have to practice animating my face for every video and I still get it wrong even though I'm looking right at it I am smiling on purpose But yeah my opinion is that that was a creative choice to add cringe to those scenes and I think that is a bit scummy Now in the end we are led to realize that Shawn has deep complex nuanced emotions if we watch the show long enough But the way they shoot and edit those scenes it really does seem like sometimes he just doesn't care Speaking of misleading [Music] editing that's not what autism or savant syndrome looks like Now I don't know enough about Savant syndrome to talk about it at length but I do know that that whole floating encyclopedia in the sky thing is tacky overdone and just not really how minds work Photographic memories the kind which Sha Murphy and characters like Sheldon Cooper possess are a very contentious thing as in they are probably not real Idic memories that's when someone has a lasting visual or audio memory of something they have experienced has been demonstrated But these memories are not longlasting and almost always contain errors There is no documented evidence of anyone ever under scientific conditions demonstrating a long-term accurate idetic memory ever And this coming from someone who has a great long-term memory which is very visual I used to get myself to sleep by walking around my hometown in my mind but it's not an accurate memory Some of it might be correct but it's nothing that I could rely on Savant skills are usually found in one or more of five major areas Art memory arithmetic musical abilities and spatial skills But having an aptitude for these skills is not the same as the magical photographic memories that we see on television Having a good memory is one thing Learning techniques that allow you to memorize long strings of information is one thing Spending time trying to memorize things is one thing But reading a book once in college and then being able to recite it accurately years later is just not a thing not a thing that anyone has ever proved that they can do You can use pneumonics to remember details of a book but that's a different thing I watched a documentary once about people with hypothymesia It featured people who claimed to just be able to remember every day of their lives Clear as But it also showed them spending a great deal of time keeping journals and calendars detailed notes on what they did taking hundreds of photos and wallpapering their walls with them and generally just spending time and effort cataloging and memorizing their lives This isn't to devalue the experience of people with hypothymesia They are neurodeivergent Their brains do appear different on scans This is all to say that even among people who have demonstrated extraordinary memory ability photographic memories just don't exist Let alone can anyone remember such complex details without trying to Not only does Sha exhibit a perfect photographic memory for textbooks and studies and anatomy he exhibits such excellent spatial visual skills that people describe it like he's got an MRI and a CAT scan in his head I could see how being a spatial savant might come in handy in surgery But it's not just like Sha is able to manipulate complex 3D images in his mind They imply that he can visualize exactly what is going on in an individual's body which is obviously impossible I think he's seeing something Sean you have to tell us what you're seeing He has almost perfect recall and he sees things in ways that we can't even begin to understand It's giving psychic visions quite frankly and it needs to stop So the thing about the writing every episode of the show is set up so that someone can learn a valuable lesson The whole thing is very American vaguely progressive Democrat voter feelgood foder It's Sesame Street for grown-ups But of course if you're going to have everyone learning a valuable lesson in every episode then that means that mistakes must surely be made And so considering what kind of show this is one designed to make blue wave moms cry I can be somewhat forgiving when they make characters insensitive or judgmental or prejudiced towards others to later learn that that is bad learning stuff and character progression is again one of the main themes of the show But sometimes because of this the show can seem to be both siding sensitive issues even if the ending is always bigotry bad So in the racism one where Sha suspects a Muslim woman of making chemical weapons because she had chemical burns but was being uncooperative and lying about using the chemical saying that she had never heard of it We can understand that Sha is letting his unconscious biases cloud his judgment Probably biases he learned from being a white American cishat man from Casper Wyoming The reason she was lying was because her brother stole the chemical from work so that she could use it to make perfume No autism does not cause racism But autistic people are just as influenced by their environment as anyone else And Islamophobia is extremely prevalent And again this is far from the only time a doctor on that show judged and profiled a patient only to learn later why that was wrong But the lesson in that episode wasn't just that Sha had jumped to a racist conclusion but also that the other doctors resisted the conclusion that these were chemical burns because they didn't want to appear racist and she almost died because of that Everyone learned a valuable lesson Sha learned to not jump to conclusions and how racism can influence your thought process Neil and Jared learned that performativity can be harmful in itself and she learned to not play around with chemicals and lie to her doctors But you could interpret that episode as saying that trying to not be racist is also dangerous which I I would not agree with But I think it was supposed to be that doctors shouldn't let their political opinions or biases whatever they may be cloud the medical facts It was just a bit clumsy and lazy like a lot of the writing in this series But I do not think that it is written so that Sha's autism made him racist or transphobic for that matter But that episode in particular the one with the young trans girl exposes more issues with the show itself While the episode may not be ableist in my opinion it is certainly transphobic In the episode called She Sha repeatedly misgenders a young trans patient cuz chromosomes despite his colleagues pleading with him to stop While Sha learns to empathize and understand eventually it goes on a bit long It gets quite uncomfortable to watch and you're just begging Dr Limb to transfer him to another patient