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Theory: he lied about not being autistic so his friends would stop being weird

They acted like he told them he had stage four brain cancer .. like he was going to die and they couldn’t believe

I hate how Riley’s core personality trait around smackle was “I know she doesn’t like hugs, BUUT I am going to hug her until I am successful at forcing her to adore them just as much as I do.” It’s like Riley is autism speaks around smackle

I love how they attempted to make the moral of the episode "labels are limiting and don't define you!" but then go on to make the autistic characters walking sterotypes

The fact that Maya and Riley told Smackle, “it’s okay to be different 🤗" when she told them she had autism…as if they weren’t treating autism like it was something horribly fatal the entire episode

It would’ve been somewhat helpful if he was diagnosed with autism, the fact they went back on it and were so happy he didn’t have it is the worst part.

10:47 the thing that annoys me is that, (I’m assuming this Farkle kid is the “weird” one of the group) is that they call him weird all the time, literally joking about how he’s so odd, but the second he says he’s autistic they’re all “but you’re so normal????”

The way that girl said ''let's go tell them you don't'' is legitimately disturbing everytime i watch it

farkle deserved better friends tbh

If this school was real and I was in this class, I would dread going every day. These main characters are insufferable and they would give me social anxiety

as a kid watching this episode i legitimately thought that autism was this deadly brain disease which is insane since i was diagnosed with autism years later

I think their negative reaction *could've* worked if Farkle had actually been autistic and their reactions could've been a learning moment. Like Farkle telling them, "autism isn't a disease. It's just who I am. I'm still Farkle. Now you just know a little more about me." and instead they went "psych! he's not autistic he's just WEIRD." like come on.

i hate that i grew up thinking that part of being autistic was not fitting in or being perceived as "normal" - we live in a disappointing world

I was expecting them to be in denial about his diagnosis and then learn more about it and embrace and accept it at the end, i was NOT expecting him to be like, “uh nevermind lol”

“Y-you don’t… 😟” “you DONT have autism… 😢” bruh 💀

As an autistic person myself, this just fucking hurts to watch. I'm not a prodigy, I'm a dumbass who's terrible at maths but can play instruments and draw anthro animals. My autism isn't a disease, it's part of my identity.

When I was diagnosed, I felt relief knowing what was up with me. Seeing these characters act like autism is a death sentence genuinely hurts.

Idk why, but I always took him saying “I’m just Farkle.” As a ‘I do have it but you reacted weird so I’m lying and reacting how you want me too’

Autistic here, was gonna say if this episode ended with Farkle saying he wasnt autistic and everyone cheering and the audience clapping that would've been the funniest shit ever. Absolutely TASTELESS for sure but man it would've been ridiculous haha

Gotta love how how they explicitly show how not to react to a friend being autistic. even with Smackle, as someone with autism who usually gets overwhelmed by touch I would hope that a decent friend who knew that wouldn't take every opportunity to hug me while shrugging off my discomfort.

i mean tbf the threatening tone in which the girls tell him hes not autistic is pretty relatable to being called agressively "but youre nothing like my 5yo nephew"

I hate when they refer to him as “farkle-y” like they literally acknowledge that he’s different from other people, but in like this patronizing way, then they deny that it could possibly be a condition.

"F-farkle... this isn't you!🥺"

Disney has somehow managed to have both Girl Meets World and Andi Mack and it makes no sense how both aired around the same time.

the amount of times I’ve had people respond to me this EXACT way when I tell them I’m suspected AuDHD. “no you’re not” or listing all these things “disproving” as to why I couldn’t be neurodivergent. and the more upsetting thing is they think they’re being helpful because neurodivergency is treated as such a disease

you KNOW they “consulted with” autism speaks on this one holy shit it’s so bad but then again, the good doctor is still running after first airing around the same time that episode came out and from what little i know it would seem that they’re still weirdly obsessed with sean’s sex life so :/ we live in hell

me and my brother watched boy meets world last summer and, though it has it’s faults and arguably controversial moments, boy meets world handles topics way better than girl meets world. boy meets world could honestly handle autism better than girl meets world did for a show made in the 90s lol

Another thing to note is the only two kids in the episode who might have autism have the strange names “Farkle” and “Smackle” while Maya, Riley, and Lucas all have typical names. This decision is very intentional, it’s like an additional step to show that they are quirky or weird, and that’s obviously what autisim is (when it’s really not!).

