Switched At Birth

Switched at Birth (2011-present, created by Lizzy Weiss & Paul Stupin) is a teen drama on Free Form (formerly ABC Family) that chronicles the fallout when two teenage girls discover they were switched at birth. Artsy, sarcastic rich kid Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano) at first resents her parents' biological daughter, the scrappy and good-natured golden child Daphne Vasquez (Katie LeClerc), who grew up poor with an artsy Latina single mom. Each girl sees the other's life as "what I should have had." But eventually, the two girls grow as close as sisters as their intertwined families deal with numerous Modern Day Issues(™).

One of the things that makes Switched at Birth unique is its commitment to using American Sign Language alongside spoken English, because Daphne, her best friend Emmett (the dreamy Sean Berdy), teacher Melody (Marlee Matlin), and several other major characters are Deaf. As the show goes on, the hearing main characters learn ASL to varying degrees in order to communicate with them. This means that at least half the scenes in any given episode are performed simultaneously in English and ASL. Some Deaf viewers have critiqued the lack of follow-through on details: sloppy translations lead to inaccurate subtitles, for example, and hearing-centric shooting choices lead to signs being cut out of frame or shot from over the shoulder in a way that makes them hard or impossible to understand. Essentially, it's still a show by and for hearing people. Still, the show does its best to present Deaf issues with research and sensitivity (if not authenticity), and the show benefits from its use of ASL and excellent Deaf actors.  

As of this writing, Switched at Birth has completed its fourth season and has been off the air for over a year. Its final season, season 5, is slated to premiere on January 17, 2017.

Key Episodes

1x1 "This is Not a Pipe": The pilot moves fast to set up all the building blocks of the premise in rapid succession. Bay and her parents, John and Kathryn, figure out the mix-up following a blood test. Their first few awkward meetings with Daphne and her mom, Regina, don't go well. John and Kathryn worry that Regina has not been able to provide a good enough home for their biological daughter. Regina thinks John and Kathryn are condescending snobs. Bay is jealous, feeling that her parents' interest in Daphne means they wish they'd never been saddled with her. Daphne just wants everyone to get along. But when Daphne reveals that her family is about to move, forced out of their home by financial problems, Bay doesn't want to lose them. The Kennishes offer the other Vasquezes free rent in their unused guest house so they can all get to know each other. So begins the wacky neighbors dramedy we have all been waiting for!

Last line of the episode is from Bay: "So who do you think my dad is?"

2x9 "Uprising": In this "all ASL" episode, Daphne and her friends hold a sit-in at Carlton School for the Deaf to protest the school board's plan to close it. The threat of losing their school is incredibly high-stakes for the Deaf students, who stand to lose a lot: education in their own language and about their own culture and history, friends, teachers and role models, the opportunity to learn who they can be when they're not just "the Deaf kid" in a hearing school. This is a tense, exciting episode, with the thrill of rebellion, and it's amazing to see how far Daphne has come from the sweet, don't-rock-the-boat kid afraid to tell John and Kathryn to slow down their speech in early season 1, to now, leader of a "militant" resistance movement! This episode also demonstrates that the show is at its strongest when it focuses on its amazing cast of Deaf actors, and frees itself from coddling the hearing audience.

4x20 "And Always Searching for Beauty" - This final episode of the series (so far) might be best viewed after a few more of the bonus episodes. But the final two minutes are so bonkers that I need you to watch them to get ready for season 5!

What I like about this episode is that, aside from the closure it offers to the various season 4 plotlines, it manages to stick in a bunch of really sweet moments that offer relationship-closure to the characters. (I'm assuming that there was at least a possibility in the minds of the writers that this was the last episode ever.) Most satisfying of all: Bay and Daphne behaving more sisterly than ever and agreeing to spend the summer traveling the world together. It's a nice time to reflect about the way this crazy journey has transformed these two girls from strangers to resentful/suspicious unwilling family-sharers to genuinely loving sisters and best friends with a deep web of connections.

