A few years ago, a friend of a friend declared that he wanted to pick my brain about The Good Doctor. He’d recently learned that I was an autistic culture writer and was eager to hear my feelings on the hit ABC medical drama’s fictional portrayal of a promising young surgeon on the spectrum.
I gave him what had become my stock answer by that point in the show’s existence: I found it competent, if not to my taste, as a primetime drama, but frustrating as a portrayal of an autistic human being. With no openly autistic people in the writer’s room or cast, the show in general and the character of Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) in particular struck me as more of an amalgamation of non-autistic people’s misconceptions, fears, and fantasies about autism than a nuanced exploration of what it’s actually like to be someone like me. I added that it was alienating to watch so many people adore autistic characters like Dr. Murphy or autistic coded characters like The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper while showing markedly less enthusiasm for their real-life counterparts or the stories we wanted to share with the world.
He then informed me that it was actually a good show, because it taught him about autism and made him more empathetic to autistic people and our plights.
As The Good Doctor, which was the highest-rated new show of the 2017-2018 season and remained in the top 30 for the majority of its run, wraps up this week after seven seasons, I can’t think of a better illustration of how a show that purported to explore the complex humanity of its titular character often treated flesh and blood autistic people as little more than props at every level. The writers, showrunners David Shore and Liz Friedman, and Highmore were all afforded the creative freedom to craft and inhabit a character who was significantly different from themselves without any of the challenges involved in actually living like him—or any obvious concern as to how those of us who do might receive their efforts. Even their autism consultant was non-autistic. Other non-autistic people were able to watch their caricatured results for entertainment and alleged education, pat themselves on the back for their open-mindedness, and occasionally lecture autistic people about their new and improved autism awareness.
Even the backlash that briefly erupted last year when a particularly egregious clip of Shaun having an autistic meltdown circulated on social media was largely by and for non-autistic people, outside of a refreshingly thoughtful article featuring quotes by multiple autistic experts in medicine, advocacy, and culture in the Washington Post. I found the line between people who claimed to be mocking The Good Doctor’s portrayal of certain autistic traits and those who had gone all in on making fun of the traits themselves muddy at best, but non-autistic people were very quick to inform me that they were definitely laughing with me, not at me.
Over the course of its first six seasons, The Good Doctor failed autistic people by depicting Shaun as more of a hodgepodge of autistic stereotypes—a “cardboard cutout of what people believe an autistic person should be like” as activist Lydia Brown put in the aforementioned 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, Shaun demonstrated a level of ignorance and transphobia toward a patient that the show seemed to chalk up to his autism. Given that trans and nonbinary people are up to six times more likely to be autistic, his response made no sense. An autistic person in his position would have at least some familiarity with trans people.
The series showed some hope of improving its autistic cred in its final season when it brought on an autistic actor, Kayla Cromer, as Charlie Lukaitis, an autistic med student who was inspired by Shaun. Not only was this a welcome step toward the genuine inclusion of autistic people in the show’s creative process, it was also a chance to expand its exploration of autism in general. In theory, having more than one regular autistic character around could have granted the writers more freedom to dig into the diversity of the autistic experience. Unfortunately, that potential remained mostly unrealized.
Shaun and Charlie butt heads frequently in the early episodes, but there are also a few moments where Charlie is able to understand her fellow autistic and help him out. The mix of conflict and support shed some much-needed light on the fact that autistic people are individuals who are capable of clashing as well as clicking on a level no one else quite gets. But for every moment that offers a peek into autistic people’s complex humanity, there’s another that reflects little more than non-autistic people’s misconceptions and biases.