The entire episode is literally Farkle and Smackle being like “it’s okay to have autism” And everyone else being ableist and literally the same as autism speaks and treating autism like he is being diagnosed with a form of cancer

i'm older gen z so i never saw girl meets world, but wow. wowww they screwed that up so bad. that's so raven would've bodied an autism plotline wtf was this 😭☠️

How the heck is the episode of Suite Life Of Zack & Cody where Cody pretends to be dyslexic banned for ableism, but This episode is ok? That’s beyond me

The thing is, the way his friends acted, the specialist and even Farkle acted was realistic. I related to some of the aspects of that, as an autistic woman myself. The problem is that the show portrayed this as good and desireable. No, Maya and Rikey invalidating Farkle's experiences and saying that he won't do his "ha" s anymore is painful. It wasn't something funny, it wasn't something good. If they made a point about those attitudes being bad, about the invalidating, the gaslighting and the disrepects being called by their name, it would have been much better

I don’t get it. When you are diagnosed with autism, that means you have always had it. Nothing about Farkle would change if he got the diagnoses. Would his friends treat him differently if he was diagnosed?

8:31 I *think* the joke is that sometimes we misread social cues, a lot of us nuerodivergents don't realise we're being hit on, and some of us overcompensate with setting boundaries worrying that anyone might be hitting on us without us knowing. Idk if that makes sense to anyone else 😅

When Farcical says “They think I might have autism” the was Riley and Maya stood up and like started moving towards him was so intimidating it’s weird

this is a very Glee style of show-writing and I mean that as an insult

i feel like, if they had made this an entire arc over several episodes, it could have brought awareness to what ableism looks like, and how it actually effects autistic people. imagine if farkle had lied about not having aspergers because of how badly his friends reacted to hearing the news, and he wanted to please them and stop being diminished or told that he's wrong. maybe at the end of the episode, there's a scene implying to the audience he actually does have it, then, over the next few episodes, we see the toll of how hard he's trying to mask, and hoe much it effects his mental health and relationship with his friends. we see how frustrated and increasingly angry he gets at how they treated him, and begins to resent the fact that he has to hide who he is just to cater to their perception of what autism is. eventually, theres another episode dedicated to exploring his autism, but this time, his friends see an institutional or outward example of ableism, and get mad at the mistreatment, acting like theyre better than whoever was being ableist, only for farkle to finally snap and tell them thats exactly how they act and have treated him, and he reveals that he lied about his misdiagnosis, and has had to pretend to be "normal" to be treated the same as he was before it. this causes the rest of them to actually reflect on who they are and how they veiw autism, and pushes them to change their perspective. then, they have a heartfelt scene, where they apologize to farkle and tell him they love and accept him, and that they dont see autism as a bad thing. this way, we see the friend group actually grow as people, and the audience gets to learn that maybe their pre-conceived notions are also wrong, and that even if you think you are a good person, you can still mishandle situations. of course, this would require competent, non-ableist writers, which girl meets world clearly lacked. it's unfortunate that we got this horrific episode and resolution instead.

man i loved this show as a kid :/ never realized how weird and ableist it was…

The thing that drives me insane is that the writers KNEW how a normal reaction should go, like smackles, and maybe slightly like lucas(we don’t see it here but from what I remember he wasn’t judgy or freaking out, he said something along the lines of “okay can you tell me more about it” And yet the writers CHOSE to have Riley and maya be like that

I feel like the most accurate thing about this episode is farkle’s friends reactions to the possibility of Farkles diagnosis. The negative reactions to the idea of their friend being their idea of “too different” being so bad they try to deny and police his behaviour is sadly something that many people in the autistic and ADHD community have to tolerate and deal with on a daily basis. I also think it’s incredibly telling when they turn around in the last scene and say “there’s nothing wrong with being different” after we just went through an entire episode showing how “different” people are actually treated. I’m not saying everyone who isn’t on the spectrum behaves like this but this happens so much that the writers have even had to include it, I just wish they could have handled it better.

