Friendship, Love and Autism: Atypical

Atypical is a coming-of-age Netflix series. It is created by Robia Rashid and directed by Michael Patrick Jann. The series has 3 seasons and 28 episodes streamed. The first season was streamed on August 11, 2017 and drew lots of people’s attention. Netflix announced that the fourth season will be streamed in 2021, but heartbreakingly it is going to be the final season of the series. I can’t remember a second that I got bored while I was watching this series. It is so funny and friendly that you cannot stop watching it. Fans of the series (including me) are waiting for a new season eagerly already. You may be wondering what this series is about, well, here is a summary of the first season.

The main character is Samuel Gardner, you can call him Sam. Sam is an autistic18-year-old boy and goes to high school. He lives with his family; his mother, father and sister. He has a great interest and obsession about penguins and knows everything about them. He likes using extended metaphors for penguins and life. He is really organised, he wants order all the time and his life is based on his rituals but he decides to make a huge change in his life. He thinks that he needs someone to share his feelings and make memories with but he doesn’t know how to find the one for him so our journey begins.

Elsa is Sam’s mother and turns all her attention to her children, especially Sam. After Sam’s birth, Elsa takes care of him too much and does everything for Sam but Sam is not his baby anymore, he is a grown-up who wants to stand on his feet. Maturity of his son makes Elsa feel sad because she is scared of the truth that Sam does not need her anymore. She loves being needed and all she does, thinks and cares is about Sam for a long time, so she does not know what to do when Sam starts to become independent and she makes some mistakes...

Doug is Sam’s loving father and wants the best for his children but he has troubles to show his emotions to Sam. He tries to feel closer with Sam and to understand what his son has been going through but he never gets close to Sam as much as Elsa does. After Sam’s decision on finding a girlfriend, Doug is going to help his son and starts to feel much closer as he wishes for all the time.

Casey is Sam’s sister and she is good at being the caring sister although she is under a great pressure to look after his brother and be with him whenever he needs, which makes her tired and bored sometimes. She is a professional runner and longs for a scholarship to go to a better school and have more opportunities. She will meet new people, have new friendships and have challenges in her new life.

Zahid is Sam’s only friend who works part-time at an electronic store with Sam. They get on pretty well, Zahid treats Sam as his own brother and I adore their friend/brotherhood more than anything in this series. The relationship between them shows us that autistics can have friends as everyone else.

Paige and Julia are special to Sam. I do not give any spoilers to you guys but I just want to say that Paige and Julia cause Sam to feel emotions he has never felt, see the world from different perspectives he has never seen and improve himself.

This TV series made me aware of autism. I learnt to empathise with what situations autistics have to deal with, how they live and see the world unlike I do. There was a line in third season’s first episode that touched my heart. Here it is:

“Sometimes I just forget that you have challenges that I don’t even think of,”

I recommend this TV series to anyone to want to chill out a little bit, have some fun but also be aware of things that you never think about it before. The episodes are not too long, so you can watch it easily on school days. If I were you, I’d better go and add it to my watch list!