josh susserIt is word-of-god canon that Shane Hollander is autistic, and holy crap Hudson Williams gave an incredible performance that really nailed it. I'm not talking about autistic coding to give a character more character, which we see a lot of, but an actually autistic character. We don't know if the actor is ND, but his father is autistic and he used that to inform his performance. Plus the text gets it right so he had good material to work with. But whatever went into it, this is one of the best portrayals of autistic identity I've seen on TV.
There are a lot of character bits that help show Shane's autistic traits and coping strats, like him neatly folding his clothes as he disrobes for a hook-up, or responding literally to Ilya's joking. One that everyone mentions is his penchant for ginger ale, which comes up in almost every episode. There's a lot of these, but one that slips under the radar is his restricted diet (at one point he's on a macrobiotic diet), which brings us to the tuna melt scene.
I haven't read the book but I have heard that Shane's eating gets more page time than screen time. And I believe that a tuna melt is probably one of Shane's autistic samefoods (something that's always good to eat, the default choice that always works, the old stand-by, you could literally eat this for every meal and not get tired of it). And somehow Ilya has noticed that Shane likes tuna melts, and has stocked his kitchen with everything he needs to whip one up. So when he casually offers to make Shane a tuna melt and Shane seems surprised, it's not because a tuna melt is a weird meal to cook for your lover, but because it's the best thing Ilya could have fed him to show that he really does care for him, and maybe more importantly, that he really sees him.
This is the magic of the tuna melt. It wasn't just post-coital protein loading. This was Ilya speaking in his love language of taking care of people. Remember Ilya takes care of his family, and not being able to be present to care for his father upsets him a lot. Makes sense, since he lost his mother so young. And we see even more of that – in an episode where everyone refuses to give Shane a ginger ale, Ilya just hands him one without Shane even having to ask for it. The tuna melt was no accident. It was premeditated romantic assault, and it worked. Except maybe it worked a little too well, and Shane had to flee when feelings got too intense.
I fucking love this show. The transgressive gayness of it gets all the attention, but the autistic representation is just as mind-blowing to me. This might be the first time I've seen this kind of autistic/allistic love shown where being autistic wasn't a fundamental problem to be changed, overcome, worked around, or compensated for, but just another part of a person that his boyfriend can see and love like the rest of him.
(If you haven't seen the show, be warned: You'll need to set aside at least 20% of your life to process all the feelings you get from watching it, then rewatching it, then watching all the reviews and reactions and fan edits. But it's so worth it.)
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