Oh, the Humanity!
Can comedies actually showcase neurological disorders?
By Cat McCarrey
Diseases-of-the-moment usually bleed into pop culture. Whether in addiction episodes like the one behind the most infamous Saved by the Bell clip, the abundance of HIV plotlines in the teen dramas of the 90’s, or Ryan Murphy’s need to insert a Downs Syndrome character in every show he creates, pop culture sure does tap into the beating pulse of popular concern.
Right now, thanks to increased diagnoses and a bucket of vaccination lies sponsored by Jenny McCarthy, autism is the hot topic, and the entertainment industry is milking this new unknown. It’s as if the disorder is specially tailored to exhibit how in-the-know showrunners are. Forget the vaguely-disabled younger sibling, now there’s autism! Just place a character high enough on the autism spectrum to label it Aspergers, and you’ve got yourself one high-functioning special needs person to tug at those heartstrings.
Most television shows use the autism trope as a way to explain the social awkwardness yet brilliance of the main character. Diane Kruger on The Bridge or Matthew Grey Gubler on Criminal Minds. It s an extension of the Rainman stereotype, except now the Dustin Hoffman role has transformed into a gaggle of random television characters, all treated with the same intangible dignity. The dignity of slightly-elevated circus freaks—fun to look at, useful, but never quite reaching the status of actual person.
And yet, in a sea of generalizations, comes a new stage of enlightened television writing. Like the writing on a little thing called Community, a show that utilizes not the removed gravitas of the other, but nuanced humanity for those with autism.
Like him or hate him (or have a healthy dose of both), creator Dan Harmon’s return to Community during its fifth season can only be described as triumphant. The unprecedented move of Sony crawling back to a banished showrunner filled die-hard Community fans with glee, after a season of replacement writers David Guarascio and Moses Port almost-but-not-quite understanding the delicate spark that made the show special.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than the treatment of Abed Nadir, played by Danny Pudi, in the past two seasons. Abed is a pop culture junkie assumed, from the pilot episode onwards, to have Aspergers. He has all the diagnostic markers of the disorder: difficulty noting social cues, inability connecting on an emotional level, and filtering most of his world schema through movies and television.
Abed as a character could quickly devolve into a gimmick, someone to be trotted out as a special of the week, like The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper. As played by Jim Parsons, who has won four Emmy’s for the role, Sheldon’s autism is more likely to be the butt of the joke. He holds himself at arms length from the other characters, and that inability to connect is where the humor lays down and dies. Sheldon, why are you acting so weird? Because I’m weird! Cue laughter.
It would be tempting to take a hook like Aspergers and use it for lazy writing, but Harmon somehow managed to confront those tropes head on and turn them upside down. Because he didn't allow Abed’s condition to be his sole defining factor, he managed to flesh him out. Make him real.
Early on in the show, Dan Harmon revealed his special connection to Abed. He’s previously discussed how he initially wrote himself in the character of Jeff Winger, the snarky male lead played by Joel McHale, but quickly realized that he was more similar to a different member of the ensemble, Abed. This kinship was obvious throughout his tenure at the helm, as Harmon wrote Abed as a charming, childish man with idiosyncratic tics, enjoying acceptance by society for the first time.
This is something Community’s fourth season writers Guarisco and Port never managed to do. They tried—having Abed actually say “pop culture reference” at times, or having him clearly state that this is “the Shawshank episode”—but their attempts were so heavy-handed they robbed Abed of the humanity Harmon had carefully established. Attempts to showcase an actual disorder dissolved into caricature. It was a relief when Harmon returned, bringing back the necessary feather-light touch that the character needed.
In the newest season of Community, the fifth season, Harmon further developed Abed beyond his role as a disordered character. He wasn’t just an autistic character granted personhood by those around him, but was allowed growth on his own terms.
Abed has always been portrayed as someone comfortable with himself and his unique tendencies. Unlike other shows, he wasn’t defined by his disorder. He wasn’t seeking a “cure,” he wasn’t thrashing out at others. His autism was just another character trait, like Jeff’s narcissism, or Pierce’s (Chevy Chase) advanced age. Being slightly autistic was just another way to set up situations for the humor, but without the disease as a punchline—once again, like Sheldon Cooper, the other comedic version of Aspergers, whose jokes often result in a grabby plea to laugh at the strange creature.
The only time Abed’s disability was used as a plot mechanism was briefly in the fifth episode of the first season, where his lack of understanding about friends “messing with each other” leads him to pull an elaborate prank on his friend Troy (Donald Glover). Abed uses his odd behavior to convince Troy that he’s an alien. The episode puts Abed in control of the situation. Who is the joke on in the end? Troy and his stupidity, not Abed and his disability.
In the fifth season, Abed’s characterization expanded. This is rare enough in the comedy landscape. Seeing characters grow successfully in a sitcom is like seeing a narwhal—possible, but unlikely. Seeing an autistic character in a sitcom mature successfully? That’s like stumbling upon a group of line-dancing narwhals in cowboy hats.
But Community pulled it off. Fifth season Abed faced down the barrel of encroaching adulthood, whether prepared or not. His best friend and partner-in-quirk, Troy, left town. New people entered his life and were not as willing to humor his precise needs.
Newcomer Professor Buzz Hickey (Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks) proved an excellent foil for Abed. At first, Hickey seemed to be the new “old” character, filling the void left by an exiting Chevy Chase. But as the season played on, Hickey came closer to replacing Troy, but with twists that made his character’s relationship with Abed more interesting.
In the first four seasons, the ensemble cast interacted with Abed in a soft, enabling way. They knew he was “different,” but didn’t make it an issue. But five years is enough time for change. Rather than accepting without comment, like the original cast, Hickey exists to point out the ways Abed relies on his behavior as an excuse. He shows how it’s become a crutch. Community has tracked Abed becoming more aware of his place on the spectrum, coming to terms with it, and fully accepting it in his life. Now, it pushed him more intensely beyond his markers. And Hickey’s continued refusal to humor Abed or coddle him as an adult adolescent contributed to that reality.
The entire season built upon Abed’s personal growth. The sophomoric hi-jinks of other seasons subsided, but instead Abed assumed more responsibility as an adult. He entered into a romantic relationship with all the tinges of adulthood. When he needed a new roommate, he took the initiative to find one (and mostly represses all urges to make that search a Survivor-like death match). When Greendale Community College was threatened with closure, he didn’t retreat into a fantasy land, but engaged in a quest to save it.
Abed gradually learned to accept reality and to stop letting his Aspergers enable his development. And this all just happened. No fanfare, no softly-rising music. Just one heartbreaking character with incremental defeats and victories.
Half-hour comedies aren’t necessarily supposed to do that. The goal should be maximum laughs, not character development. But Harmon merged it all, creating a weirdly hilarious show with characters that, wonder of wonders, actually mirrors the human experience.
So it’s happened on TV. Now that understanding should extend to greater levels. Time to start pushing that movie.
