What I’m Watching: Atypical

Atypical: Season 1, Episode 5 “That’s My Sweatshirt” (B+)

It’s great to see what Sam’s relationship with Paige looks like since she really does seem to like a lot of the particular aspects of his personality that come from being on the spectrum, and has accepted them as positive. She’s trying to help him – and herself – by making him give her each of the three cards she allots him daily every time he talks about Antarctica, and he likes the fact that it’s a system which makes sense to him. She was also totally fine with being locked in his closet as a consequence for touching everything in his room, and she quickly gave him back his sweatshirt when she realized what it was doing to him. Casey expressed a surprisingly vicious sentiment in defense of her brother, not realizing that he was in fact coming around to her, leading to him lashing out at her for driving Paige away. Casey did well on the interview even though she was on her phone for a good portion of it, and now she just has to deal with that pesky violence on her record. Elsa was understandably enraged and worried by the invite she got for Nick’s birthday bash, but, encouraged to live her own life, she threw him quite the intimate celebration with a cupcake, a candle, and a steamy rendezvous. Though it’s sad for her, it was good to see Julia’s impulses rewarded with a disappointing – devastating is too strong a word – confirmation that the chocolate-strawberry was in fact an indicator of an affair and the imminent end of her relationship.