Carl the Collector

I watch PBS Kids, partially for the novelty of watching shows through over-the-air broadcasts, and partially because Cyberchase is still going (yes, really!), but I've been finding that some of the other shows are fun too. There's a very new one named Carl the Collector that might be interesting to the people here because all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals and two of the main characters (including the lead character, Carl) are autistic, and the people behind the show actually did their research and involved autistic people in the creative process, so it's all written well.

I'm not sure how much entertainment it has for adults, but it's kind of nice to have some actual intentional representation that's done very well (as opposed to something like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic where a lot of the characters are very relatable but I don't think they were intended to be neurodivergent), and also getting a peek into a world where people are actually understanding about autism and it's just kind of treated as one of the ways people are different from each other.

The titular character character Carl is a raccoon who (as the title suggests) gets very into collecting things, and organizing and sorting, and has problems with controlling his emotions sometimes or handling when things don't go to plan, and I get a little bit of secondhand embarrassment because I'm reminded a lot of when I was a kid. Which also means that the show is probably really helpful because it's helping people work through that kind of stuff, and I had to do that myself.

Aside from Carl, the other autistic character is a fox girl named Lotta who has sensory problems, especially regarding sound, and she puts on headphones to avoid getting overstimulated. She's also a tech dork, and plays and composes music, and when she's upset you get to see her twirling the tip of her tail. And that's another thing: Unlike shows like Arthur, the characters fully acknowledge what animals they are, and will interact with their tails and mention things like their fur.

It's cool that there's more than one perspective on how autism can work for people in the show, so as not to suggest that it's the same for everyone, and I can relate to the sensory stuff a lot since that's something that's still a big unavoidable problem for me regardless of how well I can learn how interaction works.

It's free to watch online: pbskids.org/videos/carl-the-collector