"I'm black, so they put me on the brochure."
Another extraordinary nuanced episode of character drama; I'm finding Atypical gets deeper and deeper with each episode as we explore the consequences of autism not only on the person in question but those in their gravitational orbit. So yes, we follow Sam's sweet and lovely romance with the truly saintly Paige, she of infinite tolerance. Yet we can understand how Casey, overprotective, gets Paige to dump her brother rather than expose him to deep emotion.Still, it's lovely seeing Sam wooing her back at the end. Please let them be happy.
And yet Sam influences other people too. His chocolate strawberry is having dangerous effects on Julia's relationship with her boyfriend. Casey's longed-for scholarship is endangered by the fact she hit someone for being a bully- being a protector, which being Sam's sister has made her. And, of course, Elsa's and Dou's relationship has been bent entirely out of shape by this heavy object demanding so much attention. It's easy to see Doug, in spite of his weaknesses in the past, as the good guy here, as opposed to Elsa who, after a bit of immersion in family life, returns again to sleeping with Nik.
It's brave of creator Robia Rashid, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, to make Elsa so unlikeable on the surface. She's a character who makes you thnk not only hoe exhausting an autistic child would be but, more subtly, how much work, especially emotional labour, falls on women as the default. This is a superb drama, with a lot of subtext.
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