Atypical: An Honest Portrayal Of Life On The Autism Spectrum

Atypical is a show on Netflix featuring an 18-year-old boy, Sam, who is on the autism spectrum. The show revolves around him, his sister Casey, a sophomore cross-country athlete who is both fiercely protective of and adoringly bothersome to Sam, his mother, Elsa, and his father, Doug, who both deal with their own set of problems, especially around working through the many challenges that arise with having a child with autism.

The show is able to portray these many challenges honestly and hilariously. Sam’s challenges with dating, making friends, applying to colleges, and dealing with the different aspects of life that come easy to neurotypicals, but can pose a challenge for those on the spectrum are done beautifully, with a seemingly frank  portrayal of what it’s like to be autistic but not have it be the entirety of one's identity.

Like many shows, especially those that try to represent identities that are often underrepresented (a product of symbolic annihilation), there are some valid critique. In an article in The Guardian, the author, a woman whose son is on the spectrum, explains some of the not-so-great aspects of the show, writing that  “I get it that it may be more of a challenge to write stories involving characters who might be non-verbal, but does that kind of autism have to be so invisible? Sam in a sense is a kind of poster-child version of autism…But by the time we meet him in the story’s present tense, all his most challenging behaviour is in the past…” She makes a valid point. If we don’t see any characters that aren’t as high functioning as same, it’s easy to assume they do not exist. Thankfully, in season 2, there is a large increase in the number of people with autism on the show, and I suspect they will have an even larger role in the seasons to come. 

Nonetheless, Atypical is a fantastic show with a diverse cast, and I will be very, very anxiously awaiting the release of season 3.