December 17, 2025
Paging Dr. Mohan
HBO’s The Pitt is one of those shows that I think both demands and deserves a viewer’s full attention, not put on as background noise for folding laundry. And yet this past week I put it on in the background to rewatch while I folded laundry, and even so, find myself appreciating certain characterizations more deeply than I did on my first watch.
Most of the conversation around neurodivergent representation in the show has centered on Dr. Mel King—kind, even-tempered, and compassionate, but also blunt, literal-minded, and easily overloaded by conflict and chaos. She has an autistic sister who lives in a residential facility nearby, and who she speaks of often, leading many viewers to overlook that Mel herself is fairly obviously autistic. I could say a lot about why audiences fail to recognize autistic characters when they don’t conform to two-dimensional stereotypes or openly identify themselves as such in extremely circumscribed and clinical terms, but I think it’s one of the major ways in which the “autistic character as teaching tool” era of representation has failed.
And I think she’s great—possibly even the best-written intentionally autistic character since Holly Gibney of another HBO production, The Outsider.
(I maintain that among the best-written autistic characters ever on television was LOST’s abrasive, unexpectedly lovable con-man Sawyer, although I’m quite certain that was fully unintentional.)
I particularly appreciate that she’s allowed to be very noticeably autistic, and not just fully competent, but genuinely good with people—that the creators did not lean into the trope of autistic people as lacking empathy.
It’s very rare, and very enjoyable. She represents a staggering leap forward in the writing and representation of autistic characters on television.
But the deeper into this rewatch I get, the more I feel the character actually most important to me is Dr. Samira Mohan.
The very first character trait we’re given with which to associate Dr. Mohan, in the first act of the first episode, is that she’s too slow. She tells Dr. Robby that she knows other doctors call her “Slow-Mo,” that it hurt her feelings until she learned to embrace it. She doesn’t see enough patients per hour. She listens to entire life histories. She costs the hospital time and money. She has the highest patient satisfaction score of anyone in the ER.
Dr. Robby is on her case about it constantly; we don’t hear him compliment her work to her until the 12th episode: “Mohan’s on fire,” he exclaims in the adrenaline rush of the aftermath of a mass shooting.
I also work in a profession that values alacrity, though actual matters of life and death are thankfully very rare (though not non-existent), and which necessitates near-constant multitasking. I feel too slow for what’s going on in the room a lot. And I know it isn’t even necessarily true! The work gets done; the show goes on. I’ve developed a lot of strategies and efficiencies in my work flow. I know I’m not even unique in feeling this way, though I do occasionally feel uniquely targeted for it. In the course of a rehearsal process a couple of years ago, our director had gone to the general manager and production manager with a concern that my multitasking ability wasn’t up to snuff. Notwithstanding that it wasn’t true—not only was I doing a stellar job, I was being appropriately supported by an ASM who knew me well—it is a bigger challenge for me and something I’ve always had to work harder at than most people.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” said our fight choreographer for the same production (for whom I was constantly fighting with the director to get sufficient rehearsal time). I wrote that down on a Post-It note that I still keep stuck in my planner.
In a stage management community meeting about upcoming rule changes around overtime pay in some of our contracts, the question arose as to how claims for OT would be regarded if a stage manager were perceived as simply taking too long at things. Attempting to assure us that all stage managers have strengths and weaknesses and that’s just the cost of doing business, the presenter said “So for instance, someone who’s neurodivergent might take longer to write reports, because that’s what their weakness is.”
“I’m neurodivergent,” I commented, “and I take longer to write reports because I’m good at them, not because I’m not.” I could take less time to write less useful rehearsal reports and make more mistakes, but sometimes good work just takes the time that it takes.
Am I actually too slow, I’ve often wondered in a fast-paced process, or should there just be three of me here?
I’ve also always felt slower than my fellow stage managers as far as my career progression. I suffer constantly from trouble keeping good ASMs around, because I’ll get one show with a stellar assistant before their opportunities for career advancement quickly eclipse my own. Partly I know that I’m weak at networking, but I’ve also had to turn down offers of work because I simply couldn’t pivot fast enough to a new production without a break.
I’ve often felt that the time I take to listen to someone or to understand a problem is perceived as passivity or lack of urgency.
And I don’t get the impression that Mohan is autistic, or deliberately coded as neurodivergent in any particular way, in contrast to Dr. King—and that’s actually important to me, too, and says a lot about the kinds of representation we can and should be able to expect. Because autistic people aren’t experiential black boxes, fundamentally and irreparably incomprehensible and uncomprehending of the experiences we share in common with our non-autistic fellow humans.
Well-written autistic characters like Mel King are important and necessary. They also shouldn’t be the only way we can ever see ourselves in others.
I know there are higher-stakes story lines afoot this coming season, but I’m excited to see what’s in store for Dr. Mohan—whether she’ll decide that maybe emergency medicine actually isn’t for her, or find her niche in the ER with a case that demands her particular approach.
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