Atypical: Season 1, Episode 3- Julia Says

”I put my butt on his car...!"

Another well-crafted piece of drama and a treatises on faithfulness this episode. The series isn't about Sam; in a sense he's a kind of Greek chorus with his talk of a "practice girlfriend". The meat of the episode is Casey's shock at finding that their dad abandoned the family for a few months in 2004, overwhelmed by the difficulties of an autistic son. Doug is now full of regret and has been trying to atone ever since, but the father/daughter relationship may never be quite the same- we end the episode with Casey running alone.

We also end with Elsa, inevitably kissing the bloke from the bar. Yet, of course, she has an autistic child too, and although Doug tries to be an affectionate husband one has to ask if the two of them ought to be together if not for their children.

There is, of course, a lot of rather good humour, too, but at its heart this is a serious character drama rather than one driven by autism as a theme- so far, at  least.