Atypical: Season 2, Episode 10- Ernest Shackleton’s Rules for Survival

”Die slowly, you shitbirds!”

It’s graduation day, a more than usually meaningful moment to Sam; it’s an achievement he’s never been able to take for granted, as well as a symbolic moment leading towards uni and the challenges of greater independence. So it’s lovely to see Sam inviting a very pregnant Julia, and the two of them getting to chat normally again after all that earlier awkwardness. Less lovely, but at the same time cathartic, is Doug driving to the bar to punch barman Nick but, well, at least Nick has the decency to admit he deserves the punch.

There’s some amusement value in that Sam asks everyone in his life to stop helping him, with comical results, but the core of the episode is deadly serious. On Sam’s last day it takes him considerable courage to ask his classmates to sign his yearbook- yet he gets called a freak, and worse, on what’s supposed to be a special document. Paige is damn right in her furious denunciations.

And yet Sam does something amazing, in front of all his friends and loved ones. When Paige freezes up and is unable to deliver her valedictorian speech, Sam actually delivers it for her, and does it so well. This moment has really been earned, and we are left in no doubt what a wonderful thing has just happened. It’s a brilliant scene. Ernest Shackleton famously spurned the chance at glory so he could get all of his crew out alive, unlike that stupid wanker Scott, and Sam is a real Shackleton here.

With Casey there’s a sudden triangle with Evan (she gets her second first time) and Izzy, but that’s for next season. So is Elsa’s firm insistence, after finding out about the punch, that she and Doug talk about whether or not there’s any chance of him forgiving her... and then he blows her off to confide in Megan. I fear, next season, that the roles are to be reversed. And next season is probably a long way away. Ouch. Watching in real time sucks.

Another awesome season, then. How long do we have to wait now...?

Atypical: Season 2, Episode 9- Ritual-licious

“You’ve been smooching! Under my tutelage! I love it!”

The penultimate episode, and this one is again framed by a theme introduced by a Sam monologue, in this case that rituals are important, being an ongoing reassurance that everything is ok. And Casey’s birthday (she’s 16) is a day full of rituals for Sam- but are those rituals about her, or about himself? That’s a lesson Sam has to learn, gradually, with a lot of time-consuming and amusing rituals punctuating an episode dealing with a fair bit of serious stuff.

There’s a parallel with Elsa too; Casey wants to keep her birthday low key with just a few people, not least so that she can have her “second first time” with the rather lovely Evan. But Elsa arranges a large party, ostensibly for Casey but in reality because of her own need to be seen to be doing something to reconnect with her. These parallels are rather clever.

On top of this Zahid inadvertently blurts out to Paige that Sam has been smooching with someone else, and the party comes to an unhappy end when Casey’s “friends” from her new school, including Izzy, turn out to have been invited by Elsa in a clumsy attempt to get them to make up.

Still, all’s well that ends well, sort of. Izzy makes up with Casey, having never cared about her douchebag boyfriend anyway and being terrified of losing Casey- and they kiss. Most touchingly, though, Sam learned that day that he got into his chosen uni- but keeps quiet about it as the day is all about Casey. It’s a touching, funny, brilliantly structured episode. Aren’t they all, though?

Roll on season finale...

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 8- The Silencing Properties of Snow

“I just got a hand job in an igloo!”

So we teach the dramatic end of this magnificent season, a meditation about love, where Sam’s quirks  stop just being funny and start to hurt people- and where Elsa starts to experience consequences.

Sam, being Sam, tells Paige he doesn’t love her and immediately dumps her while in a restaurant with her entire family, a terrible thing to do to someone, and understandably she’s heartbroken and angry- you can hardly blame her for the angry demonstration on the family lawn. That he manages to partly atone for this is more because of her saintliness than anything else, and it’s right that she doesn’t fully take him back as her boyfriend. He’s very lucky to get, er, what happens in the igloo.

What he does to Julia in confronting her at home and declaring his love, with chocolate strawberries, is if anything worse, especially as the gift immediately reveals to her that Sam cost her her fiancé. Yes, she yells at him and causes an incident on the bus but no, she is not in anyway unjustified or unprofessional. Sam trespassed into her house and violated her privacy, with potentially life ruining consequences. Her right to that privacy is absolute. Doug is wrong to assign any blame to her. The conclusion for her is inconclusive, too; will she accept her fiancé ‘s crass new proposal?

Casey, at least, gets over her avoidance of Evan and the two of them finish in a good place- but she’s still damaged by knowledge of Elsa’s affair, something that isn’t her responsibility. Elsa gets over the affair, deleting Nick from her phone and forgiving Doug for leaving fifteen years ago- and then Doug catches a little lie. And, in the final scene, finds out in the most hilarious way possible which is so very Casey. This is brilliant, brilliant telly.

I would say I can’t wait until the next season. But I can, of course, watch it at any time...

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.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 6- The D-Train to Bone Town

“Just always assume I mean sex...”

