Dating culture in the first quarter of the 21st century is more about the journey than the destination. So long, of course, as someone else is behind the wheel. Whether it’s a road trip that veers off into a chainsaw-dense no man’s land or just a demolition derby, the entertainment value increases with the chaos, the humiliation, and our own distance from their consequences. Our culture is rife with shows about catfishing, ghosting, and romantic fraud. Personal essays extol the virtues of “heterofatalism,” and screenshots of dating app chat logs are clear breaches of ambiguous courting etiquette. We consume all of these things with the glee of Sadean aristocrats.
Every generation gets the dating culture it deserves. Ours is less debauched than it is disillusioned — we let our phones match people who never get what they want with people who never know what they want. Yet lately, a fatigue seems to be setting in. The most recent season of The Bachelorette was pulled off the air because the drama promised by its titular object of affection proved far too toxic for its brand. The entire internet dined out on the romantic misadventures of Olivia Nuzzi and Lindy West, stopping just short of buying the books they were promoting in the first place. And while 90-day fiancés seem to be renewable, there were not enough buxom moms with handsome sons to fill every room in MILF Manor. Reaching the apparent nadir of this disaster voyeurism, there is logically nowhere to go but up.
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Love on the Spectrum, a multinational show whose American version has run for four seasons on Netflix, is so at odds tonally and conceptually with the glut of our dating media that it might as well exist in a parallel dimension. It is sweet rather than cynical, prefers blunt candor to subtle euphemism, and is firmly destination-oriented. And yet it works. Two weeks since its premiere, the current season remains in Netflix’s top 10 series. Its participants have gained as many as 1 million social media followers. Even the New York Times praised the show for “restoring our faith in dating.”
The show’s appeal is aided in no small part by one important detail, one indicated in its title: All of the participants have autism. Which is to say that they meet a general criterion of autism that is distinct but accessible to most viewers. They are high-functioning individuals but lack the life skills other adults take for granted. Difficulties vary between individuals. Some struggle with speech and social cues, and others are more obsessive-compulsive and anxious. Although they range in age from their early 20s to middle age, they retain childhood sensibilities: collecting toys and dolls, watching cartoons or other children’s programming, living with their parents or caregivers. They are at once highly conscious of what makes them different without being self-conscious. Every act they undertake and thought they express is done with undiluted sincerity. When director Cian O’Clery asks subjects what love means to them, one answers simply that “falling in love is going to be the most amazing feeling in the world.”
That sincerity of substance is complemented by the style. It is the downiest of reality shows. O’Clery, who helmed the Australian version as well, applies soft lighting, intimate camerawork, and synthetic orchestral scoring. Its narration is reminiscent of library storytime: “Finding love can be hard for anyone. But for some people, it can feel like an impossible dream.” The show goes to impressive lengths to make that dream a little more possible, matching subjects with other autistic, or otherwise disabled, people. There are no schemes or challenges, just vibes. The subjects comport themselves in a manner that makes their sheltering hard to overlook. Their views on love and courting echo attitudes that “neurotypicals” of 2026 can afford not to take seriously. They’re hypersensitive about their behavior, asking for clear permission to hug or hold hands, confirming and reconfirming emotional states, and stating intentions with telegraphic bluntness. There is no subtext. Not coincidentally, several are practicing Christians. Sexuality is a touchy or non-subject in most cases, but even the participant with the most open attitude to sex, an animator named Dani Bowman, does so by combing through how-to guides like Talmudic scrolls.
But childhood always beckons. Fairy tales are a common reference point. It’s “not if the glass slipper fits,” says Madison Marilla, “but if the cowboy boot fits right.” Emma Miller, a Mormon in Utah whose hobbies include romantic fan fiction and a passable Donald Duck impersonation, writes and performs a ballad called “My Own Fairy Tale,” confessing her struggles with the concept against her actual reality: “No dragon’s fire could ever burn/Like the loneliness inside my room/A bride to be without a groom.” This has led critics, often other autistic people, to accuse the show of “infantilizing” its subjects. There are aspects of the show that support this charge. Its editing, which foregrounds awkward silences and stilted small talk, is closer to Adult Swim or the films of Todd Solondz than reality TV. Much of the framing, from the elaborate dates to unblemished depictions of family life, comes off as contrived for effect. Yet this criticism is also rooted in the conflict over autism as a disability against autism as an identity. Parents of the show’s subjects have been scrutinized over sympathies for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The subjects, for their part, are critical of him.
There is as much safety for the viewer in watching someone ride with training wheels as there is in watching someone drive with cut brake lines. But Love on the Spectrum’s true achievement is in showing how safety can also be inertia. While the show can’t rid itself of cuteness in the fourth season, it dials it down as subjects navigate the realities of being in committed relationships. One ends in an engagement, another in a break-up, and another struggles (through no fault of their own) in the pursuit of homeownership. Subjects long to escape their sheltered stasis into the trappings of adulthood they see all around them.
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But that leaves a larger question of the nature of disability. To what extent can it be overcome? And is overcoming it, rather than finding love, the real destination? The show is only now beginning to entertain an answer. In her time on the series, Madison agonized over which of her dolls to bring with her for comfort on outings. But in the moment before she is engaged, she tells the crew, with solemnity as much as confidence, that she no longer needs to. It’s a moment of growth for someone who earlier had a panic attack when a fan called her “Maddie,” and the show takes it seriously.
Comfort consumption, whether from Love on the Spectrum or Love Island, is its own kind of training wheels. It represents the desire for repetition that both reflects and is somehow beneath the viewer’s own repetitive experience. And in life as much as in media, there is no worse humiliation than watching someone seemingly beneath you find a faster route to their destination. It is left once again to the person on the couch to reshape their own “arc” en route to a better place — maybe after binging the new season of Couples Therapy.
Chris R. Morgan writes from New Jersey. His X handle is @CR_Morgan.