Bonus Episodes

1x6 "The Persistence of Memory": Daphne is confused to learn that Bay has been hanging out with her best friend, Emmett, a motorcycle enthusiast and photographer with smoldering blue eyes. Emmett and Bay have been doing detective work to try to find Bay's biological father, and they think they have tracked him down. Emmett helps Daphne to realize she has unresolved issues with her father. As Bay and Emmett bond, Daphne continues investigating on her own. The final scene delivers the first legitimate "holy shit" moment of the series.

1x10 "The Homecoming": Bay's biological father, the charming but unreliable Angelo, sweeps (back) into the family's life, raising complicated emotions from Regina and Daphne. Emmett has to choose between Daphne and Bay, making him question if a Deaf/hearing relationship is worth it.

1x22 "Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time": Carlton prom! Emmett implodes his relationship with Bay by confessing that he slept with Simone, a Buckner girl (and girlfriend of Bay's brother Toby) because he was angry with Bay for interfering in his custody battle (two episodes prior, if you care to watch an additional episode for background information.) Daphne's Buckner boyfriend, Wilke, declines her invitation to prom, so she agrees to go with Carlton pal Travis as friends (even though he likes her). At the last minute, Wilke comes through, but informs Daphne that he is being sent away to boarding school. Kathryn finds herself attracted to Craig (Sam Page, aka Greg Harris from Mad Men), the lawyer representing the family in their suit against the hospital over the switch. And as Angelo awaits deportation because there is a warrant for his arrest in Italy, Regina realizes the only way to keep him in the country is to remarry him. (This is the "winter finale," although there are still eight more episodes in season 1, which form a sort of mini-season of their own.)

1x30 "Street Noises Invade the House": The long-awaited trial: John, Kathryn, and Angelo testify sue the hospital that caused the switch. Daphne is dealing with legal trouble of her own as she tries to protect her much-older boss with whom she has been having a relationship. Bay tries to run away to Mexico with her street artist friend, Zarra, but John and Emmett track her down. Finally, everyone reconvenes at the court for the shocking verdict.

2x2 "The Awakening Conscience": Bay is excited to transfer to Carlton to be classmates with Emmett and Daphne, but once there, she struggles with language and culture shock. Daphne uses Angelo's gift of a food truck to start her own business, but isn't prepared for the pushback she receives for undercutting local businesses in her old neighborhood, proving she can't go home again. John runs for state senate.

2x15 "Ecco Mono" - An unrelentingly dark "alternate reality" episode explores what would have happened if the switch had become known when the girls were small children. Given Regina's difficulties with sobriety at the time, the ever-litigious Kennishes win custody of both girls and raise them as sisters. Jumping forward to the present day, Cochlear!Daphne is Regina George; Wig!Bay is Sarah Vowell; John is a petty tyrant with no understanding of compromise; Kathryn is a romance novelist for some reason; Breathe a sigh of relief, because "Ebay" is still a thing, as Emmett randomly appears out of nowhere to befriend Bay, and to help her search for Regina the same way he helped search for Angelo in 1x6. Emmett's zeal for amateur detective work truly is the one constant in this crazy world.

2x17 "Prudence, Avarice, Lust, Justice, Anger" - Daphne is frustrated at the moral compromises she's witnessed as an intern in John's state senate office, so when she gets an opportunity to blackmail the hypocritical Senator Coto, she takes it. Bay supports Angelo's decision to fight for custody of his new baby, whose mother has placed her for adoption, but when she meets the adoptive parents - a loving gay couple - she's not so sure it's the right decision.

2x21 "Departure of Summer" - As the summer season draws to a close, Daphne faces legal consequences for her blackmail of a senator. Angelo is overwhelmed by his new baby. Bay worries when her military boyfriend/first sex partner, Ty, is redeployed to a war zone.

