Alex Blake and Spencer Reid in “Through the Looking Glass”
A Defense of Alex Blake from an Autistic Person
Disclaimer(s) before I get into this: Autistic people/people with autism are not a monolith. We are all entitled to our feelings about how people discuss/joke about autism, and some of us will find things hurtful that others do not, and those feelings are entirely valid. The opinion stated below is just my opinion and only speaks to my interpretation.
Also please note that Asperger’s is, in the United States, an outdated diagnosis named after a Nazi. It’s been changed in the DSM to autistic spectrum disorder (ASD/autism), which is how I’ll refer to it in this post. I also don’t use “functioning” labels, but an opinion on this scene will obviously change depending on the severity of a person’s symptoms.
That being said, I’m here to explain why I love Alex Blake, why I don’t think this “joke” was ever a joke at all, and why I actually really love these scenes as an Autistic person.
So, to start, I think that this scene is filmed in a way that leaves it very open to interpretation. I personally find that myself and a few of my autistic friends interpret it a way very different from most allistic (non-autistic) people I’ve talked to.
This scene is, above all, extremely relatable to me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve discussed something just to be unknowingly describing things that apply to me. This exact scenario has happened to me several times, where someone points out as I describe autism that I was describing myself. When I saw this scene for the first time, I laughed. I laughed because I’d been there, and I was watching it happen to someone else. Things always seem more obvious when it’s happening to someone else, ya know?
This scene makes me happy, too. It makes me happy because I can see the love in Alex and Rossi’s faces when they share that moment after it goes over Spencer’s head. A lot of people view it as a mocking smile, but from my perspective I see two people who clearly don’t view autism as a bad thing and are just finding an innocent joy/humor in his obliviousness.
And I think that’s what a lot of this comes down to. For a lot of people (like my allistic boyfriend, for example), implying that someone is autistic is seen as an insult. But I do not feel that way, and I don’t think Alex or Rossi do, either.
In fact, they are two team members that don’t regularly roll their eyes at him or mock Spencer’s autistic tendencies (unlike Emily and JJ, both of whom I love, although they do regularly kind of hurt my feelings, lol). I mean, in this same scene, I don’t see people talking about JJ’s expression, which is clearly (also innocently) screaming “Do you really not hear yourself right now?”
Later in the episode, Alex is once again confronted with Spencer’s relatively obvious autism, and she actually feels bad about the fact that he might’ve understood what she was saying and interpreted her silence as mocking him. But then it’s very obvious that he didn’t realize it, and she’s just kind of overwhelmed with how much she appreciates him for his autistic traits.
It’s not often that obliviousness to social cues or a blunt, non-sarcastic personality is depicted as something admirable, but that’s exactly what Alex does. She tells Reid that his personality is why she loves him, and that she basically thinks that there is nothing wrong with who he is. She does all of this without ever denouncing his autism or speaking in spite of it.
And I think we also have to acknowledge that Spencer specifically said that he doesn’t take offense to the fact she insinuated he is autistic (and doesn’t deny that he is, either). He outright says that he doesn’t take offense to that idea, and I’m guessing it’s because (1) he also doesn’t view it as a flaw and (2) he knows Alex respects him.
We talk about the rest of the team as being close to Spencer because we see it on screen, but Alex and him knew each other before she arrived at the BAU. Their relationship went further back and in more detail than we saw. To her, he is an intellectual peer and a son figure.
So, yeah. Idunno. I think part of why some people interpret this scene as a bad thing is because we view autism as a problem/flaw. But there are autistic people who exist that don’t feel that way. I love who I am, and that includes my autism. Of course, it comes with its own struggles, but I’m forever grateful for a character like Alex who doesn’t take it too seriously. Someone who clearly loves an autistic person for who they are and doesn’t try to change him.
That’s my defense of Alex Blake. You don’t have to agree (obviously, lol), and if you were harmed by her lines as an autistic person, I deeply sympathize with you. We all feel different things about ourselves, and they should all be respected ❤️
And to all the allistic people who made it this far, thank you for listening! I hope this gives you a different perspective of how deeply anti-autistic narratives and beliefs can bleed into how we write, perform, and interpret autistic characters and storylines.
