Autism in TV fiction? The "Night Gallery" episode "Brenda"

A very weird tale of a lonely girl and the monster she befriends one summer in the Night Gallery segment “Brenda.” The show seems hokey now. It was an attempt to cash in on Rod Serling's popularity; he only hosted this anthology horror series. This episode isn't particularly scary but an interesting "social story" with maybe heavy-handed psychological content. I'm sure at least some of us were or still are weird Brenda. A lot of us grew up in this horrific situation: people (such as parents) noticed what we now know is autism but didn't know how to handle it, so they handled it badly.

Why do we want autistic kids to have superpowers?

On TV.

Read it here.

AS on TV: Brick on "The Middle"

Article. A reason to watch besides Patricia Heaton's charms.

AFAIK like a lot of us the character's undiagnosed but totally one of us, down to repeating things in a whisper just after he's said them, the way some of us think aloud.

Buzz Killington

I think we've all been this guy at some point.

Life is not the movies: manic pixie dream girls

Here.

"Why don't you like me?" Sometimes you don't want a play-by-play

Even if you need to know, a rant all at once in anger is cruel, like badgering a witness in court.

TV pick: "Lie to Me" on reading faces

The obvious appeal of this besides Kelli Williams' beauty is it covers a basic skill in AS social-skills training, how to read faces. This show is based on fact: there are scientists who've studied people's body language down to what are called microexpressions lasting a split-second to tell if somebody's lying, obviously valuable in police work.

Similar: The Mentalist in which a former fake-psychic con artist, feeling guilty over some harm he caused, now works with the cops. "I'm not a psychic. I'm just paying attention."

Learning how to be a man: modern movies don't help

Says this article.

If you want to learn a bit of alpha game by video, old movies from the 1940s-1960s and retro imitations like Mad Men are better. They have not only tough guys but everymen with strong moral codes (Hank Fonda's and Jimmy Stewart's roles) and English toughness (stiff-upper-lip stoicism in adversity, something to learn to fake instead of melting down - hide your feelings publicly and take it like a man) like the calm, cool and collected colonel under fire.

AS senses of humor: satire/parody

I am clearly missing some fundamental insights into how the world works: so much of it makes no sense whatsoever.

So many of us feel that way of course, because the glitch in our brains either makes it impossible or very hard to get those insights. So of course besides fish-out-of-water stories and characters (aliens, robots and foreigners) - Spock, Data the android, Mork, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Latka on Taxi (who also has goofy front personalities), Balki on Perfect Strangers - many of us love comedy that makes fun of the normals' absurdity and hypocrisy, from Monty Python (I'm sure a number of us, like with our cousins among the normals, nerds, have memorized and like to quote whole sketches) to The Simpsons. Andy Kauffman's schtick as Latka falls under that too: the cute, childlike, clueless foreigner tries to guess at and imitate normal American behavior and becomes an obnoxious caricature. So do Mork, 3rd Rock and Perfect Strangers.

Therapy

It seems to me of all the talk therapies (most of which are useless with AS - your problems reading people are nothing to do with how your parents raised you or what you saw down by the mill when you were 10), cognitive therapy would work best with AS people. I've never tried it though so I don't really know. AS people overthink things compared to normals as a coping strategy; cognitive therapy would harness that.

Some therapy humor:

Boobytrap! "That came out wrong"

The good news and bad news of AS are the same: you'll never be someone other than yourself; AS can't be completely cured. So if you learn how to act normal it doesn't mean you're normal. The AS is one slip-up away, a banana peel waiting for you to step on it.

Suppose you know you have AS and have learned how to mimic normal body language (eye contact, personal space/distance) and know not to ramble or lecture about your favorite subject. You can hold down a job and have a few normal friends, maybe even (as quite a lot of us do) a wife and kids.

So you and the wife are looking at a new development in your town, luxury condos for singles. You drop the ball in five, four, three...

"If something happens to you and the kids, I'd love a setup like this."

Sorry I don't remember the source of the quote.

