Random TV Notes

~ Laura

Check out Mo Ryan's review of the last episode of Lost.

Presently, two shows on TV have characters with Asperger's Syndrome: Parenthood and The Middle. It's great, because finally TV is portraying a delightful, mildly affected kid and not the robotic, autistic kid who kills his family. Finally, autism isn't scary anymore. Whoo. Parenthood premiered last night. We liked.

The best commercial on TV:

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “Random TV Notes”

  1. I’d add Sheldon from Big Bang theory (I haven’t seen Monday’s episode yet, but according to the AS list I’m on, it was a good example of how people with AS can get in trouble with the law), Abed from Community, and Parker from Leverage, though I’ve seen that show only once or twice.
    The Middle is an awesome show that you all should be watching even if you hate Patricia Heaton, as I do.

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  4. I just watched Parenthood. I thought it was meh (I really could not loathe Dax Shepard more), but it was also a spot-on portrayal of a kid with AS, so I will continue to watch for that and for Peter Krause and Mae Whitman, whom I also liked.
    Dwight as an Aspie…. hm. I don’t think I would add him to the list because like all the characters on The Office, he is pretty one-dimensional. I read somewhere that Dwight is like a hyper-masculinized character and Angela is a hyper-feminized character, to the extent that they become parodies of gender. I forget where I saw that, but it rang true.

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  5. “I read somewhere that Dwight is like a hyper-masculinized character and Angela is a hyper-feminized character, to the extent that they become parodies of gender. I forget where I saw that, but it rang true.”
    Nah. If anybody is hyper-feminized, it would be Kelly. Dwight is hyper-masculine in a particular way (geekiness, hyper-focus on his goals, and inattention to social and emotional nuance), but Michael Scott is also somewhat differently hyper-masculine.
    Some of the Office characters are pretty flat, but I think that is partly on purpose to reflect the dehumanizing, soul-killing nature of the setting. On the other hand, while Michael Scott is exaggerated, you see him in the round, and I think he’s a rather impressive dramatic achievement. I always think about him when we talk about hypocrisy here. He wants to be loved, he wants to do the right thing, the generous thing, but his moral bank account doesn’t have a big enough balance to cover the checks he wants to write. He wants to do the right thing, but at no personal cost to himself.

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  6. Here is the article. “Hyper” was the wrong prefix.
    (I’m on Twitter embargo until I catch up on the Oscars. I started an hour late. Almost there.)

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  7. I think that piece gets the rightness of the Dwight-Angela pairing, without understanding why exactly it works so well. I think it’s one thing to make us care about the romantic lives of cute, nice people (Jim and Pam), but it’s quite a feat to make us care about the love life of a couple where the guy is doughy, cold and insensitive and the woman is cold and judgy. In some ways, there’s a lot more drama to Dwight and Angela, since each of them is unlovable in their own way and each obviously has much more limited romantic options than Jim and Pam. Likewise, I really like what the show has done with Andy-who-went-to-Cornell. Initially, he was a pretty one-note character, but they’ve added a lot more depth to him over the past year or so.

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  8. My husband and I die every time Andy mentions Cornell. He makes it look so nerdy. 🙂 We also knew someone on the Hangovers (a capella group).

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