You know the story: A superstar surprises a fan on a talk show, and the online crowd goes wild, sending the clip viral. But when the affable actor Jack Black surprised Tanner Smith on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in April, a particularly poignant and joyful alchemy was conjured.
“Jack! Jack! I’m so excited to finally meet you,” Smith exclaimed as they embrace. “You’re so handsome, you’re looking good, Jack!”
“I love you on the show, and I can’t wait for the next season,” Black told Smith, referring to the Netflix reality series “Love on the Spectrum,” which recently wrapped up a memorable third season. “I’m so happy for you for having all of this success,” Black said. “To meet you in person is really amazing for me, too.”
Smith is a beloved star in his own right. Online — his handle, tannerwiththe_tism, nods cleverly at his having autism — he has about 2.5 million followers. It’s a number that is not unusual among his castmates, all of whom are autistic.
On the viral clip, one commenter called Smith “easily one of the most beautiful humans to walk this earth.” Another wrote, “This was a moment where humanity remembered what love, truth, and presence really looks like.”
“Love on the Spectrum,” the show that made Smith famous, follows him and his castmates as they date and forge relationships, often with others who have autism.
And throughout the series, they’ve managed to do the almost unimaginable: deliver on the promise of reality TV by offering riveting entertainment while cracking through the artifice of what reality TV has become. The show feels good to watch, but calling it feel-good TV would be reductive. It lends authenticity and warmth to the genre without skewing saccharine or pandering.
This season, viewers saw a start of a new relationship when Pari Kim and Tina Zhu Xi Caruso shared a kiss in a garden, the first either of them had with another woman (more than a year later, they are still a couple). And viewers saw the end of a relationship, when Dani Bowman and Adan Correa parted ways shortly after their first anniversary of dating because of their differing beliefs about sex before marriage.
“I’ve always wanted an intimate relationship,” Bowman says, crestfallen. “Instead, misery.”
What was once a genre akin to documentary, reality TV has mutated over the decades into often indulgent or guilty-pleasure viewing, defined by franchises like “Real Housewives” and families like the Kardashians. Viewers now not only accept its gambit, but also often embrace and appreciate it.
The magic of “Love on the Spectrum” is that its cast members, by their nature, have no real pretense. It’s a show not just about its main cast but equally about their families, friends and social networks — and all the love, learning and frustration that comes with their moving through the world. Instead of the tokenism of television past, the show strives to explore the depth and breadth of their varied experiences.
When Connor Tomlinson shares his regret at missing an opportunity to kiss Georgie Harris, his mother and brother reassure him that he’s on the right track and should be more gentle with himself. His self-reflection — “I just panicked,” we hear him say later — is in palpable contrast to the glut of reality dating shows where contestants move hastily toward intimacy and even marriage.
Autism spectrum disorder, as it is officially called, is as wide-ranging as its name suggests and is marked by a mix of social and communication issues, repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns that vary in severity. A mildly autistic child could simply struggle with social cues, while a child with a severe case could be nonverbal. There is no blood test or brain scan to determine who has autism.
Cian O’Clery, the show’s co-creator and director, who can often be heard in the series asking the cast questions, based “Love on the Spectrum” on his popular Australian docuseries of the same name. “We care for the people we’re filming,” O’Clery told Vanity Fair in April. “It’s an incredibly diverse population, and you can’t make assumptions about somebody because they have a diagnosis of autism.”
After Season 3 debuted in April, “Love on the Spectrum” quickly landed among the top 10 programs across all streamers, according to Nielsen, and remains a fixture in Netflix’s top 10 most-watched TV shows. It was renewed this week for a fourth season.
The show’s success comes at a time when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, has fixated on autism as a problem to eradicate. Earlier this month, he announced a new database for research into “root causes” of autism, and he has called autism “preventable” and an “epidemic,” and even pledged to find the cause of it by September.
“These are kids who will never pay taxes,” Kennedy said in April. “They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date.”
But prominent people with autism, including stars of the show, have pushed back against his statements, even balking at the idea that autism is a condition that needs fixing.
Bella Ramsey, the Emmy-nominated star of HBO’s hit drama “The Last of Us,” spoke to Vogue in April about being diagnosed with autism when filming the show’s first season. Ramsey called the diagnosis “freeing” and said, “There’s no reason for people not to know.”
And on the current season of the long-running CBS reality juggernaut “Survivor,” Eva Erickson, a powerhouse player who is pursuing a doctorate at Brown University, shared her autism diagnosis with her competitors.
She said how, when she was young, her parents had been told by doctors that she would never live independently or hold a job. While acknowledging that she certainly has her struggles, she has never viewed her autism “as a roadblock to success,” she said. “It’s not something to work around, it’s just part of who I am. It’s nothing bad about it.”
For viewers, seeing is believing. The stars of “Love on the Spectrum” put some of the most personal parts of their lives on display and stand out not just by offering a rich representation of living with autism, but also by filling our screens with an increasingly rare commodity: honesty.
At the season’s end, Abbey Romeo serenades her boyfriend of three years, David Isaacman, with a moving song she wrote. “He sees colors as numbers, now I know them all / He learned how my mind works, we started to fall,” she sings, referring to his synesthesia. Nearby sat some of their family members, who, like many watching at home, were left drying their eyes.
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
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