Chapter Text
Complicated Spectrums: Love, Television, and the Uncomfortable Politics of “Love on the Spectrum”
Section I – Introduction: Watching Myself Watching Them
When I first heard of Love on the Spectrum, I laughed, winced, and froze in almost equal measure. The idea of a dating show about autistic people struck me as too surreal to exist, like someone had grabbed my diary and pitched it to Netflix without my consent. It was marketed as wholesome, uplifting, a series that finally “lets the neurodiverse experience shine.” And yet, as I sat watching the first American season in 2022, I felt a pang of recognition that was not comfortable. This wasn’t a mirror—it was a circus mirror, bending something familiar into something uncanny.
As an autistic woman, I cannot watch Love on the Spectrum as a neutral observer. I watch it with a double-consciousness, always both participant and critic. Every scene is tinged with my own memory: of occupational therapy exercises, of parents speaking for me in school meetings, of teachers treating me like I was fragile porcelain when I was just socially blunt. The show’s participants remind me of friends from disability support groups, or of the selves I might have been if my path diverged slightly. But the framing—the intrusive camera angles, the constant parental commentary—reminds me of how institutions narrate our lives for us.
That doubleness, I think, is the key complication of Love on the Spectrum. It is not purely exploitative, nor purely empowering. It is both. It is tender and condescending, affirming and infantilizing. Watching it requires me to hold contradictory truths at once: that I am moved by Abby singing to David, and that I am horrified when her mother uses the same spotlight to spout anti-vax rhetoric. That I adore James’s Renaissance fair outfits, while knowing the edit positions him as comic relief. That I see Tanner’s bright smile and also the years of conditioning behind it.
In this essay, I want to unravel that knot. I want to use my own fandom-like engagement with disability media—yes, even reality TV counts as fandom when you obsessively analyze it—to examine what Love on the Spectrum does and fails to do. I want to reflect, as someone who makes “lore documents” of my own creative projects, on what happens when those documents are written by non-autistic producers about autistic lives. And above all, I want to confront the uneasy politics: the unpaid cast, the platformed parents, the old specter of eugenics resurfacing in comment sections.
The irony is that Love on the Spectrum itself embodies its title. Love is complicated. So is autism. So is television. When all three intersect, the result is not a clear narrative of inclusion but a jagged spectrum of contradictions.
Section II – The Show’s Premise and Its Disarming Wholesomeness
Let’s start with the surface: what Love on the Spectrum claims to be. The American series, adapted from the earlier Australian version, follows autistic adults as they navigate dating, relationships, and family life. Each participant is introduced with gentle music, bright cinematography, and a soft-voiced narrator. The effect is disarming: this is not exploitative trash TV like Love Is Blind. It looks, on first glance, like documentary care.
And to be fair, there are moments of genuine beauty. Abby and David at the zoo, their shared love of lions blooming into romance, feels tender and real. James explaining his medieval costumes, or Madison showing off her jewelry and dolls, lets us see autistic joy in detail often denied in media. There is comfort in simply seeing autistic people on screen, talking about themselves, not relegated to background caricatures. Representation matters, and in a landscape where autism is usually reduced to Rain Man or The Good Doctor, this felt revolutionary.
But that wholesomeness is also a trap. The show packages autistic people as “cute” and “wholesome” in ways that often collapse their complexity. Neurotypical viewers gush about Tanner’s “golden retriever energy” as if he were a pet, not a man. Parents are given equal airtime to narrate their children’s inner worlds, reinforcing the idea that autistic adulthood still requires parental translation. Even the dating coach’s advice—pulling out chairs, rehearsing small talk—feels less about helping autistic participants find genuine love and more about reassuring neurotypical audiences that “they can learn to act normal.”
This is the first contradiction: the show’s kindness veers into condescension. Its softness blunts the sharp realities of autistic life: poverty, discrimination, abuse, trauma. There are no autistic stoners here, no punks with tattoos, no queer dropouts navigating chosen families. Everyone is middle-class, family-supported, sanitized. Diversity is presented, but only in safe doses.
When I watch these curated wholesomeness packages, I feel both warmed and chilled. Warmed because yes, it is nice to see autistic affection celebrated. Chilled because I know the edit is protecting the comfort of non-autistic viewers, not the autonomy of autistic subjects. The show is not really for us. It is about us, but not ours. That dissonance haunts every smile.
Section III – The Parents, the Platforms, and the Politics
If the show were simply wholesome fluff, I might shrug and move on. But its complications deepen when you look at who gets to speak. Again and again, the most consistent narrators are not the autistic participants but their parents.
James’s father, thankfully, models a healthier relationship: banter, gentle teasing, encouragement. But others—like Tanner’s mother Nikki or Abby’s mother Christine—use the camera as a pulpit. They talk about vaccines, ABA therapy, “different kinds of autism,” even their own suffering raising “special kids.” In doing so, they re-center the old “autism parent” narrative that advocacy groups like Autism Speaks made infamous. Suddenly, the show about autistic love is overshadowed by parents’ grievances.
This is not neutral. These parents are now public figures, invited onto podcasts, growing platforms that they use to spread misinformation. Nikki admits she signed Tanner up without his consent. Christine defends ABA and flirts with anti-vax conspiracies. And Netflix does nothing to contextualize or counter these claims. The camera simply lets them stand, unchallenged, next to their children’s romances.