as a kid i related to farkle heavily like i never felt so seen even though I was AFAB and a POC i just felt seen personality wise. A few years before i remember "Aspergers" being brought up by a teacher so i decided to research it myself and i related to it i thought it was just a descriptive word so i'd tell people i had it i was really happy they brought it up in the show then I remember not bringing it up for years after that episode i wouldn't even say I had it i'd tell people that "they said i might be but don't worry" i was ashamed after this episode I'm so glad I now am proud of my diagnosis

Watching Farkle and Smackle interact near the end of this episode was great. I love that he actually asked if he can hug her since EVERYONE knows that she does not like to be touched (cough cough *Maya* cough cough). The interactions between Smackle and Farkle were the best representations of how someone should treat someone with autism and the best way to react to someone saying they might be autistic. Anyway, Girl Meets World was such a fever dream sometimes, I swear.

This is a good video. I’m so glad someone’s finally alone laying how strange this is. Like seriously, when I got my autism diagnosis the doctor was just like “yeah, you have autism” and gave me a peppermint. It wasn’t like he was sitting me down to tell me that I had cancer or anything. Also unrelated but I have subscribed to your channel.

ok this show had such a big opportunity with the characters and dynamics they set up +storylines from bmw and they fumbled it. this show would do SO well with more progressive writing. (i mean as a kid i questioned a couple times whether riley and maya were about to kiss...)

growing up as a girl with undiagnosed autism, i was already going to autism speaks fundraisers set up by family members for my cousin, and this episode certainly did not help my view of asd. i was only just diagnosed a year ago, and looking back at one of my favorite shows growing up and how it handled this issue was severely upsetting. it makes me feel a bit better though that the whole show was really bad when it comes down to it lol. riley and farkle definitely have autism as well as smackle, and smackle was honestly the only good character in this show. thanks for reading my essay lol

OI always felt like Girl Meets World tried so hard to be a meaningful young adult but forgot that it was a Disney Channel original sitcom with only a certain amount of jokes they could use. I just felt like every time Mr Matthews opened his mouth there was just a waterfall of pretentiousness coming out. I swear they never just did a history lesson where they learned the facts and it was always just Corey directing some overblown profound lesson at only 4 of his students.

the way the girls react to him saying he might be autistic is so aggressive jesus :')

I hate that he "doesn't have it" now when clearly they made his character hit every (even stereotypical) bullet point. But I mean kinda rings true to some drs being like "you have friends, can look at eyes, get good grades. So I don't care if you have all the actual symptoms I'm not diagnosing." I hate Disney for doing this BS!

I have autism and I remember watching this show repetitively, I just forgot about this episode until I finished watching this video. The clips made it feel like such a vivid memory, it felt so off and I didn’t realize what autism really was until way after but imagine if I did have more insight on my autism and have more knowledge on what it means that could’ve really made me feel bad about myself. Wow

Idk why but when I first saw this episode I was convinced that I was dying, they talk about autism like he’s got cancer then the “happy ending” is that he Dosent have it….

Imagine a 90s episode of a kid questioning their sexuality and his friends do everything in their powers to convince him he’s straight then the episode ends with him figuring out he is straight but they bring in another random character that is gay and tell her they’re accepting of her and want to be friends only to never see that character again.

When I watched this. I remember thinking “why is that bad?” Looking back it’s like 😃

This is kinda unrelated but any kind of ableism in media always takes me back to my high school English class where 80% of the kids talked about Lennie from Of Mice and Men like he was some cute little animal. And when we had to do an assignment talking about issues in their relation to neurodivergent individuals, almost everyone referred to neurodivergent people as ‘those people’ ‘what a blessing those brave caretakers are, having to deal with THOSE people’. I just hate how ingrained it is in so many people’s brains that neurodivergent individuals lives are somehow less valuable and a drain on neurotypical society

UPDATE: I saw the ACTUAL ending of the episode. Farkle and Smackle were talking to each other, Farkle tells Smackle “I might have Asperger’s”, Smackle responds with “I have Asperger’s”. Riley and Maya were sitting RIGHT THERE and didn’t do crap about it. Have you seen that part?

This show always felt so weird and...empty to me? Like the school environment was so awkward, like it was just an empty backdrop for the main characters to exist in. And the girls always felt so rude and uncomfortable to be around. Especially side characters and teachers. Like no one would act like this Irl? This show was always on the background when I was a kid, the only real thing I got from it was the teacher explaining how Iceland got its name. Really not surprised any of its “actual messages” they tried to teach flunked HARD.

