Switched at Birth Season 4 (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

Switched at Birth Season 4 starts tonight. Just realized when i saw it on my DVR!

 

[DaveF]

Any idea if Disney Family will re-show Seasons 1 and 2? We got started, but paused halfway through S1. I'd like to Tivo the series to watch later this year.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Thanks for getting the discussion rolling, Matt. I was hoping to squeeze the premiere into my viewing schedule tonight, but there's just too much good stuff on. I watch it tomorrow when I get home from work and I'm still wide awake. This is a show that deserves my full attention.

Any idea if Disney Family will re-show Seasons 1 and 2? We got started, but paused halfway through S1. I'd like to Tivo the series to watch later this year.

ABC Family does do marathons of the show every so often, but if you've got a decent internet connection, Netflix is your best bet. They've got all of episodes through the third season finale available to stream in HD.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I think this is going to be a tough season to get through, because I don't think I'm going to be able to get past Daphne allowing Bay to take the fall for her. Every time she hits a roadblock or a struggle, I have zero sympathy for her. Zero. Because she living on Bay's time.

I was frustrated that John, Kathryn and Regina got on board so quickly with this. I was even more frustrated that they're so supportive of Daphne while we didn't get to see much support of Bay. I was glad to see at least Toby was in Bay's corner.

I was glad the realities of probation started to sink in. I took a job in the criminal justice field last fall, and while there are a lot of programs out there serving as alternatives to incarceration for the betterment of the convict, they're pretty much all stick. Probation is serious business, and it has to be taken seriously.

It was nice seeing Bess Armstrong on my TV screen again. I loved her on "My So-Called Life", and look forward to seeing the obstacle she poses here.

My favorite bit of the whole episode was the final scene in Bay's bedroom. It was exactly right. Bay knows she can't really lash out at Daphne, since she's the one who pushed this plan. At the same time, she's understandably furious as Daphne for putting her in a position where she needed to take the fall. So she told Daphne to leave before she said something she regretted.

 

[DaveF]

Thanks for getting the discussion rolling, Matt. I was hoping to squeeze the premiere into my viewing schedule tonight, but there's just too much good stuff on. I watch it tomorrow when I get home from work and I'm still wide awake. This is a show that deserves my full attention.ABC Family does do marathons of the show every so often, but if you've got a decent internet connection, Netflix is your best bet. They've got all of episodes through the third season finale available to stream in HD.

Yeah, that's how we got so far into S1. But I'm not a regular Netflix customer; Tivo gets my heart and money. we may sign up for Netflix for a few months just to watch SAB

 

[mattCR]

There is an element of this story I really relate to, in part because it eerily follows a local story happening.


Anyway, that put aside the one thing I do like about it is that there are consequences. Emmit and Toby were both against this. The reason why the parents were quick to be on it is because Daphne would go to prison.. something most parents try to avoid, while they didn't like this conclusion, Bay did it on her own, and John was right - going back and retracting could potentially make things very bad for everyone.


It will be interesting how this plays out

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This show is still really frustrating me at the moment, and will probably continue to until Bay's off probation, but I really liked the closing scene at the mud pit. It rang really true to me; families find way of making things okay, even when everything's not okay.


I really wish every one of Regina's storylines didn't have to revolve around a man. She was an independent single mother for the better part of sixteen years. I wish she could pursue an interest or passion without it being tied to a love interest.


I liked the way Daphne's roommate reflected the feelings we usually get from the Deaf kids confronted with the hearing world.


Emmett's story with the female D.P. rang true to me too. If he's going to survive out there, he's got to having things to anchor him or he's never going to make it through such a competitive film program. Again, I'm hoping after Emmett rejected the kiss that it will be allowed to be a platonic friendship. The one way this show falls into the ABC Family cliches is will all of the infidelity drama.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Strong episode up until the final scene. I really like Bess Armstrong's work here as the chemistry professor. Like the best teachers, she doesn't compromise her standards but she is willing to make an extra effort with students who are themselves making an extra effort. Regina going in to speak with her was wrong, but unfortunately not as uncommon as it used to be with helicopter parenting, and I believed it given how many battles she's had to fight on Daphne's behalf over the years.