For me, this hits painfully close to home. I know what it feels like to have others speak for me—teachers, therapists, family members. To be treated as though my own words were insufficient, needing translation. To watch people discuss me, about me, in front of me, while I sat silent because the power dynamic demanded it. Seeing Abby laughed at by her mother, or Tanner constantly seeking approval from his, dredges that memory up. The exploitation is not overt but insidious: the show offers parents a microphone and autistic adults a stage, but rarely lets the latter narrate themselves without interruption.
This is where Love on the Spectrum crosses from complicated to dangerous. Representation without autonomy is not progress—it is paternalism. And in 2025, when autism rights are still politically embattled, paternalism feeds the very structures that seek to control us.
Section IV – Audience Reception and the Specter of Eugenics
If you want to know why this matters, you don’t need to look further than the comment sections. On Reddit, YouTube, even casual Twitter threads, you see the same refrains: “They act like children.” “It’s creepy to have a crush on them.” “They shouldn’t have kids.” Over and over, viewers conflate autism with immaturity, incapacity, and danger.
The most chilling are the “mental age” comments. “Tanner may be 25, but mentally he’s a child.” No. Tanner is 25. His brain has lived 25 years. He has 25 years of memory, perception, experience. To say otherwise is not just insulting; it is historically eugenic. The idea of “mental age” was developed to justify forced sterilization. It was used to declare disabled people “unfit to reproduce.” When viewers casually invoke it, they echo that same lineage, even if they don’t realize it.
What horrifies me most is how the show enables this. By portraying participants as “cute” and “wholesome,” by foregrounding parental worry, by editing out alternative autistic lives, it primes audiences to see us as perpetual children. And once you see someone as a child, denying them adult rights—sex, marriage, reproduction—feels natural. That is why Tanner’s reluctance to date becomes infantilized, not respected. Why Abby’s dolls are seen as childish, not as a valid special interest. Why entire threads debate whether autistic people should be allowed to be parents.
This is not abstract. This is dangerous. Because when eugenics reemerges in subtle forms—in Reddit threads, in Netflix edits—it softens public resistance to its harder forms. Autistic registries. Institutionalization. Sterilization. These are not relics of the past; they are policies still debated, sometimes enacted, within living memory. Watching Love on the Spectrum without addressing this context is like watching a train approach and calling it “cute.”
Section V – My Own Lore, My Own Lens
Here’s where I turn the mirror back on myself. I, too, make documents about autism. Not in Netflix boardrooms, but in my writing: essays, fanfic, lore charts, long rants disguised as “meta.” I, too, package autism into narratives. And I, too, struggle with the ethics of that.
When I write about Groundbreaking, my Dragon Ball AU, I often map my own autistic experience onto characters. I write Gohan’s spirals of guilt, Solon’s overstimulation, my own stimming and shutdowns refracted through Saiyan bodies. These are lore documents, not unlike the “guides” Netflix producers use to shape arcs. The difference is that I write them from within, not about others. My documents are attempts at self-love, not paternalism.
And yet, I still wrestle with the same question: who is this for? When I post a fic, I know neurotypical readers might read it as quirky, dramatic, “cute.” I can’t control their interpretations. All I can do is write with enough honesty that other autistic readers recognize themselves, too. That they see not just the “wholesome” parts but the complicated mess of joy, rage, trauma, and love.
That’s what Love on the Spectrum could have been. It could have been a space for autistic people to narrate themselves, even if messily, even if contradictorily. Instead, it curated us into palatable wholesomeness. It wrote lore documents about us without us. And that, I think, is the central tragedy.
Section VI – Conclusion: Toward a Different Spectrum of Love
By now, my feelings about Love on the Spectrum should be clear: they are as contradictory as the show itself. I cried at the sweet parts. I raged at the exploitative parts. I laughed at autistic joy. I winced at neurotypical framing. It is, as one reviewer said, a “weirdass show.” And maybe that weirdness is inevitable when love, autism, and television collide.
But complication cannot excuse irresponsibility. When you put autistic lives on screen, you inherit responsibility: to pay them fairly, to contextualize misinformation, to resist infantilization, to show diversity beyond sanitized middle-class wholesomeness. Netflix failed in many of these tasks. And the result is a show that comforts neurotypicals more than it liberates autistics.
For me, the irony is personal. Watching Love on the Spectrum is like watching someone else use my lore documents but erase my commentary. The structures are there—autistic special interests, blunt honesty, unconventional love—but the meaning is filtered through someone else’s lens. It is like making a graphic organizer and watching the teacher use it for a different essay. The irony is painful because it is familiar.
So where does that leave us? For me, it leaves us with a call: autistic people must keep making our own media, our own documents, our own messy love stories. We cannot rely on Netflix to tell them faithfully. We have to write them ourselves—whether in fanfiction, essays, YouTube videos, or collective projects. The spectrum of love is ours to narrate, not theirs to curate.
And as I close this essay, I think of the meme I wrote about before: “Make the plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails. Throw away the plan.” Love on the Spectrum was a plan, carefully executed, and then it went off the rails into exploitative territory. Maybe the next step is to throw it away and let autistic people write the next version ourselves.
Because love—on or off the spectrum—was never meant to be edited into palatability. It was meant to be lived, complicated and whole.