As Netflix show Atypical wraps up after four seasons, a look at how it navigated the tricky terrain of living on the spectrum

Season finales are bittersweet. On the one hand, it is hugely satisfying to see the characters you have watched and loved for years, finally reach that coveted self-assured state in their lives when they must flee the proverbial nest. But for us, sitting on the other side of our television screens, sharing a part of our own lives with these fictional characters, letting go is not easy. Even though we are the same audience that would not lose a moment to disapprove of them when the story loses steam, yet we still want them around. If only.

When the Netflix Original Atypical, which centres around a teenager living on the autism spectrum, concluded its third season in November 2019, it seemed like we would still have a few more years with the Gardners. In fact, showrunner Robia Rashid recently mentioned in a podcast with The Hollywood Reporter, that in her head she had always envisioned Atypical as a five-season show. Season 3 had ended with critical crossroads for every major character. It appeared, much to our delight, that those journeys would take a while. So when Netflix announced that Season 4 will be the curtain call, it was not what viewers were expecting to hear.

When the show broke out in 2017 on Netflix, it was a landmark mainstream move. Not everyday we get to see streaming giants flagging off stories revolving around an autistic character. The look and feel of Atypical appeared to echo the same traits as most American family sitcoms – cozy suburban homes, nuclear families, difficult teenagers, harrowed but doting parents, loyal sidekicks, all caught in the loop of falling apart and coming together.

But for the first time, a show was looking at all these tropes through the prism of living on the spectrum. So even if Atypical looked familiar, it was far from it.

Just like how Sam (Keir Gilchrist), who is obsessed with Antarctica, describes his favourite place on earth – “It’s not what it looks like...and that’s why I like it." He is referring to Antarctica being called a “desert” even though it contains 90 percent of the world’s ice. Nobody typically thinks ‘desert’ when they think Antarctica, he points out.

On a similar vein, behind its feel-good sitcom-like sheen, Atypical digs deep into the butterfly effect of being on the spectrum, both as a first hand experience, and that of the support system involved. In the first season, while it received heavy critical acclaim, it also came under the scanner for not including actors on the spectrum as part of its cast. The creators filled that gap in the following seasons when they roped in Michelle Dean as Autism Consultant on set, and a host of autistic actors like Tal Anderson as Sid, Anthony Jaqcues as Christopher, and Domonique Brown as Jasper. It was a standout move by the creators, and the way the show crafted sequences around these characters earned praise.

It is not easy to build a story around a tough subject such as autism and not have it weigh heavily on the viewer. A lot happens to the Gardners over four seasons – cheating wives, escaping husbands, new schools, dorm life, relationships, first times, troubled parenting, the whole gamut. Things could have easily slipped through the cracks and turned sentimental and melodramatic, if not downright preachy. But its clever and sensitive writing has consistently kept Atypical grounded, real, relatable, and universal, no matter if you have had any experience with autism or not.

And that is because we enter the lives of not just Sam, but also those around him – the “neurotypicals” who he leans on for support. What the show gets right on most counts is how it is not afraid to ask some difficult questions, to which it provides no neat answers – are ‘neurotypicals’ essentially normal? What does it mean to be a caregiver? And if a support system puts themselves ahead one time, can that be seen as selfish?

Take for instance Casey (Bridgette Lundy-Paine), Sam’s younger sister, who learnt at a very young age to take less space, because her brother needed it. A competitive high-school track runner, when her life comes with a larger calling and more promise, of the shores of UCLA to be precise, she feels lost because she is not used to being noticed. The show might be about Sam’s quest to make space for himself in a “normal” world, adapt to unfamiliar territory, find independence, find love; but we realise that pretty much everyone else is on the same journey. Casey must adapt to private school life, she must come to terms with her changing sexuality, not knowing how to define herself, and even as she finds love in Izzie, that’s a whole new unfamiliar territory she must learn to navigate.

Among its many wins, is how Atypical hits the right notes while navigating the tricky terrain of a same-sex love track. The story of Casey and Izzie, or as fans love to call them #Cazzie, is never sexualised or politicised or hyper-dramatised. The delicate manner in which their story is explored is not common in mainstream American sitcoms, certainly not those centered around high school teenage girls.

Lundy-Paine was all of 23 when she started on the show, and one can safely say that she has many great performances ahead of her; but her turn as Casey might well be one of her finest. The way she switches between her many personas on the show – ambling around defiantly around her mother who she shares a difficult relationship with, being fiercely protective of her brother, and at the same time not losing an opportunity to trouble him – remember the scene where she “sits on him like an egg”? She is also an earnest girlfriend to Evan, and her body language changes completely when she is around the love of her life, Izzie. Towards the end, we see this most stable character on the show struggle with her own issues of self-doubt. Lundy-Paine plays every shade of Casey with conviction – there is angst, there are heightened emotions, but not for a moment does the character become hysterical or insufferable, as so commonly happens in such arcs. Underplaying is such an underrated skill. It is little surprise that her performance pretty much outshines the others.

The complexities of mother-daughter relationships are cleverly explored through Casey and Elsa, the latter played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who brings about a fine mix of being the control freak, a struggling housewife, and a mother who loves her children to death but has strange ways of showing it. Being parents to Sam weighs on her marriage to Doug (Michael Rapaport), wherein both seek respective escape routes at different points in their lives – one hides away in a cabin in the woods to escape the realities of being a father to an autistic son, while the other has an affair, years later. As they continue to play parents to Sam and Casey, they must find a middle ground to make their marriage work, if not find the love they have lost. Rappaport and Jason Leigh’s rhythm makes it hard to believe that they are not a real couple. And then there is Paige (Jenna Boyd) and Zahid (Nik Dodani) playing support systems to Sam in their own ways – the former as girlfriend and the latter, as ‘the homie.' Boyd is an absolute delight as the girl who has got no chill while Dodani is charming as the smooth-talking American Pie-esque bestie. But there is more to both aside from their obvious hysterics – their quirks make them “atypical” in their own ways and their characters show just how attentive friends need to be towards people on the spectrum.

Holding them all like a glue is Gilchrist’s Sam. The actor’s studied portrayal of an autistic teenager is the beating heart of the show – his deadpan manner of speaking, the twitching eyes, the twiddling, the confused zone of not taking things literally, his hyper state of focus – Gilchrist owns Sam, a character that provides comic relief now and then, but he is never made the butt of jokes.  That is again some clever writing.  And unlike most reel characters on the spectrum, Sam is not desexualised either. His measured glee after losing his virginity to Paige, as portrayed by Gilchrist, stands among the show's many fine moments.

Atypical is not without its flaws. There is the occasional flight of fancy, some unrealistic comic twists. In the final season, the subplots appear rushed. But the show will be remembered not just for its enjoyable and thought-provoking story about a family navigating life on the spectrum, but also for celebrating inclusion. Yes, its conclusion seems premature, but, let us not forget that between its penultimate season in November 2019 and its final chapter now, in July 2021, the world changed.

The finale was shot when the pandemic was at its worst in the US. In such uncertain times, perhaps Netflix did what it had to do. Besides, when you have adults playing teenagers, the clock is always ticking. Even so, not many Netflix originals get to turn four seasons old, and that itself speaks of Atypical’s impact. And while the final season does not feel like a definitive conclusion – so many possibilities for the subplots to advance – for now, we must accept that the Gardners are moving out of the neighbourhood. They will be missed.