The Good Doctor is an American medical-drama television series, which started in September of 2017, based on a Korean show of the same name. The premise of The Good Doctor follows as such: Dr Shaun Murphy is a man with autism spectrum disorder and savant syndrome, he becomes a first-year resident at a large and prestigious hospital, San Jose St Bonaventura. He has had a hard life in his hometown of Casper, Wyoming, but now he’s ready to start a new life, practicing medicine and hoping to become a surgeon. David Shore, the creator of the popular and acclaimed medical-drama, House MD, was brought on to develop and produce the series.

The main cast features Freddie Highmore as Dr Shaun Murphy, our protagonist. Nicholas Gonzalez plays Dr Neil Melendez, the arrogant yet competent attending physician, who is in charge of teaching the new residents, while going through his own emotional conflict. Antonia Thomas plays Dr Claire Brown, a fellow first-year resident to Shaun and a good friend to add. She is easy to talk to, empathetic and very emotionally mature, but has family problems that she has to resolve. Chuku Modu, as Dr Jared Kalu, is a person that we, the viewers, are meant to forget by the end of the first season. Beau Garrett plays Jessica Preston, the in-house attorney of the hospital, the granddaughter of the hospital’s founder and the fiancée of Dr Melendez.

Hill Harper plays Dr Marcus Andrews, the chief of surgery and a rival of Dr Glassman’s. He is looking for his chance to become president of the hospital, and hiring Shaun might get him what he wants. Richard Schiff plays Dr Aaron Glassman, the president of the hospital and a father-figure/ mentor to Shaun. Will Yun Lee plays Dr Alex Park, a former cop turned resident.

Fiona Gubelmann plays Dr Morgan Reznick, a highly competitive and blatantly straightforward resident. Christina Chang plays Dr Audrey Lim, a trauma surgeon who becomes chief of surgery later on in the show. Paige Spara plays Lea Dilallo, Shaun’s friend and love interest. Jasika Nicole plays Dr Carly Lever, a pathologist and another one of Shaun’s love interests.

Since the show launched on Netflix, The Good Doctor has been ranked in the top 10 most-watched shows in Pakistan on the platform. It’s no wonder, because Pakistanis are obsessed with the field of medicine. The Good Doctor is a fresh new medical drama, alongside New Amsterdam. It does the unthinkable by making the protagonist a person with a disability, something people consider an insult to anyone who may have it. Dr Shaun Murphy has ASD or autism spectrum disorder (which makes him ill-suited for social interactions) and savant syndrome (which gives him excellent visuospatial and recall abilities).

The Good Doctor does many things spectacularly well, while doing other things in a strikingly dull manner. The characters introduced in the show are written in a well-rounded fashion. The strengths that the characters wear on their sleeves hide their weaknesses. They are juxtaposed with each other and the patients they treat. The relationships that they get into and the friends that they make are contrasted with the lack of familial love when they were young. An example of good character writing is Dr Morgan Reznick; when she is introduced, she is presented as an antagonist, through her arrogant, know-it-all and competitive behaviour. But as the season progresses, the audience learns more about how she thinks, the advice she gives to Claire and Shaun and how she treats her patients etc. One ends up relating to her and starts to like her character.

Another thing that fans of medicine and medical TV-shows love about The Good Doctor is the realistic, and sometimes very in-depth, depiction of what goes on in the operating room. From the unconscious, opened-up patient, spread upon the table to the light banter that goes on between the doctors and nurses to the complications that arise and how they are dealt with, everything is as real as it gets. And props to the prop designer for making the insides of human beings look so filled with life on camera, which, alongside the animations of how Shaun’s visual thought-processing works, is the cherry on top.

The most important thing that The Good Doctor gives us is an accurate portrayal of mental illness. The show’s exceptional ability to connect physical illness with mental illness is a great means to spread awareness on the subject. Three of the storylines that I enjoyed the most in The Good Doctor’s three seasons on Netflix were the case of the mother with anorexia, the boy with gender dysphoria and, of course, our protagonist Shaun’s struggle with ASD. Mental illness has historically been a stigmatised subject in most of the world, and seeing as more than half of the world still considers it a stigmatised topic, talking about it does more good than harm. This is especially true in a country like Pakistan.

