While “Atypical” may not be Netflix’s best show, it’s not the worst thing Netflix has ever— y’know what, scratch that. As far as I’m concerned, “Atypical” is the worst thing that Netflix has ever done (keeping firmly in mind the streaming service’s ongoing relationship with Adam Sandler, which has produced such gems as “The Do-Over” and “The Ridiculous 6.”) It’s the type of show where the Nerdy Main Character’s Hornball Best Friend says things like “I’m taking you to Poon City” and “code titties! Code titties!” and “you know what might make you feel better? Like, a thousand nice asses in those fleecy sweatpants” and “[you’ll be] taking the D train to Bone Town [in no time].” Except that this time, the Nerdy Main Character has autism! Twist!
In the coming weeks, there’s a decent chance that you will feel compelled to tune into Netflix and check out their new original series starring Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s a warm high school comedy, after all. It has some likeable stars, maybe even got a good review or two (although I have a hard time wrapping my head around that). Some personal advice: don’t. There’s another half-hour comedy on TV right now about a family with a disabled child, it’s currently streaming on Hulu, and it’s called “Speechless.” Go watch that instead.
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I call “Atypical” a comedy because of its half-hour runtime as well as the fact that it’s shot with the distinct visual style of an ABC family sitcom. However, “Atypical” is antithetical to comedy. Keir Gilchrist, who was terrific in “It Follows,” plays Sam, an autistic high-schooler who wants to “get a girlfriend.” And that’s what the show is about. It’s about Sam “getting a girlfriend.” He gets advice on the subject from his mother (Leigh), his father (Michael Rapaport) and his therapist Julia (Amy Okuda). Oddly, not once — that I caught, at least — does the advice include the fact that Sam can’t simply “make [insert name of uninterested girl here] his girlfriend” without her approval. Regardless, it turns out to be quite easy for Sam to achieve his goal, as women inexplicably throw themselves at him throughout the season.
Early in the series, Sam does some online research regarding “how to get a girlfriend.” He stumbles upon a pick-up-artist type singing the virtues of “negging.” I believe the exact quote was something along the lines of “negging is the quickest way to get a chick on your dick.” Sam writes “CHICK ON DICK” at the top of his notebook. Clearly, the show doesn’t endorse such behavior; it’s portraying the pick-up-artist as a gross sleaze and fairly quickly has another character tell Sam that negging is a bad thing to do. However, and this is possibly my primary point of distaste for the show, Sam ultimately attracts more than one girl by accidentally negging them. He says awful, mean things to them — due to his autism, I think? — and it’s pretty clear that it’s their low self-confidence that has them coming back, regularly, for more mistreatment. Sam all but tells a girl that her nose is ugly; she finds his honesty charming and eventually offers to have sex with him. Later, he humiliates another girl in front of her family and she rewards him by giving him a handjob in an igloo (don’t ask) and saying they can just “fool around.” Also a Stripper With A Heart Of Gold flashes him, friendly-like, as if this were a ’90s teen sex comedy that you’d stumble upon in the deep recesses of Netflix late at night when you can’t fall asleep because you’re thinking about how much you dislike “Atypical.”
Come to think of it, this does play very much like a “teen tit film.” It has the clueless dad, the sexy mom who’s having an affair with a hot bartender, and a virginal high school student obsessed with getting laid while his sister develops a relationship with the hot dumb-jock type who hangs around the neighborhood. It’s like “The Goldbergs” meets “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” if both were awful.
Michael Rapaport’s performance here is agonizingly wonderful (wonderfully agonizing?). It’s not terrible, per se, and it’s certainly not any good, but it really is impossible to take your eyes off… whatever it is that Rapaport’s doing here. His character, Doug, is bummed that he doesn’t have more in common with his son who would rather talk obscure animal trivia than have a catch, and to that end Rapaport is compelled to say the following line of gruesomely tin-eared dialogue: “Me and my dad used to go to the ball games all the time.” Just read that sentence out loud to yourself.
Rapaport has astonishingly little chemistry with Leigh — oh, did I say astonishingly? Pardon, I meant: Dear lord, Netflix, what the hell were you thinking with this couple? The only funny thing to happen on “Atypical” is for Rapaport and Leigh to have to share multiple scenes together. It’s like there’s some gravitational force pulling them away from one another but they have to fight it for the sake of making this goddamn show.
Speaking of astonishing artistic choices, let’s talk about Sam’s therapist, Julia, who is possibly the most ill-conceived character on “Atypical” (which itself is a perversely impressive feat). In an early episode, Sam imprints on her, Jacob-from-“Twilight“ style. The show deals with this storyline in every dumb way that you can possibly imagine. Most egregious of all, however, is that Julia is a bumbling fool of a therapist who has never heard of transference and is taken aback completely by the notion that Sam would “have a crush” on her — something that would be plainly obvious to anyone with a normal level of interpersonal awareness, let alone a trained therapist. Sam is bad at hiding his feelings.
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Gilchrist is giving it all he’s got — all of it — as Sam. At times, it’s not a terrible performance. At other times, however, it’s a horrific spectacle of good intentions gone wrong. There are moments of broadness in his portrayal of an autistic teen that seem almost to be taunting. That’s probably too harsh, as the team behind the show must have their hearts in the right place (right? I mean, they must, right?) But still, there’s a lot to this performance that rings false.
Yet, I’d place little of the blame for that on Gilchrist’s shoulders. It’s a problem primarily with the way this thing is written. I’m sure there were consultants aplenty involved in the making of this series and the crafting of the central character, but it feels as though Sam was written by someone who once had a kid with autism in his class in middle school. There’s nothing layered about the show’s perspective on developmental disorders or the struggles such a disorder can inflict on a family. It’s all been said before, and rarely worse than it’s said here. Again, I’d recommend checking out “Speechless,” which, as I said earlier, is really quite good.
An addendum, because it would be plain wrong of me not to acknowledge this (as much as I wanted to go out recommending “Speechless”). There’s one person who comes out of this whole sordid affair crystal-clean. Brigette Lundy-Paine plays Casey, Sam’s sister. She gives a good performance in the best-written role the show has to offer. Casey’s ongoing romance with a local high-school dropout (with a heart of gold, of course, because that’s how this show rolls) is actually really lovely. Lundy-Paine is great in moments where Casey has to defend, comfort, or generally look out for Sam. Give Lundy-Paine her own “My So-Called Life” or “Freaks and Geeks” and I’m there. [D-]
“Atypical” launches on Netflix on August 11th.
