If nothing else helps, only the vacuum cleaner robot can help. As different as Jack, Violet and Harrison may be, as soon as the little robot sets off, all three stand in awe. The dead straight paths on which the machine is looking for its way, its predictability calms you down. Humans, on the other hand, are unpredictable. people are a problem.
The Amazon series “As We See It” tells the story of three young autistic adults who live together in a flat share. Caretaker Mandy helps them deal with the chaotic world out there. Right in the first scene she leads fat Harrison out the door onto the street he’s afraid of because there are people, noise, dogs. He’s only supposed to make it to the café on the corner, and he almost made it, but then it all goes wrong. Harrison turns and runs.
It’s also about classic problems of growing up
The hero’s journey down the street, the greatest feelings in the most mundane everyday situations, that’s how the basic dramaturgical tension works here. The series constantly pushes its protagonists out of their comfort zones. Good this way. A flat share of autistic people could also have been told as a sitcom, with nerdy conversations about numbers on the sofa and bizarre situations when a potential love object takes a seat there, as a kind of “Big Bang Theory” with three variants by Sheldon Cooper. Instead, she gives the impression that she has a serious interest in showing people with autism for who they are: People with autism.
It’s also about the more mundane issues of growing up: Jack wants to be recognized for the genius he actually is, at least most of the time. Harrison wants to lose weight, but he also wants to eat pancakes. Violet desperately wants a boyfriend, installs Tinder, meets a guy in a restaurant who won’t come back from the bathroom, whereupon her brother takes her phone and gives her an old, dumb model instead. From then on, she mourns for the emoji.
Trailer for the series:
The valves are missing, the feeling for limits. Everything is pure and unfiltered. Excited, then raging with anger, Violet flutters through the scenes, babbles without a period or comma about the fact that she finally wants to get laid. Jack learns that his father is terminally ill. He reacts to this as he reacts to all problems: he turns them into an analytical problem, he begins researching cancer obsessively. “I’m not ready yet,” he says in one scene, stiff as a board with tension. “I don’t have all the information to be ready yet.”
The deep, worried looks are a bit annoying
He then learns that one cannot be prepared for the death of a loved one. They all learn their life lessons – and if you want to criticize something about the series, then it’s the solemn American tone in which it is told here how people grow beyond themselves. Mandy’s deep, worried looks. The implicit pleas about the importance of caring.
On the other hand: If it were a German series, it would probably contain a strong pinch of social education instead of the pastoral notes, which are only mildly disconcerting. And that would definitely be really annoying.
As We See it – Unusually normalfive episodes, on Amazon.