‘The Good Doctor’s Controversies Remind Us We Need Better Representation

Recently, social media made it a point to highlight a scene from the episode “Breakdown” in which the protagonist Shaun experiences a meltdown, an experience defined as an “intense response to an overwhelming situation,” often involving being overstimulated by one’s current environment. During this clip, Shaun, who is provoked by his ableist colleague who wants to limit Shaun’s working abilities, shouts “I am a surgeon” repeatedly while looking emotionally overwhelmed. In response, social media has recreated this scene as a meme, twisting Shaun’s line “I am a surgeon” into “I am a sturgeon” (as in the fish) along with other remixes parodying the scene. While the accuracy of this scene depicting an actual autistic meltdown is questionable, the response to it is indicative of a larger systemic of how our society sees neurodivergent people.

What Can the Response to ‘The Good Doctor’ Teach Us About Ableism?

Over the past few years, as The Good Doctor has grown in popularity, many disability advocates have pointed out the troubling implications of the way the show has represented autism and how it conducts its own research on the topic. When it was revealed that Highmore had based his portrayal of Shaun’s autistic traits on the organization, Autism Speaks, many actually autistic advocates pointed out the organization’s less-than-great actions, including its infantilizing treatment of autistic adults.

Autism and Savant Syndrome Are Not the Same‘The Good Doctor’ Blames Shaun’s Prejudice on His Autism

 Image Via ABC

“Nothing About Us Without Us”

As a society, we have finally evolved to see disabled and neurodivergent people making media about their experiences themselves, filtering their fiction through the lens of their own real-life experiences. Recent years have shown excellent showcasing of autistic representation in shows like Everything’s Gonna Be Okay and A Kind of Spark, with both of them being developed with autistic artists in front of and behind the camera. At the very least, these shows demonstrate how autistic individuals are very capable of producing quality entertainment without sacrificing autistic accuracy and show how more people within the community deserve the chance to tell their own stories.

We can definitely do better than continue to make shows like The Good Doctor that not only fail to cast neurodivergent actors for neurodivergent lead characters, consult questionable resources, and perpetuate outdated stereotypes about neurodivergent people but also prompt making fun of neurodivergent people in real life.