Fascinating episode again as, shockingly, we reach the season’s three quarter point. The relationship between Sam and Paige is still lovely, and Paige is still a saint. There’s a school dance coming up, a big thing America and indeed, these days, here, and all that stimulation doesn’t sit at all well with Sam’s autism. There’s lots of humour here, yes- a needed counterbalance to what goes on elsewhere - but Paige is showing such consideration here.

Less considerate is Elsa, but we’ve already been through how simplistic it would be to demonise her, given what her life is like, for her affair with Nick- and for relaxing every once in a while with a bit of weed. It’s just unfortunate that she should happen to let slip Casey’s possible scholarship to the mother of her daughter’s best friend, leading to lots of upsetting ostracism and bullying from Casey’s friends who are angry that she’s abandoning the relay team. But, as Elsa rightly tells her, it’s ok to be selfish sometimes, especially if you don’t put yourself first very often.

Meanwhile Julia’s boyfriend has left her, unable to deal with all the constant suspicion emanating from that chocolate strawberry, and she’s both single and bonding with Doug in a situation which seems innocent now but may take on another context when Doug finds out about Elsa’s affair, which I predict will happen next episode so the finale can deal with the aftermath. Let’s see if I’m right.

Oh, and Julia’s pregnant. Wow. This is all bloody good.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 5- That's My Sweatshirt

"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.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 4- A Nice Neutral Smell

"She's a girl who wants to touch your peen..."

A surprisingly eventful episode here as we reach the season halfway point. It's played for laughs, but Elsa is racked with guilt for her infidelity, and ends up dumping her lover and committing to her life of Doug being nice and her kids taking her for granted.

But this episode isn't really about Elsa. It's not about Doug, either, and the alienation he feels at the autism group with the constant anal pointing out of his occasional slip into non-"people-inclusive language". Nor, even, is it about Sam, with his incident in the crowd at the athletics track with the ponytail, or that a lot of screen time is spent with him clumsily making his way towards a relationship with the rather cute Paige.

No; this is about Casey, whose record-breaking victory in the 400m isn't witnessed by anyone in her family, and whose proffered athletics scholarship to a posh school is pooh poohed by Elsa because she "needs" to be in the same school as Sam to look after him. Because Sam is the special one, and no one wants it to be about her- so it falls to a brave and lovely outburst by Evan, who insists that it bloody well is about her and it's time people started recognising that. It's a very good bit of writing. And I can't believe we're already halfway through the season.

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.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 2- A Human Female

“Nobody needs you, Mom!”

On the surface this episode centres around Sam’s crush for Julia and his comical misunderstanding that he has the green light to pursue Julia, something which takes up a lot of screen time and allows him to bond with his dad while doing so, but this is all neatly resolved. Meanwhile, more long term things are happening beneath the surface.

Elsa, for example, is responding very negatively to Doug’s attention and eventually finds an excuse to meet that barman again. It’s clear where this is going, and she isn’t a likeable character, but before we judge too harshly we should remember that she’s spend years with heavy caring response divinities and, decent though Doug is, we live in a culture where women are expected to do this sort of heavy labour.

We also see an intensifying of the relationship between the touchingly inexperienced Casey and Evan. After kissing him for the first time her reaction is utterly, utterly cute. So far this is the nice and fluffy storyline, acting as contrast to the worrying possibility of adultery, and meanwhile Sam is oblivious. This is promisingly well written stuff.

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 1- Antarctica

“People on the spectrum date, you know."

This is a series on Netflix that Mrs Llamastrangler and I are going to be watching once a week, one or two episodes at a time- expect the next episode's blog in the morning. It's a comedy-drama about an autistic teenager, his family and, well, the comedy and the drama that ensues.

Now, neither Mrs Llamastrangler nor I are autistic, and those people we know are all at the Asperger's end of the spectrum- as, I'm guessing, is Sam. It's with mentioning that people we know who are on the spectrum are very different individuals, and by no means defined by the fact that they are autistic. There's also nothing wrong with being autistic; it's part of the world of neurodiversity, encompassing all sorts of things. Autism is not a mental illness.

So it's also worth questioning whether it's appropriate to use this subject matter for comedy. So far, though (and I'll keep reviewing this) this is a balance of humour with drama that seriously explores the issues f how the world treats autistic people. Humour can be a very effective way of making a serious point, and there's a balance to be struck in any case between nasty humour that punches down and being overly pious. Personally, I'm a hearing aid wearer, and I laugh at my own comedy mishearings all the time.

Anyway, Sam lives with his overprotective mother Elsa, who is exactly the sort of person I wouldn't like very much in real life, and his long-suffering dad Doug. The two of them are worn out from years of caring for him, and their relationship looks fragile, held together only by routine and worryingly endangered should the nest empty. And it's worrying seeing Elsa with that bloke behind the bar...

There's also Casey, Sam's wonderfully cynical sister, and both teenage siblings are slowly exploring relationships. Finally, there's Julia, Sam's therapist, who is handy for driving the plot and giving a reason for Sam to have his humorous and counterpointing monologues. This aspect is very Sopranos. But Sam is funny, likeable, and frankly adorable. And he knows a lot about penguins.

It's good stuff so far, well written and set up nicely for various things to develop throughout the fairly short season. Do Americans really say "twat" like that though?