Remember the ’80s and ’90s, when autism gave you magic powers? I want to see a sequel to The Wizard where Frank Savage’s brother gets back into video games and has to use his old-school ’80s autism powers against the new generation of gamers who are all self-diagnosed with Asperger’s.
Want the original art for this strip?
you know that a lot of us would buy t-shirts with “skinner’s fist” “my favourite scully variant” and “scully vs. nurse” and things like this on them, right? 🙂
I would totally buy a SKINNER’S FIST t-shirt.
“…what?”
I love that little moment all to itself right there.
My x-files watching group has a lot of people in it who love to hate on Mulder. In this episode he is actually pretty considerate of everyone, and does some decent detective work, caused a certain amount of cognitive dissonance; particularly since Scully is kind of ablest in this one. And when Mulder lectures her at the end about not telling him about her vision, it’s kind of on-point.
That aside, this episode is kind of a mess. I read Todd VandDerWerff’s recap of this episode in the A.V. Club and he describes this episode as “alternately deeply moving and really, really stupid”, which about sums it up for me.
Love the tissue up the nose.
me, too.
I still don’t understand how being a savant proved to Mulder that he didn’t do it.
I think it meant he was too busy watching the bowling and memorizing the scores to find time to commit the murder, or something the like.
This is one of my favorite episodes, but I’m still lost…I just always chose to not think about that part.
Apparently Mulder didn’t understand it either — I think we just have to chalk it up to Mulder’s intuition.
As I recall it, it wasn’t that it proved he DIDN’T do it; it just demolished the sole piece of evidence suggesting he DID do it: that he had the victim’s bowling scores memorized. The cops though that meant he was obsessed with her, but nope, turns out he just memorizes EVERYONE’S scores.
Nice bowling shoe on Scully there.
Poor Scully.
This plot reminded me a lot of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (or at least the people in the institution with their various neuroses did), and it made sense to find out that part was somewhat inspired by the book.
The opening scene was rather creepy…
The actor Sydney Lassick, who played Harold’s friend Chuck (in the episode he’s the one who keeps confessing to things he didn’t do) also played an inmate in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
No wonder he looked really familiar to me! That’s a cool fact.
Autism spectrum disorders *do* give superpowers, though! Although sometimes they’re kind of lame. For example, I was given the mysterious ability to sense frozen foods in danger.
You’re on the spectrum too? Cool.
Self-diagnosed Asperger’s people are the worst. The last thing those of us who really do have Asperger’s need is more people giving us a bad name.
Nice shout out to LOST, there. I had to double check the numbers, but my memory did not fail me. Thanks for another good strip!
I don’t like your blurb after the comic. (I should remember what it is called but memory [At least remembering exactly what I want against my brain’s will] is kind of not my thing) 1: it implies that all Aspies are self-diagnosed. This is not true as I was receiving services before finding out that I had Asperger Syndrome. (I was diagnosed in 1st grade and was not told until 6th.) 2: It seems stupid that people would try to diagnose themselves rather than get an actual diagnosis. (I mean this more as a 1-stop thing. If they believe they have it they should go and actually get diagnosed) 3: That fools like that exist upsets me. They have no idea what it is like to be an Aspie. I have very strict definitions of words that lodge in my head and so communication is difficult with other people because they view words more fluidly. (I say things that make sense to me in the way I used the words but others don’t understand because they see words differently so then I have to explain in great detail what I meant vs. what they heard and even my family is not very good at being patient enough to hear these ramblings so they just take my words at their interpretation of face value) (I suck with people and just want them to understand that I am trying.) This is also combined with the fact that I can understand and memorize information quite easily but recall and utilization is difficult means that I get put in AP classes as I already know the previous material but I can’t handle the pacing so I get B minus to D pluses and complaints about how if I just got all my work in on time I could easily get As. To try to claim that you have anything like that just cause you want to be a special snowflake is just insensitive.