All posts by Sara Luterman

Atypical: Season One, Episode Eight

This is it. The final episode of the first season of Atypical. Unless Netflix addresses some of the significant problems with Atypical and includes some actual autistic voices, I hope it is the last episode ever. Despite a few positive moments, Atypical laughs at autistic people, not with us. Rather than inform people about what our lives are like, it provides a cartoonish and heavy-handed caricature that plays into almost every negative stereotype about autism. Treating women like sex objects is not a natural extension of autism. Limiting how often someone is allowed to talk about what they love is abuse, not a real relationship. Autistic women, autistic people of color, queer autistic people and transgender autistic people exist. Autism doesn't cause families to fall apart. It isn't even true that families with autistic children have higher divorce rates than the general population. The fact that … Continue Reading ››

Atypical: Season One, Episode Seven

The end is near! The seventh and penultimate episode of Atypical is titled, "I Lost My Poor Meatball." My first reaction was to desperately hope that it wasn't yet another disgusting sexual euphemism.

‘You need bowling more than anyone I've ever met.’

Atypical: Season One, Episode Six

Episode 6 of Atypical is titled, "The D-Train to Bone Town." I feel slightly uncomfortable just typing that phrase. It was an uncomfortable episode to watch overall. Atypical is threaded with racist subtext, but it really comes to a head in this episode. Somehow, all of the mean girls are black women. April the mean mom? she's black. Sharice, Casey's so-called best friend who betrays her? Black. Her track mates are people of color, too. The only empathetic black character in this episode is Harmony, a sex worker, and she is thoroughly objectified by both Sam and the show's writers. I don't think it's intentional, but the image of autism as a white disease causes serious hurt and isolation for black autistic people and their families. The image of Sam's white family being afflicted by intolerant, neurotypical black people is not a good look for the writers.

‘You asked … Continue Reading ››

Atypical: Season One, Episode Five

In the fifth episode of Atypical, "That's My Sweatshirt," Paige overtakes Claire for the most unlikeable character in the show. She seemed quirky and sweet last episode, but as she systematically violates Sam's space and controls him to an abusive degree, she's completely lost me and has taken the crown for the Worst Person on this show. And that's saying something, since the episode caps off with Elsa cheating on her husband, again. Which is still, somehow, autism's fault and not hers. A core part of the family dynamic on Atypical is that somehow, Sam's autism makes everyone around him's life worse. How, exactly, is unclear. It seems that the mere fact of Sam's autism negatively impacts everyone around him to a degree where any and all terrible behavior is excused and justified. It's a completely toxic dynamic. It's not funny. It's not even sympathetic. It's horrifying. I feel sorry for … Continue Reading ››

Atypical: Season One, Episode Four

In Atypical's fourth episode, "A Nice, Neutral Smell," Sam's Odyssey to date continues. A girl, Paige (Jenna Boyd), shows interest in him! Why exactly is mysterious, since he treats her and other women terribly. She's a little quirky and probably has low self-esteem, so apparently that means they're perfect for each other? Of course, the writers continue to portray Sam's awfulness towards women and girls as some kind of natural extension of his autism. Last time I checked, misogyny isn't part of the diagnostic criteria for autism, although I suppose I should give them props for giving Sam a personality trait beyond an autism symptom checklist, however unintentionally.

‘Gonna break that record, superstar?’