Genre: Drama/Comedy
Cast: Keir Gilchrist, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brigette Lundy-Paine
‘Atypical’ is an admirable show filled with great potential. This enjoyable dramedy focusses on an autistic teenager and his family. Sam is an interesting, quirky character who you feel for even though he’s not especially likable. He is an autistic high school senior who is extremely passionate about penguins and really wants a relationship with a girl. Although it may not represent perfectly how autism is it still gives a lot of insight to parents.
The cast is uniformly excellent, but the best is not the brilliant Jennifer Jason Leigh as the mom, but rather Brigette Lundy-Paine as the sister. Leigh seems totally miscast because her character Elsa is very thinly drawn. On the other hand, Lundy-Paine does a great job as the talented student in the shadow of the problem, a very interesting character.
It tells us about the rest of the Gardner family: his autism warrior mom Elsa, his ashamed paramedic father Doug and his track star younger sister Casey. All of them have varying storylines of their own: Elsa’s infidelity, Doug’s acceptance of his son’s autism and Casey’s promising athletic future and her first boyfriend.
One of the largest points of criticism came from the casting of Keir Gilchrist as protagonist Sam. Sam has autism spectrum disorder. Gilchrist does not, even if it’s not surprising for a show or film to not cast an autistic actor in an autistic role. Other criticisms are about some symptoms of Sam’s ASD. Apparently, they seems a bit overdone at times. His character is not as nuanced as some others, nevertheless it still feels genuine.
Ultimately, ‘Atypical wants people to be more sensitive to what people like Sam go through, and in that sense it succeeds. Gilchrist, is persuasive and thoughtful enough to avoid making Sam feel like a stereotype. ‘Atypical’ is, after all, about a young man who doesn’t fit easily into what many would call the normal world.
> Mar MartÃnez
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