This has to be the best episode yet in this drama that manages to highlight so many human interest topics, the complexity of our emotions, and various relationship dynamics that pepper our lives - and in particular, the lives of the medical professionals who mostly behave toward us in their health care and healing roles, as though the only thing they are concerned with is us and our medical problems. We may rationally know and recognize that, of course, doctors and surgeons have lives and thus joys and woes like the rest of us. But in our preoccupation with being on the cared-for end of the equation, we easily overlook just how significant doctors' "own stuff" is, and that it is all going on at the same time as our own personal life story. And this one doesn't do what many TV medical series do, and simply make doctors into two-dimensional caricatures more interested in money and/or fame and accolades than substance.
So, that Freddie Highmore in particular, so dramatically captures and presents to us a person who is every bit the brilliant diagnostician and surgeon with autism is one thing. But his impactful delivery is only a small part of what is the true underpinning of this show: the incredibly well-thought-out characters, their development and a plot primed by the brilliant creators and writers of this show to reveal such complexities and make them believable elements. And all in an entertainment format that is otherwise all too prone to superficial and unrealistic content - so, wow! This tops the many previous glimpses we have been granted into Shaun's world and consequently his worldview, together with the often mistaken belief that those on the autism spectrum are either cold or emotionless, and that people's neurodiversity is still something that many find hard to accept amounts - yes, true enough - to differences between us, but not wrongness or 'less-ness' requiring or dictating being left behind or always being judged as "needing to be fixed."
So, I love the story and roles portrayed and played out in this episode. And coming on top of recent developments in Shaun's relationship with another neurodiversity-accepting person, Carly, and her rightful and inclusive emphasis on Shaun's many attributes, I am grateful this show is no doubt influencing a wide audience of viewers to open their minds (newly or further) to neurodiversity being an ordinary fact, not an oddity. To our human family as a whole being diverse beyond the ways we have already recognized (even as we struggle still to reconcile how to deal with what was in the past simply shunned and not acknowledged) in things like gender, sexual orientation, intellectual abilities, and so on, this too now stretches us.
The show's excellence In writing and acting, its candour and 'realness' we can relate to, its ability to engage us at a heartfelt level, are welcome in an increasingly negative and evil-focused set of fantastical prime time dramas. Kudos are due here for a show, and this episode in particular that hits it out of the park, to show us and to challenge us, to different ways of thinking, and deploying our empathy and our emotions. Not just well done, indeed it is at the top of every excellence category it could be.
So, that Freddie Highmore in particular, so dramatically captures and presents to us a person who is every bit the brilliant diagnostician and surgeon with autism is one thing. But his impactful delivery is only a small part of what is the true underpinning of this show: the incredibly well-thought-out characters, their development and a plot primed by the brilliant creators and writers of this show to reveal such complexities and make them believable elements. And all in an entertainment format that is otherwise all too prone to superficial and unrealistic content - so, wow! This tops the many previous glimpses we have been granted into Shaun's world and consequently his worldview, together with the often mistaken belief that those on the autism spectrum are either cold or emotionless, and that people's neurodiversity is still something that many find hard to accept amounts - yes, true enough - to differences between us, but not wrongness or 'less-ness' requiring or dictating being left behind or always being judged as "needing to be fixed."
So, I love the story and roles portrayed and played out in this episode. And coming on top of recent developments in Shaun's relationship with another neurodiversity-accepting person, Carly, and her rightful and inclusive emphasis on Shaun's many attributes, I am grateful this show is no doubt influencing a wide audience of viewers to open their minds (newly or further) to neurodiversity being an ordinary fact, not an oddity. To our human family as a whole being diverse beyond the ways we have already recognized (even as we struggle still to reconcile how to deal with what was in the past simply shunned and not acknowledged) in things like gender, sexual orientation, intellectual abilities, and so on, this too now stretches us.
The show's excellence In writing and acting, its candour and 'realness' we can relate to, its ability to engage us at a heartfelt level, are welcome in an increasingly negative and evil-focused set of fantastical prime time dramas. Kudos are due here for a show, and this episode in particular that hits it out of the park, to show us and to challenge us, to different ways of thinking, and deploying our empathy and our emotions. Not just well done, indeed it is at the top of every excellence category it could be.
