YMMV / The Twilight Zone (1959) S4E8: "Miniature"

• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Charley Parkes is widely interpreted as autistic by 21st century audiences. This reading stems from the dichotomy between his excellence at work and his social ineptitude. Among other things, he's bad with eye contact and repeatedly fails to connect with others, who regard him as weird and constantly try to make him more "normal," to his chagrin. His fixation with the living miniatures in his dollhouse is also easy to read as allegorical for a special interest.
  • There are also hints that Charley may be asexual as well. The show implies that he's been a virgin up to this point with no apparent thought of pursuing a relationship with anyone, he either brushes off or fails to pick up on clear tells from his date Harriet that she's willing to go farther, and he has a viscerally and violently negative reaction to being kissed when she tries to force the issue. He is clearly infatuated with Alice, but his desires are never presented as sexual in nature, and the ending scene shows the two of them perfectly content with merely spending time together in one another's presence. Some of this may simply be manifestations of (or at least comorbid with) his general social awkwardness, as well as down to the limits on how explicit daytime TV of the era could get about discussing sex and sexuality in general, but as with the autism diagnosis above, the signs we do have are certainly suggestive.
• Values Resonance/Vindicated by History: The episode has received a lot more praise in recent years for having a main character with a startlingly accurate portrayal of autism — a neurological condition that was virtually unknown when the episode first aired, and wasn't nearly as accepted at the time as it is today.

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