Like a Breath of Fresh Artic Air: Atypical Episodes 1 and 2

For this blog, I watched the show Atypical. The drama about an autistic boy trying to find his way in the world, and get a girlfriend too, hits right at home for me since I have an autistic little brother. Because of this unique perspective, I feel I am in a unique position to the family dynamics within the show.

The dad, I immediately bought because he acts like he loves his son, but isn't exactly sure what to do to help his son. However, this was probably easy to get right as every show I've seen about kids with disabilities features a hyper-competent mother and bumbling father. In my opinion, this is because we are trying to get away from the father knows best idea from the 1950’s.

The mother, on the other hand, is an odd-duck. She isn't the queen of the family, like Minnie Driver's character on the ABC show Speechless, nor is she a pushover. This is interesting because, like I said before, we usually get the first extreme with smatterings of the other. However, I have a feeling that her subplot with Nick will lead to a cheating angle, which will weaken her character tenfold. In this scenario, the dad will be on the moral high ground and have his wife at his mercy. This would return us to the old dynamic. On the other hand, if the writers are intelligent people, they may see as a wake up call for the husband. He could see that his wife was indulging in escapism because of the stresses of raising an autistic child, and would therefore take on some of the responsibilities. I feel that this is the direction the writers will, since they've made a point to show the father and son’s growing relationship, but only time will tell.

That leaves us with Casey, the sister, and at first, I really didn't care for her. I didn't see her facing many of the challenges that siblings of autistic kids face, like resentment and guilt. They seemed like regular siblings until this one scene. In it, Sam, the autistic boy, walking past Casey, visibly upset. Her response is to drop the conversation and immediately comfort him. That is what any sibling of a person that usually can't express emotion very well would do. After that, I began to like her character more and thinking about it, that may have been the reason she never got in a relationship. She might have felt guilt that that was something her brother could never have.

All in all, I like the show Atypical because of its nuanced approach of a family dealing with autism. Instead of treating it as humor to be laughed at, it is treated as serious. Autistic people do have trouble finding relationships and it is hard for their family to watch the struggle. I'm glad to have found a show that I can relate to in this manner and I can't wait to get back to watching it.