'Atypical' Season 3 Episode 2 review: 'Standing Sam' learns a lesson on individuality and friendship, as Doug steps on a slippery slope
Season 3 Episode 2 of 'Atypical' continues to see Sam pursuing his college prospects and warding off all the challenges that await him, starting with reinventing himself. There are huge plusses and negatives to having Zahid (Nik Dodani) as your best friend, and 'Standing Sam' is a perfect example of the latter. Having filled Sam's (Keir Gilchrist) brain with talks of molding himself into the person he wants to be rather than who he used to be high school, Zahid basically set him up for failure.
During his orientation, Sam meets two new students, who misinterpret Sam's matter-of-fact answers to be "funny" and "ironic", and make him feel like the big guy, something Sam hasn't really experienced and he goes with it. With the intent of spending more time with his new BFFs, Sam even decides to move into the dorm and misses an appointment at the Disability Services in college because they thought attending appointments are uncool
Thankfully, he realizes that those two aren't really the kind of people Sam would want to be around, but we would have loved for him to stay at the dorm, only because his roommate, also Sam G, is played by Niles Fitch aka young adult Randall from NBC's 'This is Us'.
As far as episodes go, this is probably one of the more laidback ones with Sam experiencing a new challenge and learning some important lessons, but for that last scene with Doug (Michael Rapaport) and Elsa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It literally made me scream "No Doug, Whyyyy!" to the screen when he lied about who he was texting to his wife.
We saw Elsa admitting to Doug during their couple's counseling session that what lead her to cheat on him was the first lie she ever told him. That lie made it a little easier for her to say the next lie and so on until she finally slept with another man. We see how that happens in real-time when Doug gets a text from Megan (Angel Laketa Moore) and smiles at it, but when Elsa asks who it is from, he lies about it.
It was one of the disappointing things to watch on the show, especially because we're afraid we know where this goes. That one scene bump's this episode's grading from B- to B+ and if you haven't already, you should watch right now by heading over to Netflix.
