Comprised of two grandparents, four children, and the children’s families, the show focused on the difficulties of a normal American family. A family member, Max, was the first television character to show the reality of living with a child on the autism spectrum.

The character, played by Max Burkholder, was just 11 years old when the show began filming. Before Max began filming the show, he studied Autism so that he could accurately portray the role. Max said he was determined to understand autism before filming the show because he wanted his interpretation to be accurate. Like Max, the scenes he shot featured personality tics and deeply emotional scenes designed to hit families of children with autism. His role helped raise awareness about the spectrum.

During season 5, Max had a particular scene where he goes on an unsupervised field trip with other students in his class. Max was teased and bullied by his classmates until he collapsed, forcing his parents to drive and remove him from the activity. During the drive home, Max said to his parents, “Why do all the other kids hate me? Is it because I’m weird?” His on-screen parents, played by Monica Potter and Peter Krause, were speechless. This particular scene shocked many parents. Direct honesty and the harsh reality of misunderstanding others is something that families with autism deal with on a regular basis.

Writer and producer Jason Katims based the television show after a movie of the same name. He was inspired for the character of Max by his own son who lives on the spectrum. Katims said he wanted to include some of his own challenges as a parent, including the difficulties of raising a child on the autism spectrum. When it started, Katims said he wasn’t sure how it would work because there were no other shows or movies that addressed the disorder head-on. “I was worried. Would everyone turn it down? Could we do a good job of telling the story … what is the experience really like for a family dealing with this?”

Throughout the show, Max’s character is seen handling a variety of everyday situations and some not-so-everyday situations. In the show’s fourth season, Max’s mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. When his parents tell him that she is ill, he responds, “Okay. Can I go watch TV?” In the same episode, Max tells his mother that if he receives chemotherapy, the treatment will kill the healthy cells along with the diseased cells. This episode accurately highlighted the typical response that Asperger’s sufferers often have to emotional situations. In many cases they respond with facts, things that they know how to deal with.

Burkholder said, “The way Max thinks about things is rationally and logically, rather than emotionally. In his mind, rather than”My God, my mom could die. I’m very sad. What I am going to do? ‘ It was more like ‘Hmm, it will be really inconvenient not to have a mom. That will suck if she leaves. No one will be able to take me to school, prepare my meals, things like that. ‘“

Part of what made the show special was how the audience learned to see someone living with autism as a human being.

“At first, I thought playing Max was due to the fact that he had Asperger’s. But over time, it’s been more like his Asperger is more secondary to who he is,” Burkholder said.