In 2001, the World Health Organisation reported that around 450 million people were suffering from a mental health issue, and an expected one in four people are likely to suffer from a mental disorder during their lifetime. That number had grown to around 792 million by 2017, which amounts to more than 10 percent of the world. In Pakistan alone, a reported 50 million people have a mental disorder. Many people face some sort of functional or occupational impairment in their life. And the stigma surrounding the topic has led many to be insulted, ridiculed and discriminated against because people don’t consider their suffering to be real, but only imagined. A show like The Good Doctor breaks these barriers, making mental illness less of a verboten concept and more of a reality. It serves as an awareness tool and a conversation starter.

So far, I have refrained from talking about the protagonist of the show in any meaningful way, precisely because that is the fatal flaw of the show. I am not saying that having a character with ASD in the lead role is a bad thing, certainly not, because the movie, Rain Man, does exactly that and does it better. If you think about Rain Man and compare it with The Good Doctor, you’ll start to notice some things that have been blatantly ripped off. Shaun has ASD and savant syndrome, just like Raymond Babbit. Shaun’s brother Steve and Raymond’s brother Charlie play similar supporting roles in the journey of the protagonists. When you give your lead such characteristics, you run into a trap, that ironically, you have set yourself; your protagonist is defined by his disability. His entire personality becomes that one thing. Anytime the writers change something, they are stuck with looking at it through the lens of the disability.

This is a double-edged sword; it can work to spread awareness, but the manner in which it is executed on the show can have the effect of alienating the viewership. Shaun is a prime example of this – any new development in the plot of the show is seen either through the lens of ASD, or, the writers forget what quirks their protagonist has and move the story along. For example, in season one, it is revealed that Shaun doesn’t like to be asked questions (this comes with its own set of problems, such as how he got through medical school). After the episode ends, it seems like the writers have forgotten that they gave Shaun this quirk.

The most problematic thing about The Good Doctor is that in its attempts to make the show more inclusive, they give the impression that aggrandising and unconditional acceptance of mental illness and to those who suffer from it is the only worthy thing. The portrayal of Dr Shaun Murphy, a doctor with ASD and savant syndrome, fighting with and always beating back all that the world can throw at him, isn’t completely realistic. A person with such severe ASD would not be able to do surgery, let alone be able to pass medical school. Such things make people believe that having ASD and being a savant is some sort of superpower, that it is beautiful and desirable and that therapy doesn’t help or shouldn’t be used to help these people.

Consider this for a minute, for a science-based, fact-checked medical show, The Good Doctor does a terrible job at representing the challenges faced by people with mental illness. That’s especially true when the protagonist has ASD and his entire theme is being brilliant. Somehow they fumble the therapy part up. In season one, episode 10, titled Sacrifice, Dr Glassman, Shaun’s mentor/ father-figure/ friend, asks him to see a therapist for help with his day-to-day functioning. What do you think Shaun does? He says no, I don’t need help from a therapist to learn, which is ironic considering that Shaun is shown to be ultra-rational in every decision he makes, and all his surgery ideas come to him as if straight out of a textbook. But somehow, he can’t rationalise how therapy would be good for him? The reason Shaun gives, or at least implies, is that he doesn’t need a therapist because he can learn from others, and attain the power to make his own decisions, essentially being independent: ironic, right? The entire point of therapy is to help you learn from others and become independent.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness said it best in their report that television and the media both sensationalise and misrepresent mental illness. The sensationalisation of mental illness can be damaging, particularly to young people and teenagers. Depictions of self-harm, for example, could convince some viewers to think of mental illness as tragically charming. People may assume that mental disease is merely a part of who they are and that therapy is a ruse, due to sensationalism. Suicide, on the other hand, can be contagious. According to some studies, suicide rates rise when news broadcasts sensationalise suicide stories or provide details on suicide attempts. Considering all that has been said about the show and knowing that better medical shows exist (like House MD, from the same creator), The Good Doctor gets a solid 6.5 out of 10. It is something that you can watch a few episodes of on a weekend, and turn your brain off as you do.

The writer is a student of psychology at BNU