My ex called me up to make sure I watched Law&Order:Criminal Intent today, titled "Probability". This episode was about a man who is an Aspy, someone with Asperger's Syndrome. Many of my family are Aspy-ish, to a lesser or greater extent. Including me.

The portrayal was good, but stereotypical. By stereotypical, I mean the writers and the actor looked up the clinical criteria list for a diagnosis, and turned them all up to 11.

But as extreme as this character was, I could feel echos of him in myself. Right down to the piano playing, the desire for keeping comfortable things the same, and the divorce. He was even cynical about one of the same things I'm cynical about:

"Women like money."
"Men like money too."
"That's because they know that women like men who have money."

At least my ex didn't immediately marry a much richer man, like his did.


But Goren's partner's reactions to and belittling of this man really grating on my nerves. He was smart, more capable in his field as she is in hers, decently attractive, but because he kept messing up her comfortable field of social cuing, she could do nothing but belittle him. In other words, she was expressing the condition that AS's refer to, only partially tongue-in-cheek as "Neurotypical Personality Disorder", or "NT".

The world would be a better and happier and less unpleasant and dangerous place if the relative proportions of NTs and AS's were flipped.