3x2 "Your Body is a Battleground" - After Carlton is forced to let in 50% hearing students, Deaf and hearing kids clash. Emmett investigates a rash of tire slashings of Deaf students and realizes to his shock that a Deaf student is responsible, in a attempt to frame the hearing students. Meanwhile, Bay struggles to gain the approval of her new art teacher (Sandra Bernhardt), especially after being paired with Tank, a shallow frat guy, for a group project. Meanwhile, Daphne's community service in a health clinic inspires her, especially when she works with the super-cute wheelchair-using volunteer Campbell (Breaking Bad's RJ Mitte).

3x11 "Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, and Remorse Follows" - As Emmett prepares for his first in-person date with his Internet girlfriend, Bay launches an investigation, only to discover the truth moments too late; cut to, the moment when Emmett opens a picnic basket to discover a dead catfish is delightfully disturbing. Thankfully, Emmett's emotional and physical pain leads to some hurt/comfort action. Meanwhile, Regina's interior design work with a millionaire who is leading a gentrification effort in East Riverside has stirred up real anger, and she and Daphne are terrified when a brick is thrown through the window of Regina's office.

3x16 "The Image Disappears" - The family gathers at the hospital where Angelo is in critical condition following a serious car accident. Gradually, the news about his condition begins to look worse and worse, forcing the family members one by one to accept that he must be taken off life support. This is an emotional wallop of an episode, made more so by the realism of the drip-drip-drip of increasingly negative but slightly inconclusive information. TV trains you that, if there is even a little bit of hope, the character will recover; this episode uses that training against you to bring you on the same journey as the characters, from disbelief and denial to devastating acceptance. (Incidentally, I watched it on November 5, 2016; in retrospect it was a good allegory for the election, but I'm glad I watched it before that.)

3x21 - "And Life Begins Right Away" - And time for future plans. Bay has no college lined up, but is excitedly planning to following Emmett to L.A., where he is attending film school. Daphne, who is delivering the school's commencement address, was supposed to be attending Gallaudet, but after a series of felonies (!!) she is now looking at up to 3 years of jail time.

3x22 Yuletide Fortune Tellers - Another "alternate reality" episode (and it's especially odd that a Christmas special is happening right after graduation; what year is this?) I have a love-hate relationship with alternate reality episodes because they are often quite silly, especially this one with all its contrived Christmas magic. But they're good standalones that comment directly on the heart of the show's premise in a way that episodes in the continuity often do not. Daphne and Bay wake up one morning with all their normal memories, but the world around them is different: the switch never happened, de facto making Daphne Bay and Bay Daphne. Of course, the girls soon discover problems and realize that life wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows if they hadn't been switched, and maybe theirs is a Wonderful Life after all.

4x11 "To Repel Ghosts" - Bay and Emmett's climactic break-up fight is in the previous episode, and unlike their previous breakups, this one feels devastatingly realistic and unsolvable and final. In this episode, Bay struggles to get through the day when she keeps seeing Emmett everywhere, alternately sweet and menacing. Bay's interactions with the "ghosts" of her past are slightly cheesy but still effective way to show her dealing with the breakup and clawing her way to acceptance. Meanwhile, Daphne deals with a bombshell as Toby's recent ex reveals she is pregnant.

4x15 "Instead of Damning the Darkness, It's Better to Light A Little Lantern" - The Mexico episode! Daphne, Bay, and Travis go with Melody to Mexico to do volunteer work fitting poor people with hearing aids. When Emmett shows up to surprise Melody, Bay goes into full scorned-ex-rage, inspired by the passion and turbulence of her artistic role model, Frida Kahlo. When she visits Frida's home and actually meets someone who knew the artist, Bay comes to realize that maybe being emotionally unbalanced is not an attribute she wants to share with her hero. Meanwhile, Daphne finds herself inspired by the work of the mission, and wonders if this type of work could be her calling. The episode is notable not just because of Daphne's career realizations, but for Bay doing body shots off Travis. Because of the change of location and smaller cast of characters, this has the feel of a "bottle episode." I just love bottle episodes.