YMMV / A Kind of Spark

• Fridge Horror: The fact that Miss Murphy has been teaching for thirty years and revealed that she also bullied Keedie as well as Addie. How many other autistic children has she abused? Or others with different disabilities?
• Nightmare Fuel: Addie’s description of what Mrs. Craig did to Keedie: When Keedie threw a tantrum about the terrible dinner, Mrs. Craig threw a plate at her, pinned the eleven year old girl to the floor and screamed at her. She also called Addie an animal when she tried to get her off. Worse? Mrs. Craig is a social worker. And it’s never revealed what happened to her afterwards, meaning she could still be out there.
• The Scrappy: While Miss Murphy was always intended to be a Hate Sink, many found her ableism and villainy too cartoonishly over-the-top. The live-action series goes out of its way to address this issue by portraying her with more subtlety, while still retaining her main character traits.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Nina. In interviews, Elle McNicoll has stated her to be "sort of an antagonist" who "causes tension between the sisters." But readers might notice that Nina gets a lot of parental reponsibility pushed off on her, with none of the accompanying freedom or respect. Her dad barely interacts with her, her mum's main interactions involve screaming at her, and neither of her sisters take her particularly seriously. Addie's trip to Keedie's university is a prime example: her mum demands that Nina must remain with Addie at all times (despite the fact that the parents don't seem to keep a constant eye on Addie), and therefore is not to shoot her makeup tutorials...which is Nina's actual job. When Nina disobeys her and spends an hour or two shooting a video, Addie wanders off — something she acknowledges she knows is wrong to do. Her mum is only mildly exasperated with Addie, but downright vicious to Nina. Throw in all the hints that Nina spent her childhood trying to placate the adults, look after Addie, and look out for Keedie's meltdowns, and it's hard not to think that, despite her screw ups, Nina's not had an easy time of it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Addie's parents. Though the story treats them as the cavalry, they're fairly useless, and end up putting Addie and Keedie in the line of fire more often than not. They hire an abusive babysitter, and don't realise how badly they've screwed up until serious damage is done. They ignore Keedie's warnings that Miss Murphy is a monster, even saying that Keedie "traumatised" her and putting their autistic younger daughter in the class of someone they had reason to believe was hostile to autistic children. They don't stand up for Addie at the council meetings — in fact, they seem a bit embarrassed of her. They don't even seem to do much parenting, being at work all the time and leaving that to Nina (Addie knows that it's Nina who will show up when the school calls home, so it's probably not unusual for this to be the case). It's their older children who really go up to bat for Addie.