This episode made me basically stop watching this show as a kid. I was already insecure about being autistic as a child, I tried to make sure no one would find out, after this episode I referred to myself as beast like and even said that I was “always acting like a drunk person” because of my diagnosis. I couldn’t see the show the same after they treated me like this. I’ve seen the majority of people dislike the episode for but never seen anyone talk about it. Autism is often portrayed in a two dimensional high school stereotype way, especially in unfunny sitcoms (thanks Sheldon), and I thank the gods that we have characters like Julia. Thank you for this video.

tbh as a child, i only watched girl meets world because i thought sabrina carpenter gorgeous (i still think this lol). as an adult, i went back and watched boy meets world and oh my gosh. what a masterpiece. girl meets world couldn’t even compete

I think even Sabrina Carpenter hated it, she was told to list all the shows and movies she was in and she said she purposely forgot GMW 😭

I really wouldn’t mind an episode about internalized/systematic ableism, since it sadly is a very realistic reaction. But the way the show doesn’t even try to act like the way they’re acting is wrong…

Damn this really got me. I used to be in this friend group... Recently i had a friend say "bring cami from 2019 back", which was a period of intense masking and lots of thoughts about ending it all. I used to make messed up dark humor jokes just to fit in with them, which eventually caused me so much shame and led them to mock me and make me feel guilty for being sensitive and "soft" (now I know I struggle with hypersensitivity). Someone else in the friend group would also laugh at me by calling me "special" whenever we disagreed about something. This ain't even half of it but man am I glad I finally cut ties with them. It hurt but it's such a relief now

giggling so hard at the way farkle is like "yeah they think im autistic" and the FEAR FROM EVERYONE WHEN THEY'RE LIKE "U DONT ‼️‼️ THIS ISNT REAL RIGHT ⁉️⁉️⁉️"

I was the entire tome like "why are they being such bullies and acting like that's a sad thing??" About the diagnosis, this episode got me so pissed as a kid

I don't remember watching this show ever, so this is news to me on how this could possibly air. I have ASD diagnosed. I'm also pretty stereotypically autistic; meltdowns starting at the age of 2, watching spinning objects or flickering lights, hand and finger flapping, jumping around, poor eye contact, awkward movements and walking, you get the picture. However, there are plenty of people who aren't exactly "stereotypically autistic" ie, they mask frequently, they symptoms aren't displayed as bluntly, or they simply have less symptoms (for example, they have just 2 out of the 4 symptoms listed in the DSM-5). Which is completely okay, and very sad that they can't be represented often. I don't think that there's inherently a problem with having "stereotypical autistic" characters AS LONG as they are respected and represented properly with research put behind it. It seems the Smackle as a character is not the problem, but the problem is that she is being written for laughs, and to make fun of her social awkwardness. Had she simply been an autistic character, that's fine. As for Farkle, it's quite sad they wrote him off as "just being Farkle". He probably could've been a great autistic character. Disney appears to have a certain reputation with these things. Hopefully one day they won't be common.

I grew up on boy meets world and never rlly got into girl meets world, but holyyyy shit that’s horrendous 😭 the way they treated Farkle reminds me of how I got treated when trying to tell people I was autistic

Smthn also weird is that Riley was also clearly autistic coded throughout the whole show too, except was written that way very accidentally so she doesn’t line up with all the stereotypes

Very interesting observations! Let's also not overlook how Riley constantly told her bestie Maya that she didn't think and was a bad girl while telling everyone she herself was smart and a good girl. This would culminate in Riley sabotaging Maya's progressing by claiming Maya was copying HER when Maya was getting good grades and staying out of trouble (and no one called Riley on it). So no surprise that she (and annoyingly Maya) would treat the possible autism diagnosis as though Farkle had a doomed, forlorn existence if he got diagnosed with it! Oh, yeah, too bad that neither Cory nor the counselor attempted to tell Riley to butt out of Farkle's biz when the counselor approached him to talk to Farkle. And, yeah, Maya was not as likable in this episode as she usually was.

