So, how do I feel about Everything’s Gonna Be Okay?
That question has been on my mind since the end of the final episode. I’ve been overwhelmed with emotion just thinking about it, to be honest, the main one being confusion. I want to like this show. I really, really want to like this show. Here’s what I like, and what’s holding me back.
This review will have spoilers. Like everything on my blog, I am speaking only for myself.
Representation
The elephant in the room is that this show actually has autistic representation including women, and a spectrum of sexuality. The show is incredibly white, and has a lot of characters with class privilege, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t shocked. I’ve never seen a bisexual or gay autistic character on television before. I’ve seen maybe one woman.
And, this is kinda key: It’s never been an autistic woman playing either one. I didn’t know how much it would change the way things are acted, but it definitely does.
The whiteness of the show does definitely bug me, though. It persists to this day that I’ve never seen someone that looks like me be played autistic outside of one bollywood film-and this show isn’t a game changer, there, for someone like me. In some ways, though, it is.
The Autism
Matilda, the main autistic character, has hopes and dreams. She has all the teenage fears around image, and all the autistic struggles that come with not understanding the world and how people treat her. She feels like a burden. She has meltdowns.
She’s heartbreakingly real, a lot of the time, save for one or two points in the show where they’ve clearly pulled the whole “autistic people have no empathy” card for plot drama.
Drea, another autistic character who has a service dog, is probably my favorite in the show. She’s honest, she’s up front with what she wants from people, and she doesn’t hesitate to share how she feels when people screw her over. She’s got a list of chronic conditions (sensory sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, crohn’s disease, anxiety) and is also clear about them, both of which I have legitimately never seen out of a show about autistic people before. This is despite literally every autistic person I know having at least one co-occurring condition.
The Other Guy who is autistic is comic relief. He has a name, I’m sure, but it comes up so rarely that I don’t think it matters. He’s the one constantly trying to date or kiss Matilda, and while he listens to her no every time, I still found him kind of off-putting. I think this character will resonate as a realistic person for a lot of autistic women-the autistic guy that sucks at boundaries. The fact that he’s meant to be a joke, here, is profoundly uncomfortable. I don’t want to be around this kid when he grows up.
Everyone Around the Autistic People?
They suck. That could be this whole section, they just suck. Everyone in the show, besides the father who immediately dies, treats Matilda like a child, despite her being a transition age person. She’s about to go to college. Now, is that a problem inherently? I mean, no, lots of people treat autistic people badly, showing that isn’t a bad thing.
The bad thing is, well…
The show refutes almost nothing about how “bad” the characters make autism seem.
This starts early and goes on often. The show references the fact that Matilda “defies expectations” by speaking after being assumed nonspeaking as a child. Being nonspeaking is treated as a horrible thing to get past, and nonspeaking people are never brought up neutrally or positively.
Matilda has a meltdown. The show treats it neutrally, but it’s framed as one of many things that makes people not like being around her. Her sister treats a potential later meltdown as Matilda being like a ticking timebomb of embarrassment. Is that realistic? Maybe. But the meltdowns are always framed as Matilda being a problem for others.
Matilda stims. Drea stims. These are both treated neutrally to positively, I’ll give the show that.
Matilda’s sister and teacher both seem to think Matilda doesn’t have the life skills to be ready for college. She doesn’t know how to use a credit card, or a bus. This is never framed as something other people should have taught her, a disconnect in resources or skillbuilding. It’s just a thing, a barrier to her dreams that’s treated as inherent to her autism, and to be frank with you it pisses me off.
Issues
The show talks about sexuality, gender, college, school-lots of things relevant to autistic teenagers, and especially autistic teenage girls. The way they handle a lot of it makes me concerned that autistic girls will see themselves as limited by their autism, rather than needing access to tools to get through any or all of the above stuff.
The one thing I will give the show major props for is how they handled the relationship between Drea and Matilda. They have give and take and honesty, and love in a way that I never thought I’d see between autistic women on TV. That’s revelatory, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry.
What’s the verdict?
I want to say that I like Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, and I do, but I think I like it less than I wish I did. I want the show to have a truly neurodiversity friendly lens. It’s close, in some places, a lot less in others. I’d give it B, maybe a B+ on a good episode. It’s definitely worth watching, but it’s got a lot of work to do.
