My brother has Cerebral palsy, he walks with an obviously " different " gate than most people,which means he gets a lot of weird stares and funny looks. Even though he's supposed to use crutches he doesn't like to because he thinks it makes it more obvious that he has a disability. When I started watching Breaking Bad, that was the first time I had ever seen a character with CP on tv, and I was so thrilled, not just because of representation, but because of ACCURATE representation. The actor playing Flynn has CP in real life. While Flynn's handicap is obvious throughout the show, it's never really mentioned or talked about. He is just a semi angsty teenager who goes out with his friends, goes to school and is excited about getting a drivers licence... and he does all of this using crutches. Little things throughout the show really hit home with me. Like sometimes Walt would try to open a door or pull out a chair for Flynn and he would get frustrated because he could do it himself. In one of the first episodes they had a scene where the family was shopping for clothes and Flynn needed help in the changing room, and a bunch of dumb teenagers were pointing and laughing at them. Scenes like that might seem exaggerated to people who don't deal with it on a daily basis, but stuff like that happens all the time. Sometimes simple things can be challenging for people with disabilities, but that doesn't mean that others should assume a disabled person can't do something for themselves. The way Flynn's entire character was written and portrayed was just so accurate and realistic. It dealt with issues facing people with disabilities without making a big deal out of it. Flynn was not defined by his CP, but by his character traits and personality. My brother appreciated seeing someone he could identify with on tv, a character who was similar to him in more ways than one. They are both rebellious and frustrated with school and homework and parents, and they both just so happened to have Cerebral palsy. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this, other than to make the point about how much representation matters in media, especially to people who are barely ever represented. I saw a post about a show that is going to have people with actual disabilities portraying disabled characters, and that just makes me really happy. Because I know that there are so many people out there who, like my brother, have never seen a character with their disability on tv. For people who are never represented, seeing just one character like them can be a big deal.