18:22 this scene actually made me cry cause why is Farkle so sweet and amazing

Gonna be real here, kinda wish someone had yelled at Riley about the hugs, it's crazy how much people talk about consent and then completely ignore that it goes for more than just sex and that women are just as guilty if not sometimes more guilty for thinking they can ignore someone's no

I was a kid when i watched that episode and was undiagnosed autistic not knowing i was masking for my entire life, Maya saying Farkle will "stop doing that" when referring to his symptoms is like genuinely upsetting looking back after being professionally assessed and diagnosed because that's exactly what children who fly under the radar when it comes to diagnosing neurodivergence hear a lot of the time, it's seriously sad and i feel like the episode may have reinforced other undiagnosed people on the spectrum that their behaviour is abnormal and something that causes upset to their friends and family like it did to Farkle's friend group (which are all pretty much assholes in their own right)

i never watched this show but i remember seeing clips of this episode years ago and was so bewildered. as a feminine creature with autism, seeing it be portrayed in this way is a sure fire way to instill this type of ableism in people, both internalized and externalized. the way his "friends" reacted to his diagnosis, the way they invalidated him repeatedly, and everything was so upsetting to see. plus the whole "i actually dont have it" is so baffling to me. i was fully prepared for "i dont have aspergers, i have autism" or SOMETHING but we got "nope im just weird teehee" like. that is surefire tism in that boy. i feel it. plus how they treat the girl (shmackle or whatever her name is) is frustrating too. i had to learn the lesson of respecting personal space and such at a young age and have it specifically laid out for me, so seeing them not respecting it specifically to her is so. STOP IT!!!!!!!!!! like thats rude af!!! she doesnt like hugs, dont force them on her!!!! its so simple ARRRGGGHHHH

I mean, honestly, I think Maya's immediate denial of Farkle's diagnosis is pretty accurate in some cases. Like I know a lot of circumstances (I've been in a few myself actually) where the parents/family of a child newly diagnosed with autism immediately jumped to denying it because they were uneducated on what autism really was or immediately assumed it was totally negative. I think that part is kind of an accurate picture in some of these types of situations.

I think he has it, he just said he didn’t because his “friends” were total weirdos about it

I don’t really remember this episode maybe I didn’t watch it? But many years later turns out I’m also autistic 😂 and it’s probably intentional but the fact that they name the clearly autistic characters the most… non human names?? Like even if it’s not addressed in the show the “comic relief character” usually has a lot of autistic traits and then always has such a weird… non name

this could’ve been so great if this show was competent. autism is so incredibly misunderstood

As a person on the savant end of the autism scale who, i hate how they make it seem like a terminal illness. It took me years to convince my parents to get me tested and whenni git my official diagnosis my friends were si exicted because they knew how annoyed i get when i cant explain things even my own tendencies

I've never seen this show in my life but the one autistic win is that Smackle (what is up with these names-?) holds her hands the same way I do

6:12- It was most infuriating (instead of funny or cute) how Riley refused to respect Farkle's privacy via not only attempting to intrude in on his counseling session but not letting him consider what the counselor believed she needed to tell Farkle without Riley's butting it! Of course, not only did no one attempt to tell Riley to back off or butt out(or even to to scram) but it was treated as something the viewers were expected to adore! Riley TRULY needed someone to spell out that she needed to respect others' boundaries- especially those she kept claiming were her friends! Alas, show kept ramming down the viewers' throats that Riley was always a perfect sweet saint so how were the teen and tween viewers expected to understand that her behavior towards Farkle in this episode was NOT cool or even nice?

I struggle significantly with human touch, with only letting two specific people touch me(some people aren't even comfortable with one person) so Riley hugging that one girl made me so upset because I would feel like throwing up in her her situation

this was so interesting! you should make this a series (talking about controversial girl meets world episodes because ik there’s more😭)

youtube kept pushing this video to me like straight up was on my feed every time i tried looking for videos so i’m finally watching 😂 you’re slay, this show not so slay!!!!

The bit where he asks permission to give her a hug and the laugh track plays made me want to punch a concrete wall. One of my favorite memories is from the first time I attended a Social Support group for young adults with ASD, and at the end one of the other members asked if I “did hugs” and waited for me to say “yes” before hugging me goodbye. I was 19, recently diagnosed, still in the process of untangling my ingrained “masking” behaviors from my authentic self, and she gave me the opportunity to realize that, yes, I do, in fact, “do hugs”. And they made a joke out of it. Screw them.