I also liked that Kathryn decided it was time to cut Toby off. I know a lot of young adults in their late twenties and even early thirties that are still on their parents' car insurance and cellphone plans. In addition to representing a huge liability if the insured ever is the cause of a bad accident, this continuing dependence for people who have the capacity to be independent is not good for parent or child. On the other hand, health insurance is a huge cost for anybody to bear so it makes a lot of sense to keep on your parents' insurance as long as possible. In that case, Toby probably isn't costing them any more since Daphne and Bay already would put them into a family plan.

Hated the final scene. If Kansas is anything like New York, a prohibition against the consumption of alcohol is a pretty standard probation condition, even for non-alcohol related offenses. So there's a good chance she shouldn't have been drinking in the first place. But given that she had, and given that it seems that she had sex with Tank, that leaves us with two scenarios: either Bay, her inhibitions impaired by alcohol, cheated on Emmett, which doesn't track at all with her character; or Tank date raped her, which doesn't track at all with his character. As recent headlines have made clear, in a "yes means yes" college culture the line that defines what is considered rape has become increasingly expansive, and many young college men are committing rape without necessarily realizing that's what they're doing. But that doesn't change the fact that taking advantage of somebody who is too impaired to say no has always been a skeevy thing to do, and I don't believe for a second that Tank wouldn't recognize where that line is.

So it looks like, either way, I'm going to be even more frustrated with the show next week, unless they really surprise me with some explanation I haven't considered.

 

[mattCR]

Hated the final scene. If Kansas is anything like New York, a prohibition against the consumption of alcohol is a pretty standard probation condition, even for non-alcohol related offenses. So there's a good chance she shouldn't have been drinking in the first place. But given that she had, and given that it seems that she had sex with Tank, that leaves us with two scenarios: either Bay, her inhibitions impaired by alcohol, cheated on Emmett, which doesn't track at all with her character; or Tank date raped her, which doesn't track at all with his character. As recent headlines have made clear, in a "yes means yes" college culture the line that defines what is considered rape has become increasingly expansive, and many young college men are committing rape without necessarily realizing that's what they're doing. But that doesn't change the fact that taking advantage of somebody who is too impaired to say no has always been a skeevy thing to do, and I don't believe for a second that Tank wouldn't recognize where that line is.

There is no prohibition of alcohol on probation in Kansas, FYI. This may not influence you, but no such thing exists here. You -may- be subject to random drug testing, but alcohol is not a test variable in KS.


This may not change your view, but I thought I'd point that out.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Not sure what to think of this week's episode. I still think they assassinated Tank's character so they could tackle the verhy topical issue of affirmative consent, but then they went so far to try and create a balanced portrait of the issues that things got so murky as to be indecipherable. There's little question that even twenty years ago, whatever did happen would have been written off as night of drunken indiscretion. I think there's even a debate to be had about what sort of legal ramifications should result from that sort of scenario. But there's no question that it is at the very least extremely sleazy to put yourself in a position when there's even a question as to whether consent was given or even whether the person had the capacity to give consent. And given that Bay had made it pretty clear in the past that she wasn't interested in a sexual relationship with Tank, I just didn't believe that he would interpret ambiguous signals from Bay while she was heavily intoxicated as a green light. But then again, 38 percent of rapes are committed by a friend of acquaintance. And added to that, I think it's quite likely that somebody spiked the alcohol with drugs, further clouding both Tank's judgement and Bay's judgement, and leaving the facts of what occurred even more obscured. So in summary, I don't know how I feel about that whole plot line.

It looks like next week's episode will deal more with the fallout, so perhaps how that is handled will clarify my feelings on this.

