A while back, I watched through Everything's Gonna Be Okay, another Josh Thomas joint at the recommendation of a friend, who upon hearing I watched Please Like Me, looked it up, saw it was Josh Thomas, and told me about Everything's Gonna Be Okay. 

The problem is, I've been struggling to find the words to explain it. I thought it was great and has some of the best explicit autistic representation I've ever seen.

If you're coming to Josh Thomas's work for the first time, I think this is an easier one to jump into than Please Like Me. They're both deeply tragic and touch on alot of the same themes like long term relationships that don't quite work and parental death, but the shows are very different. Whereas Please Like Me starts with a parental suicide attempt, Everything's Gonna Be Okay instead starts with Nicholas (Josh Thomas)'s wealthy father dying of Cancer. Nick is an insect etymologist who lives in Australia with his mom, and in the first episode is visiting his dad. Throughout the show his collection of insects seems to grow. Upon finding out his dad is dying, Nicholas agrees to move in and take care of his teenage half-sisters, one of whom has Autism. Matilda is 17 and is a brilliant piano composer and also has elements of her character I see reflected in different people I know who have Autism. No one friend is Matilda, her attributes are spread out across a handful of them. Genevieve is 14 and doesn't have autism but she has two friends, Tellulah who is a spoiled brat and Barb who is a loser in the same way Tom in Please Like Me was a loser. Genevieve, having grown up with Matilda, is sensitive to what her sister needs as an Autistic person & does what she can to help her out when the situation calls for it. Then there's Alex, who Nick hooks up with right before he finds out his father is dying, and they form a relationship that lasts throughout the two seasons of the show, until the very end, where it's clear they're not getting along anymore and break up. We see Alex's friends once or twice and I recognized one of Alex's friends as Jim from Our Flag Means Death.

Matilda eventually gets a girlfriend, Drea, who exhibits a different set of common autistic traits. Drea is asexual so eventually they figure out Matilda should hook up with other people and Drea doesn't mind as long as they can be together romantically. Richard Kind and Maria Bamford play her parents and I gotta say they do an incredible job. Maria Bamford's comedy central presents episode from like 20 years ago is burned into my memory. Richard Kind I know from seeing some of Spin City, but I remember him in it just about as much as I remember Michael J. Fox, which is pretty impressive.

I'll keep this short, because I think you should watch it yourself, but as the show goes on, Matilda starts dating Drea, Gen and her friends "do drugs" by taking old blood pressure medication they find in a medicine cabinet, Matilda gets into Juliard, goes to NYC to practice riding the subway and decides she won't be able to do it on her own & withdraws from Julliard, Gen does a stand-up set in NYC at an open mic night about growing up with Matilda, Matilda graduates High School, the Covid pandemic breaks out, Gen goes on her first date with her crush, Barb gets caught in a really bad lie, Matilda proposes to Drea against the advice of all the adults in her life, Nick and Alex break up, Nick discovers he might have Autism and seeks a formal diagnosis, and Matilda and Drea get married. 

I don't have much else to say about it beyond I really enjoyed it, it's a journey that I think is worth going on and unlike Please Like Me, I was always ready to jump into the next epsiode, I finished it over the course of three days while I worked. With Please Like Me I felt like I needed a break even doing one episode per day. I'm glad I watched Please Like Me, but I'm unlikely to revisit it, at least for a while. I could easily see myself rewatching Everything's Gonna Be Okay.