Autism and Understanding TV Shows

Post Reply New Topic

Hey, basically a newbie here, and one of the things that finally got me to join was watching a crime drama tonight and being totally unable to piece together what was going on.

It's hard for me to parse rapid-fire information or directions anyway, and especially with crime shows this happens a lot, with characters constantly finding new leads, giving each other tasks. It's always, "Johnson, go process those fingerprints in the lab. Jane, go talk to this witness about what the victim was doing at X time at Y place, was it Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candlestick?"

But seriously. x) Sometimes it makes me feel vaguely anxious or sick when I can't follow the plots of TV shows, and start to lose the thread of what's going on, or can't understand what people are saying. There's enough transference between TV and RL (hah) to remind me that if I can't understand what's going on in simple prime-time TV shows, I'm also going to have problems keeping things straight and knowing what's going on in real life, especially taking directions from people. Maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone else, but sometimes watching characters do something even as simple as grocery shopping or talking on the phone -- simple daily transactions, socializations, activities -- or whatever stresses me out, because even these basic things can be a cause for anxiety. Obviously I see people able to do s**t all the time, but in the case of TV you're literally watching a person be a model of competence and capability. (Exaggerated by being scripted, i.e. actors never say "um," they're never clumsy, etc.)

I know the solution here is either a) don't watch TV, or b) get a grip and remember that everything is scripted, but I enjoy TV and it's simply annoying that it triggers thoughts of my shortcomings.

It sucks, 'cause, you know, watching TV is supposed to be a way to just relax and unwind. Ugh, stupid stressor NTs don't have to worry about.

Anybody else?

Last edited by Ambrila on 11 Sep 2014, 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Do you have this trouble with books as well? It could be you're just not a good audio learner, so listening to people talk would be the least efficient way to learn something. It's not necessarily an aspie thing, just a thing.

I've thought about that, and that's probably the bulk of the issue. If I'm able to review what happened a few times (like you can reading a book) I can sometimes put it together. There's something about listening to spoken information, at least task-based or technical information, that's hard. (If someone's telling me about their life or their day, it's usually fine. If they're listing things, and the info is a bit more "analytical," or if they're giving me things to do, I run into trouble. Hmm, maybe it's just that I don't like doing things! )

But yeah, that's a good thought. Maybe there's a way to improve "verbal comprehension" skills.

I am often annoyed when in works of fiction a characters motivation makes no sense, or the creators offer no insight into why a character is performing certain actions. Others say it is obvious why, like duh he is an evil dude of course he would do that! But I still want some sense of WHY he would do that.

One work of fiction I found amazing was the Song Of Fire And Ice book series by GRRM, turned into the TV series Game Of Thrones. The chapters are written from dozens of different characters point of view and include their mental thoughts, the author goes amazingly in depth to show what each character is thinking and their motivations. The author puts a lot of effort into making these characters feel like real people, showing you their thoughts and the limited information they are acting on. He really shows what it is like in real life, where no one knows what is really going on and people are working off of only what they know and see.

Having Asperger's hasn't stopped me from understanding movies and series. There have been a few movies that have had such a strange ending that I didn't get it, but my NT mother has also been confused by the same movies, so it's not just me, and in one case we looked the movie up online, and found a discussion on said movie where there was more confusion about the ending, so it definitely wasn't me.

I can find it hard to pay attention, my mind will usually wander a bit (sometimes a lot) and that can make me miss out on information I need in order to get it, but that's a concentration thing, not a misunderstanding thing. There have been times I've had to rewind DVDs and recordings because my mind can be such a wanderer.

Also: If a lot of info is said at once I find it hard to process it all before the movie/ series moves on. That happens very rarely in fiction, but can be a problem in documentaries. That goes for books as well. There are books where I can read only a sentence at a time and then I need to digest it before continuing.

Absolutely. That's an issue with a lot of these TV shows too, they're very plot-driven and characterization is almost thrown out the window. So you just end up with a bunch of things happening and either very little, or very sappy, emotion driving it. Why do people want to be directed by the "applause lights" of "He's good and he's evil!" instead of getting an interesting character study?



Yeah, darn those random info dumps, especially technical info dumps. Makes me feel like I've just been hit by a freight train, like, what just happened? Gotta go catch up...Do you think for you it's the subject matter of the documentaries, like if you're just getting a list of facts it's boring and harder to concentrate on?

I can have a hard time watching TV shows an movies, too. I will be paying attention and miss what characters say (things that my family catch.) I will sometimes not be able to follow a character to another scene. All these things and more contribute to confusion.

I don't have TV coming into the house anymore. If we watch anything (which is not a lot), we watch it online or through Netflix. Reducing the amount I watch has definitely lessened the stress in my life.

I like watching movies at home. Almost every time I watch a movie, I have to pause it and ask what just happened or what someone said. I watch movies with the remote in my hand.

Same here. I often concentrate so much on details, that I miss crucial points. I´m almost never capable of telling, what went on through the entire movie.

Turning on the closed captioning will fix a lot of that. Most Netflix streaming content has subtitles now.