I think the jokes about Smackle thinking Lucas was hitting on her were more just about his comments being really innocuous and interpreting them as flirty is kind of ridiculous. They play on this further when Maya tells him to “take a hint”, implying she also is interpreting his comments as flirty. I do think this type of joke is usually that the girl is ugly and just *wants* guys to be into her, but Smackle seems to genuinely want him to back off from the clips in the video, so it comes off a little differently to me.

Watching the way they treat him, trying to aggressively deny he's autistic, telling him he's gonna stop doing those behaviors, is giving me war flashbacks to the way my parents treat me. I am autistic. They don't even Know That, and they still act exactly the same. Also the fact that the two autistic characters are named silly shit like "Rumple" or "Fleeby" is. Insane. Like they're cartoon characters compared to the rest of them.

came from ur tiktok just now

This episode was the first place i remember learning what autism was and i had a really inaccurate idea of what it was until I was in high school and learned that I actually was autistic

As a fan of Boy Meets World when Girl Meets World came out I was excited to see a continuation of that story through learning about the the world of Cory Matthews daughter but immediately I hated it as the humor felt so forced, I loved that Boy Meets World had episodes that tackled dark issues such as when Shawn joined a cult or when Topenga was being harassed by a professor but Girl Meets World did not tackle these issues and then when they did try we had episodes like this

Deserves so much more views. This is very well covered. I used to love this show as a kid, I never thought they'd do something like this.

“I have autism” “Nuh uh”

Riley legit is the worst friend you could ever have

As an afab person who wasn’t diagnosed with autism until I was an adult due to things like this. Not getting tested for not fitting autistic stereotypes. I was a smart child but got burnt out, I wasn’t obsessed with trains or random things but I was really obsessed with dogs. It’s frustrating how they’ll dismiss all his traits and then still be like “oop if he doesn’t have autism”. Feels like how growing up with undiagnosed autism feels

10:46 honestly hilarious how absurd this response is, my reaction to my brother’s diagnosis was “yea that tracks”, because 1: it’s not a bad thing, just like me having ADHD isn’t a bad thing, and 2: it DOES track

This reminds me of the dyslexia episode of shake it up. I remember being so angry as a kid at how they made it seem like something the characters were ashamed of. I was never ashamed of my dyslexia. This episode really made the whole thing a huge deal that I never felt like it was.

It felt like a drastic twist from farkle which might have it to the way they treated smackle who did almost like they refused to accept it until they knew someone had it then they were fine??? As if they were always cool with it when clearly they weren’t. I do think that they keep smackle in the loop and treat her fairly well for the remainder of her time there but idk the episode is weird. Plus Riley had so many traits that could be explained with her be autistic I’ve seen ppl bring up

It really sucks that this was one of the first times Disney Channel featured Aspergers and this is how it went down

i have this video open in a separate tab on my laptop while i play minecraft nd i heard farkle ask if he could hug her and i literally teared up and was so stoked (despite the entire episode being shit lmao i just got so excited abt the PRESUMED normailzation of asking permission to touch someone) and then the fucking laugh track ruined it so much ohhh my gods

i love the part where he asks permission to hug her ☹️ i’m autistic and my boyfriend always asks before touching me, he’ll usually say can i kiss you and where and have me point or tell him no, he never acts offended or dismisses me. it’s important that disabled or not you respect your friends and others boundaries!!!!!!

can we talk abt how the two autistic characters have stupid names??????? like what kind of name is farkle and smackle

As a child I literally didn’t care about any messages in movies. I just watched it bc I liked the show. I never picked up on details like this in shows.

My younger gen z sibling loves this show and I can’t stand it. Riley is irritating and childish, the way Farkle is treated is horrendous (by the show and the characters). The only one I enjoy is Maya, who should absolutely have been the main character. I’m just about as old as you can get and still be gen z so this wasn’t my intro to ASD and it irked me soooo much that they used Asperger’s as the “diagnosis”. It’s not even like they didn’t know - they had to have known that a) Asperger’s isn’t a thing anymore and b) Hans was a douche.