But again as we're all just here to watch him learn stuff he isn't Shawn does accept that he was wrong after talking with the patient who helps him understand both what it's like to feel in congruent with your body but also how it feels to be at peace with it By the end of the episode not only has Shawn stopped misgendering the patient but we get the feeling that he truly has learned something that he empathizes with her He's not just doing what other people have told him to He's not just using her preferred pronouns He accepts and understands her In the final scene Dr Glassman tells Sha that he can't imagine what it must be like to feel so different to how you are perceived from the outside But Sha can And so he goes home to experience freedom in the way that she had described But it's important to note that Jared who had been insisting that Sha use the correct pronouns throughout the episode is only doing so because he doesn't want to get into trouble He wants to win a competition they're having Jared also explains to Sha that the reason why he can't keep calling the patient him is because she has gender dysphoria and is mismatched Quinn has gender dysphoria She's mismatched Dr Murphy It's a bad episode precisely because of that kind of medical misinformation throughout See the other doctors tell Sha off for misgendering the patient cuz chromosomes because that's impolite and disrespectful to the patient Not because that's not how chromosomes work Because that's not how chromosomes work There is no discussion of the biodality of human sex nor any discussion of the variance of chromosome occurrence Chromosomes do not map onto sex the way that Sha describes nor do sex or chromosomes map onto a binary but nobody points that out And the very idea of gender dysphoria being a psychiatric diagnosis that trans people have is a very contentious one One which is strongly criticized by many in the trans community There was ignorance from all the doctors in that episode who failed to challenge Sha's inaccurate statements because there was ignorance in the writing room And I do kind of suspect that this episode isn't alone there I rather suspect that every episode of The Good Doctor is full of medical inaccuracies It's just that I don't notice I know that that stuff about chromosomes is wrong but every time Sha is all like "The the patient could have a blahy blah blah We need to perform a thingy bob stat." He could be saying anything any old rubbish For all I know all these kinds of shows portray a very shallow surface level understanding of the sciences that they're dealing with I'm looking at you site guy from Law and Order SVU That man will say anything And no medical drama is realistic It would be really boring and depressing if they were We might expect medical misinformation from a cheesy network television drama but the reason why I'm still mad at The Good Doctor is because it makes big claims I feel like if you are claiming to be doing representation claiming to be educational claiming to be responsible then you might want to put in a little bit more research than your average medical drama show or at least don't feature such sensitive topics about currently persecuted people if you're not going to do any due diligence over the research Of course the lesson in the end is that prejudice is wrong But you still just broadcast dangerous untrue statements to millions of people The Good Doctor is not nor could it ever be good autism representation Nor do I find it inspiring Watching The Good Doctor did not make me feel like I could do anything In fact it rather had the opposite effect In the first episode the board votes no to Sha A high functioning autistic doctor would be too much of a liability they said Even if he is a savant which I'm not most of us aren't Yes autistic people are more likely than the general population to have savant syndrome but also a bunch of other things like EDS zebra gang sound off in the chat But the point stands almost all autistic people do not have soantesque abilities And even if they did that's not what it would look like So if I'm to take this first episode at face value even if I had completed a bunch of medical training I wouldn't even get my foot through the door at a prestigious hospital for no other reason than my autism Is that what my therapist needed me to know His condition makes for good television but if he is indeed hired by an actual hospital I just see liability and lawsuits everywhere An individual who presented as Dr Murphy does would put a hospital at immediate risk of a massive lawsuit However most people would decline to be treated by him at the very least when it came to undergoing a surgical procedure In the real world Sha Murphy likely wouldn't be hired for such a lofty position I've only worked with one case who like the good doctor was recognizably non-neurotypical from the moment he started to speak And we tried for probably 8 years to help get him into medicine Then PA then nursing No luck He had difficulty getting good recommendation letters That was the first red flag Nobody he had volunteered with or observed could honestly say that he was good with patients or that they'd hire him The few times he got medical interviews they'd smile and shake hands he'd think the interview went well but then they'd call me and say "Why did you send us this student?" Oh well maybe that means that the show is like being realistic by by showing that you know abbleism exists in the workplace Except no No it isn't H among us has a boss willing to risk their career to save ours because Sha has too twice the big boss of the hospital stepped down to save Sha's career and he wouldn't have gotten the job at all if not for a personal guarantee from the president of the hospital I don't know about you but I'm a little short on mentors willing to risk everything so that I can work at the company they're the boss of And despite the bullying and the abbleism Sha is given a lot of grace more grace than the average autistic person can reasonably expect from a workplace Because while his autism is becoming an issue they simply cannot cope without his special abilities How that hospital functioned without him we'll never know But boy is his autism becoming an issue consistently throughout the series It's his autistic traits as well as I would argue his trauma that are the problem His social communication difficulties his issues with both reading the emotions of others as well as portraying the correct reactions his need for routine and familiarity his narrow field of focus his struggles with change These are all problems which are