The Good Lawyer - casting and airdate announced

[Guest]

TV Line has just announced who has been cast as the two main players of the The Good Doctor spin-off The Good Lawyer. Kennedy McMann will play the role of Joni DeGroot, a lawyer with OCD (McMann herself has OCD), Felicity Huffman has been cast as Joni's mentor Janet Stewart. The backdoor pilot that introduces the characters will air on Monday, March 6, at 10/9c on ABC.

More information here (contains minor spoilers for what I assume will be a larger Shaun storyline in season 6.2): https://tvline.com/2023/01/11/the-good-doctor-spinoff-kennedy-mcmann-felicity-huffman-cast-lawyer-abc/

[thuganomics85]

Love Kennedy McMann on Nancy Drew (an underrated show despite some issues during the last half of its third season), so I'm glad she's already got another gig.  Honestly have heard much from Felicity Huffman after her whole scandal involving the college admissions, but I guess it wasn't enough to affect her career too much.  I can see her fitting that potential character well.

Still wondering what legal trouble Shaun is going to get himself into that he needs representation.  Will it be a story later down the line or have seeds already been planted?  Admittedly, it might be my bias showing, but I kind of wonder if Powell will somehow be involved since we've seen them clash quite a bit.

[bros402]

I wonder if they'll treat OCD better than this show treats Autism, given that they'll have a star with OCD?

[bros402]

17 hours ago, TeeJay said:

I mean, TGD also has a staff writer with ASD and they run all scripts by an autism consultant. Maybe not the same thing as having someone with the condition portray the character, but it's not like there's no ASD representation on TGD at all. I suspect they will always make certain cutbacks on things that realistic if that doesn't work well for the story they want to tell. At the end of the day, their primary goal is to tell interesting and suspenseful stories and not to make a documentary about autism or OCD.

That said, of course the best effort should always be made to portray a condition as realistically as possible. I also think the show is really trying, even though they don't always hit the mark.

Having a writer with autism doesn't mean they write autism well (or that they are listened to in the writers room). If they have an autism consultant.... I doubt they listen to them, based on how things have gone on this show.

There is always dramatic license for how things are portrayed - it just gets.... let's just say annoying, when it gets to the point of mockery and/or inspiration porn

[circumvent]

21 hours ago, TeeJay said:

TGD also has a staff writer with ASD and they run all scripts by an autism consultant.

Do you have the name of those two people? I would be very interested in knowing who they are. Some autistic people who are quite "famous" in the community are also plagiarists and get paid and/or promoted for saying what organizations that have a lot of money but little interest in actually working to improve the lives of autistic people want they to say. I am curious because I know stories and might even find evidence of the plagiarism.

I don't think it is this one person, known as JER, but he was defending a nazi who murdered people because said nazi was said to be autistic - as if disability exempts someone from crimes. Just an example of how people can be autistic and damage the image the larger society has of autistic people

[circumvent]

3 hours ago, TeeJay said:

And maybe this is just my impression,

It is your impression. I don't assume motives, I might assume something if I know of any information that makes my assumptions likely, or possible. Otherwise, I just comment on what I see

Edited January 14, 2023 by circumvent

[bros402]

18 hours ago, TeeJay said:

Yes, I do. The writer with ASD is Mark Rozeman. I believe David Shore spoke about being thankful for having a writer with ASD on their team in at least one interview. I don't have the link handy for that, but I've read that interview. Fellow disabled writer David Renaud mentions Rozeman being on the autism spectrum here: https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/david-renaud-good-doctor-disability-1202910405/ Rozeman is also quoted as autistic writer in this article: https://feature.variety.com/disability/entertainment-assets-not-afterthoughts

Rozeman started out as a script consultant and was promoted to staff writer in the later seasons. There's this one story I recall hearing that Rozeman, who wrote 3x11 Fractured, said the scene where Shaun has the almost-meltdown in Glassman's office was very much based on his own experience of experiencing rejection as an individual with ASD.

The autism consultant is Melissa Reiner, she has several online accounts on social media under the name Ask Melissa Now or AskMNow. She's a trained behavioural therapist who works a lot with autistic individuals.

She has posted short one-minute episode insights for each and every TGD episode where she talks about specific things in the scripts that were changed after she advised about it not being realistic or appropriate. Often those are just specific lines they changed, so I don't think she's involved at the episode conception stage. She gets an early draft of the script, reads it, and tells the writers where they missed the mark to leave it up to the writers whether to change it or not. In most instances they have, in some they haven't.

This is her website: https://www.askmnow.com/

These are playlists of all the episode insights videos. The first few in season 1 are a bit of repetition since she talks about the anxiety response when being asked questions almost every episode, but they become a lot more diverse in topic for the later seasons.

Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 1
Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 2
Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 3
Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 4
Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 5
Ask Melissa Now – Episode Insights – Season 6

I don't think any of these two individuals claim to be something they are not.

And maybe this is just my impression, but it sounds to me like maybe you think Shore and people attached to the show just sat down and went, "Oh hey, let's write a show with an autistic protagonist, could be fun and interesting" and then they just went ahead and wrote whatever they thought was fitting. If you've read and watched interviews with Shore and Highmore, they've talked a lot about how they try to make the autism as realistic as they can within the confines of a TV medical drama. They really do try, and they do so in an ongoing fashion. Sure, sometimes Shaun's ASD may be somewhat over-caricatured or used for a quick laugh. There's episodes I hated beause of this, for instance 5x05 Crazytown. They don't always get it right, for sure.

oh no, reading "behavioral therapist" makes me think ABA. ABA is pretty much the autistic equivalent of dog training

[circumvent]

14 hours ago, bros402 said:

oh no, reading "behavioral therapist" makes me think ABA. ABA is pretty much the autistic equivalent of dog training

Right? Someone is still to point out to me the positive in teaching autistic kids to never say "no" while training them to comply with everything neurotypical people want. It is like grooming people to accept abuse and be a pleaser, at the cost of their own individuality and independent thinking. 

[bros402]

19 hours ago, TeeJay said:

You're awfully quick to judge there. Have you even looked at Melissa's Reiner's work? It's like like you're automatically assuming the most negative every time someone posts something.

Have you ever looked up autistic POVs on ABA?