NBC’s Good Minds presents the perfect neurodivergent illustration I’ve ever seen.
As an autistic particular person, I’m hyper-aware of the stereotypes and unfavorable tropes that plague most characters who’ve any sort of neurodivergence.
Even The Good Physician, regardless of making big strides on this space, created extra issues than it solved., although Good Minds owes it a debt of gratitude.
Wolf’s Neurodivergence Is Solely Half Of His Story On Good Minds
Probably the most necessary ways in which Good Minds is completely different is that it’s about a health care provider who’s neurodivergent slightly than focusing solely on his neurodivergence as a supply of battle.
Certain, Good Minds Season 1 Episode 1 started with Wolf getting fired as a result of he took a affected person with dementia out of the hospital with out permission, however that was about his unorthodox strategies, not his face-blindness or different neurodivergent traits.
After all, neurodivergent persons are extra prone to break the foundations on this method. We’re typically loath to observe tips that appear to impede progress greater than they assist it.
Nonetheless, that story units Wolf up as somebody who will get in hassle as a result of he approaches drugs in another way than others, slightly than somebody that everybody doubts due to his neurodivergence.
It’s a delicate however necessary distinction between Good Minds and The Good Physician.
Most of the time, The Good Physician was in regards to the methods Shaun’s autism interfered together with his success.
Both his rigidity and want for sameness threw him completely off when one thing disrupted his routine, his bluntness offended somebody, or some physician determined he shouldn’t be a surgeon as a result of he’s autistic.
The Good Physician’s portrayal of autistic characters was meant to be inspiring, however its insistence on making Shaun’s autism a supply of battle inadvertently bolstered stereotypes about autistic folks, particularly the concept that it’s practically inconceivable for them to achieve conventional careers.
To date, Good Minds has prevented that entice. Wolf is neither a savant nor somebody whose neurodivergent-related challenges are handled as a critical impediment to success.
As a substitute, his neurodivergence is one a part of him, and he has way back discovered to compensate for his difficulties so he can succeed.
The closest his face-blindness involves being a critical impediment is when Nichols complains that Wolf ignores him within the hallways, which Wolf shortly clears up by explaining how his situation makes it in order that he actually doesn’t see Nichols when he walks previous him
The Intersection of Wolf’s Neurodivergence and Previous Trauma Is Clearer
Good Minds does one thing much like what The Good Physician Season 1 did: it makes use of flashbacks of Wolf’s childhood to discover the trauma that made him the person he’s as we speak.
Nonetheless, the main target is completely different. Whereas Shaun’s brother, Steve’s, dying on The Good Physician was inarguably traumatic, its impact on him was principally restricted to the plot level of Glassman taking him in afterward.
It wasn’t till he started fascinated by having kids of his personal that Steve’s dying was talked about in another context.
Conversely, Wolf’s trauma on Good Minds is… trauma.
His father’s psychological sickness and subsequent dying affected him deeply as a young person and are intertwined together with his neurodivergence.
Wolf has grown as much as be somebody who works exhausting as a health care provider to assist others and is enthusiastic about caring for sufferers, significantly ones that the world desires him to surrender on, but is closed off to most relationships.
He didn’t even need to educate interns when he first returned to Bronx Basic.
That isn’t handled merely as “neurodivergent man has poor social abilities.” Certain, that’s a part of it, however he is also afraid to let anybody get too shut due to that early loss.
Wolf can also be an brazenly homosexual man who grew up in a time when it wasn’t secure for him to be out.
That’s necessary on a number of ranges.
At a time when LGBTQ+ illustration on TV is declining, we’d like extra characters like Wolf.
I particularly like that Wolf’s relationship together with his sexual orientation, and with relationships normally, is difficult.
He embraces who he’s but doesn’t need to let anybody be too near him for varied causes. His trauma round relationships leads him right into a tough state of affairs with Nichols, his one-time enemy who will undoubtedly be his love curiosity sometime.
He’s a homosexual protagonist, not a homosexual secondary character, and I’m keen to wager he received’t immediately die in a gay-bashing incident to show the purpose that homophobia is on the rise as The Good Physician did to Asher on The Good Physician Season 7 Episode 5.
(Sure, I’m nonetheless bitter about that and at all times can be. The useless dying of a homosexual character just isn’t okay simply because a homosexual author accredited of the story.)
It’s remarkable to have neurodivergent LGBTQ+ characters on TV, regardless that there’s vital overlap between the 2 communities, particularly the trans and autistic communities.
Wolf Demonstrates That Neurodivergence Seems to be Completely different On Every Individual
Wolf just isn’t autistic; he’s obtained a distinct neurodivergent situation known as prosopagnosia, which implies he doesn’t acknowledge faces and has to memorize particular particulars about every particular person’s look in order that he can bear in mind who they’re.
This can be a completely different situation than we’ve ever had on TV earlier than, excluding an episode of Picket Fences in 1992 during which a person used that situation as his protection for murdering his brother.
It’s finished truthfully and demonstrates the methods it’s much like and completely different from autism. It’s additionally not the one neurodivergent situation on Good Minds.
Van has Mirror Contact Synthesia, a uncommon situation during which he feels the ache and different signs of his sufferers, and Dana has an anxiousness dysfunction that comes from the trauma of her sister’s dying.
(And sure, these are forms of neurodivergence regardless that they aren’t the splashy ones that are usually misrepresented on TV.
There are various extra examples of brains being wired in another way than autism and ADHD, although correct illustration of those can also be necessary.)
That includes all of those completely different characters helps forestall the foremost drawback with The Good Physician, which was that Shaun was an anamoly who nobody understood or was in any respect like.
Till the ultimate season, he was the one autistic particular person, physician or not, on your entire collection, which bolstered the concept that autism was uncommon and tough to cope with.
There Would Be No Good Minds With out The Good Physician
None of because of this The Good Physician was a horrible collection.
It was an necessary present that broke some necessary boundaries. Regardless of its missteps, it took the thought of autistic folks being human critically.
It didn’t deal with how exhausting autism was for different folks. It wasn’t about how “tragic” it’s for fogeys to have an autistic baby or any of that crap.
That’s why I don’t assume Good Minds might exist with out The Good Physician.
Earlier than this collection, it was remarkable to have a present about an autistic physician, by no means thoughts another neurodivergent situation.
Certain, the producers might have pitched it.
However would NBC, or another community, have purchased it when there was no proof that audiences had an urge for food for neurodivergent characters, by no means thoughts one as well-rounded as Oliver Wolf?
After all, there’s no option to know, however I believe it might have been a a lot more durable promote.
I don’t assume it’s that Good Minds is superior to The Good Physician as a lot as it’s that it constructed on what The Good Physician began and made one thing even higher, much more consultant of autistic folks.
Over to you, Good Minds fanatics!
What do you assume? Is Good Minds constructing on The Good Physician’s legacy, or wouldn’t it at all times have come into the TV world the best way it did?
Hit the feedback and tell us your ideas!
Good Minds airs on NBC on Mondays at 10/9c and on Peacock on Tuesdays.
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