How typical is Atypical?

Shorya Sehgal

The show, Atypical, focuses on the life of a high school autistic student, Sam Gardner, who is diagnosed with ASD of high functionalities. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental condition that involves persistent challenges in social interaction, speech and nonverbal communication, and restricted/repetitive behaviours. It affects one’s capacity to communicate socially and brings about symptoms that hurt a person’s ability to function properly in school, work, and other areas of life.

According to the criteria of the DSM-5, there are three levels of severity of Autism. By what can be observed in the series, Sam presents level 1 autism, that is the lowest. This mainly affects his social communication and his interests, and he also displays restricted and repetitive character sometimes.
While Atypical is one of the very first shows which is really close in its approach to correctly display how Autism surfaces, it is very stereotypical in its approach to do so. It talks about very cliche examples, in a comical way and that does not seem to really be the best way to illustrate an autistic character.

The show debunks the usual beliefs of Autism at a lot of places. Oftentimes, people with autism are discriminated against or do not even get the opportunity to work. What is really striking for me in the show is the fact that Sam is successfully employed at a computer electronics store. Thus, there is an ease of integrating autistic adults into the community. His boss seems understanding of his autism. Sam is even best friends with one of his co-workers and fellow high school student, Zahid. His father, however, is frustrated with his son’s diagnosis. Initially, he left his family shortly after Sam’s diagnosis, but then he came back. Additionally, after hiding Sam’s Autism diagnosis from a work colleague for years, Doug realizes his internalized shame about Sam.

At some points in the show, there is a combination through the literature – the many academic accounts, memoirs and so on – and extracted, intensified and amplified all the most obvious autistic behaviours. The conversations that happened between Sam and his therapist are extremely interesting. One example that particularly stood out was when he stated that even though people think that he doesn't know when they are teasing him, he is painfully aware of the experience. He knows that the others are laughing at him and that they are asking questions in a provocative manner, but his outward appearance does not show a response. This example shows how an adolescent with autism is able to perceive things that are happening in the outer world and people’s perceptions about him.

What is extremely bothersome in the show is that Sam’s autism manifests in how he simply makes the people around him incredibly uncomfortable and this is the crux of Atypical’s comedy, but there does not seem anything that is funny about turning someone’s disability into a punchline. In one scene, he says to his counselor, “I can see your bra. It’s purple in color,” unaware that it probably wasn’t a socially acceptable thing to say. In another scene, he just repeats the word “twat” over and over for no apparent reason. As he does each of these things, the audience is supposed to laugh at how weird and different Sam is. This might oversimplify the problem through the use of comedy, which clearly isn’t how disorders should be dealt with.

According to the 2010 census, about 20% of the U.S. population had a disability, a statistic which includes people with autism. The CDC also reports that in the United States, 1 in 68 people have been identified with ASD. Yet, the disability has a 2% representation rate in the popular media which is consumed in the country today, which isn’t very representative of the actual make-up of the country. Hence, while the disorder is highly prevalent in the country, those who actually know about the disorder might be a very less part of the entire population.
One could easily see school kids laughing at someone who they know is on the spectrum after watching this show, and simply assuming that they too must say the same things Sam does and have the same embarrassing difficulties in everything from relationships to school. To me, Atypical conveys as to how we could laugh at people’s differences — and not in a good way.