only ever tolerated by his colleagues and bosses due to his special abilities Without the silver lining of Savant syndrome the dark cloud of autism and trauma would simply be too much to bear and would mean that no actually he would never be a surgeon How am I supposed to find inspiration in that when the real world is so full of Dr Hanss The fact that in interviews they only ever bang on about autism advocacy and never mention Savant syndrome or how few of us have it I think it's slimy It leads to people like my former therapist to assume that we all have these incredible capabilities these powers which make us super special and able to do things that others simply cannot It leads to people like my former therapist to insist that we shouldn't call ourselves disabled We're specially aabled What help could I possibly need Why on earth would I need therapy to come to terms with a diagnosis that means I'm basically magic Like if you think about it it's basically like getting a letter of acceptance to that famous magical school Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches I don't recommend watching The Good Doctor I don't think it's good autism representation and I'm not inspired by Sha Murphy's story I think it's a pretty shallow attempt at vague progressivism I think the writing is predictable except when main characters die or almost die I never do see those coming But it is predictable in the sense that you can see that valuable lesson coming a mile away It's overly sentimental Incredibly American Yeah I cried Of course I cried These American shows insist upon it They didn't do anywhere near enough in terms of consultancy and they didn't safeguard the vulnerable subjects of their supposedly heartwarming stories by not even checking their facts And it's just weird to cast an autistic actor in an autistic main role I'm sorry but it is It's just weird And frankly every time we see an autistic character who is only tolerated because of what their genius can offer other people we alienate almost every autistic person But then when we have to watch as the autistic traits the traits that we do actually share are mocked and derided on screen and off when they are seen as the faults in the character The things that he needs to change in order for his genius to shine through The things about him which cause a problem for those around him those parts of himself which will obviously cause a viral sensation How are we meant to feel It's not great I tried fitting in but I got frustrated so I gave up People tolerate me because I save lives Without that why would anyone ever care about me I care [Music] But then I also kind of enjoyed watching it a bit It's not the kind of show I would usually watch and I have a ton of medical anxiety which was triggered watching this series You're welcome The things what I do for you I don't know Like the characters are okay They're pretty complex And it does kind of scratch that part of your brain that enjoys an ethical conundrum It's like am I the asshole but with a rousing soundtrack and lots of hugging I liked Cla I found her to be more inspiring than Shawn to be honest That story line with Cla and her mom that hit quite close to home for me I first watched the series while I was going through something quite similar So watching Cla go through the sudden loss of her mother all the baggage that comes with being a neglected child and losing a parent when you're so unbelievably mad at them but then finding peace and purpose and love It was nice Something I needed to see And it wasn't lost on me that it was Cla who had been through trauma and neglect and who had fought the odds the entire way That it was she who was there for Sha the most And you know I kind of liked Sha Kind of like Charlie I saw myself in Sha in almost every episode Many of his mannerisms are like my own And I can empathize with the way he responds to situations quite a lot That's why it hurts so much to see him getting made fun of And I know I'm not alone in that I don't think that Sha is just a clumsy collection of traits In fact I think the writers went to great lengths to provide lots of context and backstory to his emotional depth and complexity They didn't chalk up his ignorance to autism and they were right to include that scene I've seen people saying that it was wrong to include a scene which people will obviously make fun of that it's that which opens autistic people up to bullying But really is that not a bit victim blamingy It wasn't a bad portrayal of a meltdown which had been building over the course of two seasons And we don't fight stigma by hiding away and people didn't even start making fun of it until years after it was broadcast The initial fan base responded quite positively to it and did not in fact see Dr Han as a Chad for what it is a very cheesy network drama It's not as bad as it could be and it's mostly not bad for the reasons people keep saying it's bad but it is bad There's episodes where they're in Guatemala and they put that stupid yellow filter over every single scene even though they're in the middle of the jungle There are dozens of episodes that I could pick apart individually and write whole essays on Nothing about the show is realistic But also like are you really going to a show like that for realism I don't know Like at one point Dr Lim and Dr Glassman spent days and loads of hospital resources pranking each other And Shaun's traits do kind of jump around sometimes particularly in the early season Like there's an episode in season 1 where he can't answer questions He can only respond to statements and that lasted for a full episode They dropped that one like a hot potato Can you imagine if they'd kept that up for seven seasons And maybe it is unrealistic that in real life you could behave like Sha and not lose your job as a surgeon but that's the thing they're being aspirational about isn't it That people like Sha could be a surgeon if allowed They're saying it should be the case not that it is but it isn't good So don't watch it Watch something else Don't go there for your autism representation Go to any of the hundreds of autistic creatives out there making their own media Just in the past few years there has been a well I won't say a boom but a pop of autistic actors playing autistic characters Go support them Speaking of supporting autistic creatives if you wanted to you could join my Patreon or my YouTube memberships via links below And don't forget to share what you think about The Good Doctor in the comments cuz I am done Also you can join my Discord [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]