Everything’s Gonna Be Okay explores Nicholas’s relationship with his feelings

Shortly ahead of the second season premiere of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, the series creator and star, Josh Thomas was profiled in The New Yorker discussing his choice to focus on autism in the series.

Thomas was praised for his thoughtful and sensitive portrayal of mental health in his previous series Please Like Me, so further explorations of neurodiversity weren’t entirely surprising. As he did in his previous work, Thomas endeavored to research as much as possible in order to have accurate portrayals, including having autism consultants on set.

Throughout the course of making the show’s first season, Thomas began to interrogate his relationship with the series, and in turn, his relationship with autism, essentially wondering why it was he wanted to make something about autism in the first place, before finally discovering he was on the spectrum as well.

Thomas’s work has always been intertwined with his own identity as well, with Please Like Me being a semi-autobiographical show. As a result, Thomas’s character, Nicholas, will be exploring a similar arc this season on Everything’s Gonna Be Okay. As Thomas explained to The New Yorker:

"“This is about me understanding why I am the way I am…And it’s about trying to figure out how I can make the world fit with how I’m going to be.”"

Viewers saw the first glimpse of this arc in the latest episode, “Emperor Scorpion.” As Nicholas, Matilda, and Drea mourned the first anniversary of their dad’s death, Nicholas found himself at a loss with how to process the day.

While everyone wrote emotional letters to the departed Darren to read aloud and burn, including Nicholas’s boyfriend, Alex, who barely knew him, Nicholas simply wrote, “Dad! Yay!”

One of the lovely things about Everything’s Gonna Be Okay is it understands that grief is nonlinear and often very weird. No one knows how to react because it’s not a “normal” part of life–even though it is.

Nicholas’s “Dad! Yay!” moment is a beat that’s played for laughs but explored throughout the length of the episode as Alex tries to get Nicholas to open up and talk about how he feels. But while Nicholas is clearly uncomfortable talking about his emotions, Alex seems to think he simply doesn’t have a safe way to do so.

The two grow more frustrated throughout the episode as Alex wants Nicholas to be more emotive and Nicholas simply doesn’t know how. Another show would have Alex storm out and say, “I don’t understand you” and have the heavy emotional beats of the episode focus on Nicholas’s failure to open up.

But Thomas’s work is much more subtle and gentle in its storytelling. While Nicholas and Alex are far from a perfect couple, they genuinely love each other, and as Alex says toward the end of the episode, “We like you too much to leave.”

Eventually, Nicholas admits he’s “an abstract feeler” who feels “like a guest in [his sisters’] grief,”  due to their different relationships with their father. And while he is a bit “closed off” as Alex says, he also sweetly thanks him for his generosity and kindness at the episode’s end.

Of course, as discussed above, there are other reasons Nicholas likely feels reticent to express himself, which we’ll see unfold throughout the season. But “Emperor Scorpion” was a lovely place to begin exploring this facet of Nicholas’s (and Thomas’s) identity.

What did you think about Nicholas and Alex’s heart to heart in this week’s episode of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay? Tell us in the comments below!