 

[mattCR]

I will have a long post on this tomorrow, but you summed up some of my thoughts. I think there are a lot of really difficult issues being addressed here, and how they handle it will be VERY tricky

 

[mattCR]

Date Rape is a complicated and tricky thing for a lot of people to get their mind around. It is so because unlike the way we want to imagine it, the people involved aren't twirly mustaches cackling with evil - no doubt, some are the evil stereotype, but many fall into that area in which they do something terrible and wrong and self-justify to themselves because they don't view the act as wrong.


In my mind, from the circumstances, Bay was raped. That said, the situation leaves almost no hope for her to proceed with a successful prosecution. This isn't to minimize what happened, it is just the reality a prosecutor would tell her especially in the midwest. Now, the question is - how does Bay move forward? This is going to be complicated. Because for Tank, he doesn't grasp that he did in fact rape her.. took advantage of her without her consent. And while he won't face criminal backlash in the real world, it will do one of two things: either his character will be eliminated while he works to sort his life back out OR his character will refuse to admit that this was an issue and just deny the entirety.


Both of these options are difficult for TV to convey because the black and white nature of the way an audience sees an event like this will expect results.. jail, or expulsion or something similar. But Switched at Birth has been frighteningly accurate in how these things actually play out for stupidity, and I'm not sure how they play this out without either changing the way we feel about main characters, the justice system, or the validity of the show.

It will be.. interesting. But I'm glad they've embraced this and they haven't shied away from making it murky and complicated rather than straightforward and evil.

 

[mattCR]

Some catchup this week. I actually really enjoyed the Daphne storyline this week.. it was goofy and odd, but it was the kind of thing I could remember as a college kid and I related to it immediately.


I am unsure about the coffee house storyline, but the other side character who has really come into their own is the baseball storyline with Travis. It's both heartwarming and I get Travis has for a while been the character that you want to root for - so seeing him have some struggle and success in a big part of the show was great stuff.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I stepped away from this show for a while because the incident between Bay and Tank made me really uncomfortable, especially in light of some of the experiences in my own life. I'm still two episodes behind, but after the storm episode I felt like I need to get my thoughts out. I'm still frustrated that the show concocted a scenario that maximized the murkiness of both the actual events that happened and the culpability of Tank (and there for Bay). You could make a compelling movie centered around this scenario, but given that we know Bay and Tank so well from the course of the show, I think we as an audience deserved an objective accounting of what happened, even if neither of the parties involved have an objective understanding of that night. What were left with is that Bay made some bad choices that night, Tank made some bad choices that night, and what happened was at the very least sleazy on Tank's part but perhaps also illegal.


I question a little bit the portrayal of the university's policy for handling this situation; not that things couldn't snowball like they did, because goodness know that they have and they do in real life, but in my experience it's usually the victim struggling to be heard in the face of the administration's callous indifference and not dragged along by the process in spite of her wishes. I also question Melody and Lily's obligation to report what they'd heard. If it were a case of Tank posing a danger to other students, then absolutely. But given that that wasn't the case, I think Bay's wishes should have taken precedence over the school handbook. In a state like New York or California that has affirmative consent rules for sex at public universities, this would have been more clear cut.


That being said, in spite of my unease over the portrayal of the storyline, I give the show a lot of credit for its portrayal of Bay through this whole thing. She couldn't have easily become a prop for the storyline, but every step of the way it rang true to who Bay was as a character. She was never reduced in her complexity or shoehorned into being all one thing or all another thing. She navigated the aftermath in a way that reflected who she is and how she carries herself. I also want to give the show credit for Kathryn's talk with her, sharing a personal anecdote that is unfortunately all too common, and I especially want to give the show credit for its portrayal of John. He was furious, came to understand the situation was more complicated than he'd first assumed, but never once judged Bay because of that murkiness. And when he discovered that she was tiptoeing around the house to avoid him, he didn't give her a big speech or ask for a long discussion about it. He told her he loved her, and then he gave her a hug. That was exactly the right thing to do, and it was exactly right that he didn't push for any more than that. I also thought his advice to Bay with regard to Emmett was right too; she had to be honest with him, and either he'll be able to come to terms with it or he won't. Otherwise, it would just rot away at their relationship, and she'd never be able to move forward from it, because it'd be at the center of her relationship with Emmett.


