Atypical (Season 1), Reviewed

Netflix's Atypical is not the first TV comedy to have a main character who is Autistic, but it is the first show to give Autism such a prominent place. In a way, this new show comes to correct some of the errors its predecessors (most notably, The Big Bang Theory) have made when portraying characters with Autism. Yet, as it has been pointed out by people with personal experience in Autism, it falls short in some fundamental ways. 

Even viewers with no personal experience in Autism will find in Sam (Keir Gilchrist) a familiar portrayal of a character in the spectrum. Sam is the kind of high functioning person with Autism that we have seen before in movies and television. His major problem in season one is that he often comes across as rude and struggles to find a girlfriend at age 18. 


If we widen our angle to look at the other members of his family, we'll also find familiar portrayals of characters and situations that have been explored in TV fiction before: a somewhat distant father who, even though he loves his family, has trouble connecting with a son who falls short of his expectations; a mother who feels neglected and is tempted into a romantic affair; and a sister who feels the burden of being her brother's keeper.

In Atypical, Robia Rashid (The Goldbergs) has created a well-intentioned TV comedy about a middle-class suburban American family one of whose members has Autism. Although the show goes to great lengths to put the audience in the shoes of a teenage boy with Autism, the problem is that Sam is often the butt of the jokes we are invited to laugh at.

This is the biggest contradiction in Atypical because when another character makes fun of Sam within the show we are prompted to feel empathetic toward his plight. Yet, the show keeps constantly making fun of Sam for his "quirks". For example, many of Sam's struggles to secure a date early in season one are played for laughs. 

A TV comedy should have jokes but to make them at the expense of a person with Autism when it is clear that the show also wants us to empathize with him feels not only slightly cheap but misguided. 

There seems to be a clear attempt to attract a broad audience. Although at times they show may be slightly reminiscing of past Showtime family comedies like United States of Tara, there is very little about Atypical that would be inappropriate for network television. 

One of the saving graces of the show is the performance of Brigette Lundy-Paine as Sam's sister Casey. She is great at playing the role of a teenager who has sacrificed so much of her short life to her brother that she feels guilty when doing perfectly normal things like having a boyfriend or going to a different school.

Part of this is down to Sam and Casey's mom Elsa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is not only over protective of Sam but also never makes any decisions that she thinks might have a negative impact on him. We get the impression that by the time we meet the family they have already gone through many challenging moments. What we see in season one is the result of 18 years in which family life (and the individual lives of every single family member) has revolved around Sam's well-being.

Some of the Atypical's storylines seem out of place in a family comedy. The whole storyline in which Elsa has an affair with a younger barman does not fit the show tonally. For being such a central character, Elsa is very flat. If the show made a bigger effort in making her seem more rounded, perhaps her storyline would make some sense and she would be a more empathetic character. 

Other problematic characters are Sam's therapist Julia (Amy Okuda) and his best friend and co-worker Zahid (Nik Dodani). Apart from seeing "ethnic minority" characters once again having the sole purpose of assisting the white main character, at different times, they both seem out of place within the show. They would work better as audience surrogates (outsiders to whom Sam can talk about his experiences directly) than as the attempts at fully fledged characters that they gradually become as the season progresses. 

A more interesting character is Sam's dad Doug (Michael Rapaport), who has some of the most moving scenes with Sam as he tries to connect with his kid now that he's grown sufficiently for Doug to know how to talk to him. There is a sense that Doug has always had a better relationship with athletic daughter Casey than with his son through the years. 

Atypical veers from being too expositional or even shoe-horned educational about Autism to being a broad comedy that doesn't pull away from making fun of its Autistic protagonist. 

If this show comes back for a second season, I can only hope that they readdress some of the issues with season one and try to find a better balance between getting laughs and being the accurate and sensitive portrayal of Autism that they clearly intended to make.