Is ‘The Good Doctor’ Actually a Good Doctor? Fans Are Fighting About It, Again

Hello? Have we fallen into a time machine. It’s 2023 and The Good Doctor is trending on Twitter with 21.8K tweets and growing. What’s going on??

Well, what’s going on is a complicated and multifaceted conversation that stretches over multiple social media platforms that are both memeifying and analyzing old and new clips from the ABC series, in service of condemning or deifying the show’s portrayal of autism. You know, that old thing. If you’re still confused, read on as we attempt to break it all down.

Created by David Shore and inspired by the Korean series of the same name, the medical drama stars Freddie Highmore as Dr. Shaun Murphy, a young autistic surgeon working at an esteemed hospital.

The character has an eidetic memory and keen eye for details as a result of his Savant syndrome, but struggles with his interpersonal skills, which complicates his relationships with his colleagues and patients. 

As a result, Dr. Murphy often clashes with others, including his former Chief of Surgery, Dr. Jackson Han (Daniel Dae Kim), who fired him during a Season 2 episode. TikTok users recently revisited the scene which featured Dr. Murphy having an explosive breakdown after being demoted.

While demanding to get his old job back, he tells Dr. Han, “I am a surgeon” and refuses to leave his office until he is reinstated. The superior argues that Dr. Murphy is unable to control his emotions and has unprofessional outbursts. In response, the young doctor begins to yell, “I am a surgeon” repeatedly and is fired from the hospital.

Social media users, who may not be acquainted with the series, have turned the scene into a meme by sharing comments such as “I think he is an engineer.” Another posted the clip with a caption that reads “POV: you are a surgeon,” poking fun at the repetitive nature of Dr. Murphy’s rant. Others have edited the original video to show the two characters having superpowers, like vision rays, during their argument – with one amassing 1.7 million viewers in the six days since it’s been posted.

Another resurfaced clip shows Dr. Murphy screaming at his neighbor and eventual love interest Lea Dilallo-Murphy (Paige Spara) during a Season 3 episode, calling her “flaky” and “superficial.” Reporter Sara Lutterman shared the video, writing, “I am begging TV writers to understand that being autistic and being terrible to women are not the same thing.” Autism advocate Amy Gravino agreed with Lutterman while pointing out that the trend also appeared in the Netflix comedy-drama Atypical which featured an autistic character “breaking into his female therapist’s house and locking his own girlfriend in a closet.”

I am begging TV writers to understand that being autistic and being terrible to women are not the same thing. pic.twitter.com/kGqnduXOab

— Sara Luterman (@slooterman) May 9, 2023

These developing conversations have led viewers to question whether Dr. Murphy is actually a good doctor, as the title suggests. And, on a greater scale, has created a platform for people to share their thoughts on the autistic representation in these shows, which may be accurate in some cases, but are being used to create a one-dimensional perception of autistic individuals for the purpose of entertaining those who are neurotypical, rather than create a program that’s meant to be enjoyed by autistic people. One critic brought The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper into the conversation, writing, “​​The Good Doctor and Young Sheldon are not bad portrayals of autism because that’s just how some autistic people are, they’re bad portrayals of autism because they’re made specifically for allistics entertainment.”

In 2017, when the series premiered, the creator told Indiewire that he wanted to use Highmore’s character to dispel common misconceptions about autistic people. “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism. They are as unique obviously as any one of us. There’s a spectrum,” he said. “But there is this notion that they don’t have emotion, that they’re not smart because of the awkwardness and interacting with them and how they can shut down.” At the time, Shore admitted that Dr. Murphy would “very easy to do badly,” but was confident that the character’s emotional depth would keep him afloat.

And it did for a while as the show debuted to soaring viewership with the premiere drawing in roughly 11.22 million viewers and becoming ABC’s most watched Monday drama in 21 years, per Deadline. While the numbers have dropped substantially over the years, this good faith attitude has been popular enough to spawn a Good Lawyer spinoff focusing on a lawyer with OCD. 

Simply put, the bullying isn’t working.

Through the criticism of The Good Doctor, we are reminded that this show – and the ones mentioned in relation – are not the only offenders to the autistic community. In 2021, “Chandelier” singer Sia released a movie called Music which featured Maddie Ziegler as the title character, a nonverbal autistic child. The release flopped as a result of its lazy storyline and portrayal of the autistic lead, and also accumulated viral backlash for the casting of Ziegler and the depiction of holding an autistic person in a physical restraint during a meltdown, which could be lethal. It was also revealed that Sia originally cast an autistic actor for the role but the actor left the project after finding the experience “unpleasant.”

The recent conversations are also bringing to light more questionable moments throughout the series, like one incident where Dr. Murphy had an outburst during a surgical operation. The character removed his protective gear while in the sterile environment and repeated “no,” while exiting the room. A Twitter user wrote, “After this scene, the doctor trying to calm down The Good Doctor refuses to operate on the patient when he’s directed to and instead decides to continue trying to calm down The Good Doctor so he can finish the surgery,” insinuating that the patient’s life was in jeopardy. The same user revisited the character’s aforementioned outburst at Lea and wrote, “This scene is preceded by close to a full minute of The Good Doctor threatening this woman with a bat.” Which is just… not good.

Another clip shows Dr. Murphy continuously misgendering a transgender patient because he doesn’t understand why she would not identify with her biological sex. While the patient is receiving treatment, he questions her about her interests, asking if she plays with dolls and likes the color pink. Dr. Murphy’s colleagues repeatedly tell him that the interrogation is inappropriate. 

These out-of-context scenes from the show have led to people siding with Dr. Han, who, sure… had his fine moments, but was overall set on booting Dr. Murphy out of the hospital because of his autism and would purposefully manipulate the doctor to the point of having a breakout. And the Tiktokification of the “I am a surgeon” scene has launched a toxic conversation around which autistic traits are good vs. which traits are bad.

So, if you came to this article to ultimately figure out whether Dr. Murphy is, in fact, a good doctor… sorry, but the answer is a bit more complicated than that. In all, the conversations surrounding the series should gravitate towards a bigger call-to-action: hire more autistic people to tell their stories.