After seven long seasons, The Good Doctor aired its final episode this summer. An estimated 2.47 million viewers watched the series finale, fittingly titled “Goodbye”—a 14 percent drop from its previous season finale last year.
The Good Doctor is a show about Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young surgical resident with Autism and savant syndrome, who overcomes personal and professional challenges to prove his exceptional medical skills at a prestigious hospital. It has always been a subject of great debate over its depiction of Autism. For a series that has been a large point of contention among the Autistic community, for better or for worse, The Good Doctor has cemented itself a seemingly permanent spot in the conversation about Autistic media representation and, more broadly, how Autism is seen by the general public.
I am Autistic, and I polled several fellow Autistic thought leaders and experts, and it’s official: The Autistic community mostly rejects the show, mainly for its oversimplified and flawed representation of Autism.
Main Character Syndrome: Autism Edition
Many in the Autistic community particularly dislike the depiction of Autism through the show’s main character Shaun Murphy, played by neurotypical actor Freddie Highmore.
“I find that it plays the Autism card a little too heavily,” said David Moloney, a board member for Autism Ontario.
“This show is very stereotype based, mostly because it’s an Autistic character written and played by non-Autistic people,” said Sydney Zarlengo, an Autistic actor and disability educator.
They continued:
“He is usually given a free pass for being occasionally the worst human and also committing so much malpractice because he’s Autistic. Accommodations and understanding is very important, but also very different from allowing someone to have a free pass to suck as a human being because of their Autism. Not the move. … This is harming how people view Autistic people—but also if he were an actually good doctor, I would probably like it anyway because I am far too desperate for representation and it’s a serious issue. But seriously, how did he not get fired immediately? Like, he should not be a practicing physician. Who let this happen?”
The Hollywood Reporter on Shaun Murphy: “With near-perfect recall, a photographic memory, and savant-like diagnostic abilities, he is the poster boy of ‘Hollywood Autism.’”
About The Good Doctor, author and Autistic culture writer Sarah Kurchak wrote in a piece for TIME that she “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 casting of a non-disabled actor in the role of a canonical disabled character is not a new issue: Among 31 shows studied for a report commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation, 95 percent of disabled characters are played by non-disabled actors. At a certain point, this no longer is a matter of talent, but rather one of disabled people being shut out and excluded likely due to their disability.
Overall, The Good Doctor‘s depiction of Autism was based almost solely through the lenses of neurotypical audiences, with little to no input from Autistic people themselves.
The Good Doctor serves as “a lesson in intention versus impact,” Autistic runner and content creator Ashley Daniels told Ms., “When we don’t allow autistic people to tell our stories, we get portrayals that feel like mockeries, inspiration porn, and exploitation of our disability for profit.”
Finally Hiring an Autistic Actor Could Not Save the Show
One month before the final season of The Good Doctor premiered, Deadline announced that Autistic actor Kayla Cromer would be joining the cast as Charlie Lukaitus, an Autistic medical student working under Murphy as part of her medical rotation.
This was likely an attempt to respond to critiques from the Autistic community.
Cromer had previously made history as the first Autistic actor to play an Autistic character in a series regular role on an American television show with her role as Matilda on the Freeform show Everything’s Gonna Be Okay.
Cromer has consistently spoken about the importance of diversity and inclusion in media representations of Autism. To many Autistic people, her success felt like a big step forward for representation.
In preparation for writing this article, I attempted to watch every episode of The Good Doctor‘s final season. I hoped that with Cromer’s inclusion, it could present an opportunity for the show to acknowledge and show viewers that Autism isn’t just the Rain Man archetype that their titular character had represented for its seven-year run.
Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed when Charlie turned out to be just the girl-version of Murphy, with little difference in personality between the two characters.
I’m not the only one who noticed.
Writer Jack Ori, who is Autistic himself, expressed similar sentiments in his review of Cromer’s debut episode.
“As an autistic viewer, I was thrilled that The Good Doctor hired an autistic actress to play the character. It’s about time—there’s no reason for it to have taken this long for an actual autistic person to portray a character that shares the way their brain is wired. But the way Charlie was written made her hard to take, which was a huge disappointment. The series’ original premise was that Shaun’s autism made certain things more difficult for him, and it seemed the writers were trying to recreate that with Charlie. But she came off as a parody of neurodivergent people, with every negative trait and few positive ones.”
In one scene, Cromer’s character is explicitly compared to an “untrained puppy.”
I think that tells you all you need to know.
“I think overall the legacy of it is going to be something more complicated and more like ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,’ where at the time of its airing it was rather progressive, but won’t stand up to the test of time.”
Rebecca “Riki” Faith Quinn, autistic actor and influencer
A Complicated Legacy
“The Good Doctor represents a one-dimensional, cis, white, male portrayal of a disability that many don’t believe is intersectional, which does a disservice to our entire community,” said Daniels.
According to Autistic actor and influencer Rebecca “Riki” Faith Quinn, the legacy of The Good Doctor is complicated.
“On the one hand, it is somewhat of a step in normalizing Autism,” Quinn told Ms. “But on the other hand, it normalizes a lot of harmful stereotypes that negatively impact the community.”
We as Autistic people deserved better. Nothing about us without us.
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