Premiere of TV show "COMMUNITY" on NBC

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Did you guys see "Community" on TV last night? There was a scene where Jeff tries to berate Abed by calling him "Asperger's." The people around Abed snickered because they thought it was such a funny word. The whole scene to me was very offensive to the Asperger community.

How is the character of Abed presented? I think the actor is very cute. I've seen him in a few commercials.

I'm not sure he was trying to berate him. If you noticed at the beginning when he was telling Jeff about what he knew about the girl he liked in his Spanish class Abed said "She has a sister who works with kids who have a condition that she thinks I should look up" or something to that effect and then at the end Jeff said "You have Asperger's" before he walked out. It wasn't a very sensitive treatment by any means and they were definitely joking around about it after Jeff left, but the Chevy Chase character is some old creep that we learned prior clearly does not have any tact whatsoever. And if you haven't heard the word before it is going to sound odd, though he laughed and made jokes because he is just rude in general (and probably does feel out of place being a senior citizen with a bunch of people that could be his children or grandchildren so he is probably struggling to fit in but clearly doesn't know how). But I think he said that not as an insult but because the character was designed to show traits of Asperger's but apparently does not know it.

Abed talks a lot and speaks in quotes from movies and relates a lot of people/situations to movies so I'm guessing if they go along with him actually having Asperger's that this is one of his special interests, though I don't know if it is part of the continuing storyline or not. He seems pretty outgoing, nice and helpful, but collects a lot of information (especially information related to people) and interrupts conversation a lot with his random movie stuff and etc. I don't know there has only been one episode so I can't tell much but I did enjoy the show and the character so far.

It was done for laughs.

Besides, the character of Ahmed has too much of a sense of humor to have Asperger's, although he does have weird habits like randomly repeating movie quotes and facts, etc.
I don't know, he might, but it's only a vague possibility.

He's a lot closer to having Asperger's than most other "geek characters" I've seen on TV. One thing to take note of is Abed's lack of eye contact and facial expression. He rarely, perhaps never changes his facial expression when he's happy or sad about something. That's a biggie in my book.

Umm, people with asperger's change their facial expressions just as much or more than neurotypicals.

What's often called a "flat affect" is actually pretty common in Aspies. I remember being shocked when the evaluator diagnosing my son remarked on it, because it was something I was too close to him to notice. Now that he's older, it's more noticeable, as is the unusual tonality of his voice.

From the DSM-IV: (A) marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, *facial expression*, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction

We just started watching episodes of "Community" last night and so far I really like it. Though I thought Abed was shown as friendlier in the pilot and they have been making him more stereotypically Aspie since then.

Funny I find this thread after just starting to contribute on here. Honestly, Community is what made me look up Asperger's and later on get my diagnosis. Like Abed, I was one of the cinephile type Aspies when I was younger. Always quoting movies and using media framework to filter certain real life situations. Whether they portray him correctly or not, they got one thing right: whenever Abed is in the group as a whole, he is usually regarded as a weirdo, but when Abed is with only one or two characters in a scene, he is portrayed as the "all-seeing wiseman" personality that every other character gets to individually experience and respect.