Everything REALLY IS Gonna Be Okay,

*MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

Happy Birthday Josh! (May 26, Gemini season where you at?) Though, you will never see this post a day in your life, probably. And, mainly, because I read the interview where you said you don't really read reviews and that is what this is.

SORRY! (Not sorry) To get on with it, I straight up give the show a 5/5... if we were doing some arbitrary number thing where such a scale could be used to rate my feelings of this show. But I am not really here to review the show. I am here as a person of the autistic community, to share my feelings about young Maeve Press' performance in the season 1 finale. I found myself looking to see if Tellulah was returning for season 2 (so sad to learn she's not). I learned of many in the community who are electing not to watch season 2 of the show due to concerns over Genevieve's "stand-up" act.

Let the record show I am literally doing air quotes as I type that sentence.

I will admit, fair. Maybe I'm a little biased in that I've been partial to young Genevieve from the very first poem she uttered.

I guess a small part of me remembers being a young poet. Confused about my place in the world. Forced to grow up too early. I remember mumbling my thoughts to myself for hours on end while washing dishes as my mom did... well, whatever it is moms do when they are forced to raise three young black men in the heart of the city.

*Full pause*

I should discuss the term disclosure. What I have found in my few years since receiving my diagnosis is that it's important to remind everyone that for 23 years, I was a perfectly healthy neurotypical boy (except I wasn't). And Autism is a spectrum (which it is).

Many criticisms I saw surrounding the act seemed to take issue with the fact she seemed to be making fun of her Aspie sister. Shy of the small grace of asking her sister to wait outside to not hear the onslaught directly. I saw praise for the first 9 episodes on finally getting real representation on tv that's not done in the very cringe-worthy way Hollywood has criminalized, infantilized, and victimized a whole neurotype. It seems Josh Thomas actually did get input from persons on the spectrum. And he absolutely did! This is why if we all take a brief moment and step back to appreciate Genevieve's moment for what it truly was, we can see that this show has so much more to offer than just, like finally not making autism tropey. Like, our whole thing CAN'T be just championing for non-tropey representation in TV and then...

Well, and then what exactly?

That's kind of tropey itself isn't it?

I get it it all very much sounded like Genevieve finally getting to "tell how she really feels having the burden of a sister on the spectrum." She just seemed to drone on and on about how much it overshadowed everything she seemed to want to do. But then, that interpretation is exactly why I love GOOD art. And trust me, by all measures, Everything's Gonna Be Okay is great work.

EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE. Good art makes you extract from it. It pushes the consumer as much as the artist. To assume this was the context of Genevieve's backstabbing plot all along is short-sighted and quite projecty, maybe?

The season finale of season 1, from this proud Autistic was a tribute to Josh Thomas' theme I think we are all asking to live by. "Moving on".

Genevieve struggled with her own identity too, and her own thoughts and grievances. We see very early on how she deals with pressure in the basket case that are her best friends Barb and Tellulah. (She quite literally pretends to be stoned. The kid is not okay).

And any of us who have been in front of a stage if you fancy that kind of thing knows that is wayyyy worse than any sort of peer pressure. No. It's worse than worse because it is the final judgment. She went to expose her soul in a city far away from hers. As she looked back one more time at her "story" she told Nicholas she wanted to share and placed it on the stool, i knew what followed was going to be golden. Everything that followed was truly from the heart. The heart of a confused, socially awkward wordsmith, who can weave a beautiful tale together like a quilt. Something to wrap yourself in when you realize her admitting to that. How all she thought she wanted in the world was for Matilda to go, when really that's the thing that scares her the most.

It's was never "when can I get a break," and always "what do I do when she's gone". Where can I escape to anymore to avoid facing my fears when I no longer have my sisters to distract me. She just said it in a very awkward way I guess to us. I'm not saying you were wrong for hearing it the way you did if you did hear it differently. All I'm saying is please go back and rewatch it with an open mind... and give season two a chance. And if you still feel underrepresented or poorly represented, let's make your own story!

(Shameless plug time)

Visit www.therennetproject.com. Hell, I'm going to. How much do you see the 6ft almost 200 lb scientific poet autistic represented on TV?

The world is changing and we can sit back and complain that it isn't changing well enough or we can get active... And Josh Thomas has gotten active so I for one will be tuned in to every new episode!

*Spoiler* Season 2 is following Genevieve outside of her responsibilities to the family and we are definitely here for it all.