There was an episode of "House" that had something like this as its plot: a man has brain damage that knocks out his internal censor so he says everything he's thinking (he doesn't think his wife is as smart as he is and doesn't value her job as much as his, hardly abnormal but don't say them!) and even when he means to say something appropriate it comes out wrong (he knows what's happening so of course he doesn't want his little girl to hear him in this condition; it comes out "I don't want you here"). (BTW I don't think House has AS. He's just a very smart grouch.)

Putting on the right act: front personalities and playing roles

Like normals but more, we try to learn a lot about how to act from movies and TV. (Which explains one then-friend's nasty remark seemingly out of nowhere at the time, "You watch far too much television!") So here are a couple of quotes from classic shows to start off this post:

Lou Grant: You know how you usually are?
Ted Baxter: Yeah?
Lou: Don't be that way!

Mindy: Just be yourself!™ (stock advice to normals that's only partly true)
Mork: (Huge smile and exaggerated handshake) Ee-spah!
Mindy: Put on an act.

People with AS have often been compared to aliens in their own cultures and because it's often true, we often love fish-out-of-water comedies like "Mork and Mindy." Anyway, normal and AS, we all do it: role-play our way through life, code-switching for different audiences. (One AS person told me he imagines he's in a movie.)

So, seeing how the normal kids play Starsky and Hutch or whatever, the AS person who doesn't know he has AS tries to do the same with the make-believe characters he identifies with. The trouble is if you don't know what the underlying problem is, it'll backfire. But if you do, it's a valuable coping skill, a talent like the Oscar-winning actors have. (For example Robert DeNiro's really the son of beatnik artists. He used to hang around the Mafia kids and imitate them to blend in. Guess what he's made a successful living at?)

I mention Bobby DeNiro because one of his change-of-pace roles has been one of my personas for 25 years: the seemingly straitlaced 1940s priest he played in True Confessions.

One reason it helps is most of the time your model shows how to act normally: not annoying AS stuff like talking at somebody about only one or two pet subjects.

So here are some types whom AS people have tried on or might like to. They're the resident intellectuals of their worlds, who talk "little professor" style like we do, and are by circumstances foreigners or at least outsiders.

Mr. Spock: the greatest TV sci-fi character ever invented. Unusual-looking; IQ off the charts and sounds it; and because he's half-alien from a people for whom emotions are unknown, he doesn't quite understand or accept his own or others' feelings.

Frasier Crane: Class, speaking in the clipped old Mid-Atlantic style Bill Buckley and George Plimpton had (almost a cultured English accent), smart and showing it off with his big words and cultural references... and he manages to pull it off, even outlasting the other Cheers characters on the air. You weren't supposed to like him at first but you did.

(The character's ex-wife, Lilith Sternin, seems to be an AS stereotype, as outwardly cold as Spock and with a flat robot-like voice that says lots of big words.)

Part of the trouble with trying to play a cool and collected type like these is besides "little professor," another aspect of the AS personality that sandbags us is... we have very short fuses, the tolerance for frustration of a toddler. We throw tantrums. Especially of course if we don't know about the AS. So you can literally be a genius but after the first meltdown you get treated like a five-year-old. Front personality shot to hell.

So... learn about the AS, develop a coping strategy for the frustration and you have a shot.

Hello world: a TV recommendation

Welcome to the launch of this blog, written by two men with Asperger syndrome, one diagnosed, one not. It's to be a guide for other AS people on living happily with normal people and meant to explain us to normals too.

First, my TV pick for explaining your AS to your normal family, friends et al.:

Bones


She's sexy, smart and successful. And the greatest thing for AS people since Drs. Asperger "discovered" us and Attwood explained us to the world. Like a lot of us she's not diagnosed but she's odd. But it doesn't get in her way. Good for explaining to normals we don't all act like the Rain Man. They call it the autistic spectrum for a reason; some of us make it to the same level as normals. With your high IQ, understanding the condition and a few field-tested workarounds (coping skills), chances are so can you!

P.S. AFAIK the actress doesn't have AS.