I also enjoyed the storyline with Kathryn's mother. I was happy to see that, at some point between her earlier appearances and now, her and Bay found away to come to terms with each other again and heal those cracks. Aside from the fun in Meredith Baxter and Joanna Cassidy of seeing two eighties stars in a relationship with each other, I thought it was delicately handled. Some fun early on with the are they or aren't they question, then the shock of the Alzheimer's diagnosis, and the finally the confirmation of the relationship. Both Kathryn and her mother, being WASPish women of a certain time and place, didn't really have the vocabulary to discuss it. That rang really true to me. At the same time, Joanna Cassidy was brilliant as Lucille. Warm and understanding, and not the least self-conscious about it. She left you feeling like Kathryn's mother's care was in good hands.


The return of Nacho felt like more of the melodrama that feels most artificial and least like the show at its naturalistic best. It also wasn't super logical, given that exposing Bay's lie would have revived the charges against him. On the other hand, I liked Eric's handling of the situation, and I like that Regina might finally have found a healthy relationship (even though I still wish all of her storylines weren't about relationships with men). The one fly that seems to be headed for the ointment is all of the vague references to Eric and his son moving all of the time. I hope that doesn't portend more artificial melodrama. I'd much rather just see two people with rocky pasts who have improved themselves find happiness with each other.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Caught up through the midseason finale tonight. My favorite story was in the third-to-last episode, when Bay reached out to Tess. I thought Kathryn's advice to her was spot on, cutting right through all of the socioeconomic divides to what is universal about being a mother. And Bay's way of applying that advice was equally spot on. Sarah Stouffer has done a great job as Tess, capturing someone who is deeply flawed and is responsible for a lot of her own problems, but who was burdened with the enormous responsibility of a baby with serious health problems and rose to meet that responsibility. When Bay told her the positive reception the bench had received, Tess's reaction broke my heart and warmed my heart at the same time.


Bay's breakup with Emmett was tough, but it was pretty clear long before the Tank situation that the distance was putting a strain on the relationship that it wasn't in a position to bear. There's a certain bitter irony in that Emmett wouldn't be thriving at UCLA if Bay hadn't pushed him so hard at the beginning, but I think he was right to be frank with her once he realized where things stood. Bay needs to find her own life on her own terms. It was never going to be healthy for her to try and exist as an appendage of Emmett's life.


I was so glad to see Toby not bail on his performance with Kathryn, despite how angry he was at her. It's the first really adult thing I've seen him do in a while, small as it was. Now if he could just fix that awful haircut...


I was also glad to see Daphne get rejected by the fraternity, and have that experience remind her that she already his a fraternity of sorts with the Deaf community on campus. After all of the major shocking events, I'm glad to see that both Travis and Natalie made it through the drunk hit-and-run banged up but otherwise okay.

I am unsure about the coffee house storyline, but the other side character who has really come into their own is the baseball storyline with Travis. It's both heartwarming and I get Travis has for a while been the character that you want to root for - so seeing him have some struggle and success in a big part of the show was great stuff.

I'm enjoying that as well. I particularly enjoyed John bringing Kathryn in as his English teacher. It keeps him connected to the core characters in an organic way, and Kathryn's a great person to have in your life is your parents have fallen short, the way Travis's have.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Kind of late notice, but the fourth season resumes with tonight's autumn premiere at 8/7c.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Switched at Birth to End with 10-Episode Fifth Season

The series will end with a special 90-minute finale.

As great as the show was at its best, I think this is the right decision. The concept had a built in amount of mileage; as the distance from the reveal of the switch has grown, the show has gotten more and more melodramatic to fill the airtime. I'm also glad Freeform made the decision in time for the writers to craft a satisfying conclusion.

 

[DaveF]

I finished S4 earlier this year. It was a slog. The show has lost everything that made it unique and devolved to a generic young adult soap opera, with Bay and Daphne repeating foolish mistakes episode after episode.