Atypical: Season 1, Episode 7: I Lost My Poor Meatball

”What about you, Elsa? You been doing any self care lately?”

It’s amazing that so much can be crammed into thirty-one minutes, but that’s a testament to how much the show and the characters have been patiently developed over the last six episodes. So the central thread of Paige telling Sam she loves him and him trying to work out what love is and that he feels it for her is both evocative in itself and interplay’s effectively with other threads- when Sam asks his parents how they first realised they loved each other he’s oblivious to the awkwardness, the question of whether they do indeed still love each other, whether they do do equally, or whether they ever did.

And the rug is cleverly pulled from under us- just as Sam thinks he’s worked out, in his own way, that he thinks he loves Paige, he meets Julia and realises he loves her. As Zahid says, you just know.

The contrast here is Elsa. Does she love Doug? She certainly doesn’t love Nick. Her convenient no-strings arrangement suffers mission creep as Nic’s friend has died and this time he wants emotional
and not just physical support. And Elsa can’t do this; she has enough emotional labour in her life and just wants some consequence-free sex. Given her life, one can understand- and I will emphasise, again, we should be careful not to demonise her for being unable to cope with her life and the huge expectations on her with expectations on her as the traditionally caring gender. But that’s not to say the affair is ok. Neither is just using Nick for free sex like this; he’s understandably upset at being exploited as she ends the affair as soon as strings become attached. It’s nice to see a tiresome gender stereotype being reversed; our culture sees men as being pure libido and women wanting sex only as something deeper. This is nonsense.

As for Casey- she gets her scholarship, in spite of everything! But her happiness is somewhat ruined by seeing her mother kissing Nick, ironically as she leaves him. This puts a horrible burden on her and ruins the loss of her virginity. I suspect we’re in for an eventful but unpredictable finale.