UPDATE: Never mind. Turns out they’ve just decided that the final season won’t air till 2017(!), so I have almost a year to watch 30 episodes. All the time in the world! (Unfortunately. Surely it would make more sense to just finish it off?)
Switched at Birth was cancelled a few days ago; a ten-episode season 5 will be its last, with a 2-hour finale. Once I was done being sad about that, I did the math: if I watch at least one episode a day, I can reach the season 4 finale by the beginning of April, just in time to watch season 5 as it airs.
So, my next couple of posts are going to be my binge-watch of seasons 3B and 4.
Never heard of it? Read on…
The titular switched babies are now-16-year-old Daphne (Katie Leclerc) and Bay (Vanessa Marano), who find out about the switch after a lesson from Bay’s Biology teacher leads to her learning her blood type and how it means she can’t be her parents’ daughter. They meet, and they discover that while Bay has lived a life of luxury, with a private school, comfortably rich parents and an older brother, Daphne grew up in a bad neighbourhood with a single mother and meningitis at the age of 3 that left her deaf.
That deafness is a large part of the show, with a focus on it that I haven’t seen before. The deaf characters use sign language whether they speak or not, the hearing characters learn sign language, and there was even an entirely ASL episode. Deaf issues are dealt with organically, but at the same time Daphne isn’t restricted by it – she’s a great basketball player, a great chef who’s worked in a restaurant and had a food truck, and she’s currently considering pre-Med at college.
Naturally, once the issues of learning about the switch and the two families meeting is done with, the show needs to continue; whether it’s the familes’ vastly different backgrounds, the girls’ boyfriends, school, friends or the issues of the parents who get just as much screen time as the kids, it is (or will be) 103 episodes of great family entertainment.
Lauren's Playground 