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So I have continued watching The Shield on FX. It is an all-around excellent series, dealing very heavily in the gray areas of law enforcement. The lead character is a man who loves his family and his community, and will quite literally do *anything* to protect them. There is the ongoing plot thread with his autistic son, and that is the part that bugs me. Five years old, and it takes a teacher to point out to them that there is something seriously wrong with their son even though they have two other children as barometers. I suppose I can buy that, maybe he is more in the Asperger's category than being classically autistic. But towards the end of the 8th episode there is a scene with the family at the dinner table. The son is poking at a slice of pizza with a spoon, when his older sister demonstrates for him how to pick up the slice and take a bite. One example. The boy makes eye contact with her, observes what she did, and follows suit. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Two of the major hallmarks of autism are the avoidance of eye contact, and the complete inability to model behaviors. Grr.
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