zer0netgain wrote:
2. Has AS. The biggest problem is the lack of consistent history. .
I picked this out, thus losing context, but I wanted to focus on just that one thing, "lack of consistent history".
I think this is a byproduct of being a TV character and it dooms to failure any attempt to diagnose characters with anything based on their character arcs and character traits.
The limitations of a character in a novel or a movie are whatever limitations the writer had. If a writer means for a particular character to have a particular condition, the limitation is what the writer knows about that condition. I think things go a little better when a writer has no specific condition in mind but is instead basing the character on somebody he's met in real life, allowing actual traits to come through rather than stereotypes pertaining to the condition.
Then there's the matter of the actor. However the writer writes the character, the actor will interpret it in his own way, adding character traits that he thinks fit even if they aren't specified in the script.
All of these limitations apply also to characters in TV shows with a huge additional limitation of long, long story arc that has the character evolving. A novel or a movie is self contained. The writer gives it a beginning, middle and end and envisions the characters as whole people moving through the story. But on a TV show, all that really gets written is a beginning and a bunch of middles. It's the rare show that actually has an ending written prior to shooting the pilot. So in reality, the characters are always evolving depending on how the show is received. If you watch a show from its first episode to its last, you can often see the characters slowly change as audience response to the show alters how the writers write it.
All this makes a firm and consistent diagnosis impossible. These aren't real people and writers will tweak the character traits to fit the needs of the plot or because the audience has responded to a character in a certain way (a response it is easy for writers to see now that all episode are discussed on boards). Character traits that may fit one diagnosis or another will ebb and flow according to plot (an ever changing plot that is constantly being written) and audience response rather than in accordance to how a real person would act.