Memory is Your Image of Perfection

This may be one of the cutest episodes of Switched at Birth with so many family issues. It was interesting to see how different each family and their values are depending on the structure created by the individuals in that family.

Starting with the Kennish family, it was nice to see how grow up Toby is about his house and how sloppy John is about his living situation. I was expecting more of a bonding time between father and son on this situation but instead we got a moral lesson from son to father. Granted, the situation is not that normal since John kissed Toby’s mother-in-law and not just any woman out of the blue which cause a deeper embarrassment of the situation but also has the advantage to show that it was not John going around with any one and being labeled as a player or convictional cheater. Although it was a explainable small mistake, it was still a mistake and that affected not only Toby’s new family but has consequences into Bay’s idea of guys which are not good already. Having a role-model of a father cheating on her mother crumbled down her thoughts about how men behave. She saw her bio-father (Angelo) cheating on Regina, Emmett, Noah and Ty cheating on her and now her father also gives her the impression that men are “bed news” no matter what. If that will give her the idea that marriage is not worth or even any relationship, we don’t know yet, but it is most certainly molding her to believe that way, unless she finds the real life prince charming. Well, we know the real life prince charming doesn’t exist but then again, this is tv, anything can happen and between you and me, I think her prince charming is already in her life, she just have to win him back.

Talking about price charming, it was really good to see Emmett so relaxed, humorous and friendly again in this episode. For a while now we haven’t seen him without a major problem or secret. He seems to be happy now even though we’ve seen him before smiling on scenes with Travis, he always had that pain hanging over him for loving Bay and not being with her. It is not really clear so far if he had really moved on, we definitely don’t want it to be true, but in this episode his emotions seem to have calmed down and he can be just a friend as he has been since they break up. Although it was nice to see the scene of their usual friendship, it came a little bit awkward in the middle of nowhere within the previous story lines and plots. Emmett hasn’t been on the previous 2 episodes and the last one he was in, he and Bay ended up a little awkwardly about their friendship and their feelings for each other. Of course, they both hold no grudge about their “feelings” talk but we, as the audience, have been given all the Bay and Tank relationship building up, they talk about everything, they hang out together on parties, she even made Tank report his friend’s party and from the end of last episode they were still friends (if not more than that) so bringing Emmett to be the one she confines with suddenly made a little no sense. Yes they had the past history that she always confines to him, and honestly it was so good to see them talking as friends again, but really unexpected.

Melody and Travis storyline was the sweetest thing of this episode. As Travis said, she is not his mother, but she treats him as if he was her son and even more in front of her own son. In that case, Emmett’s attitude is the best. He is the only son and usually the only child is the most jealous of their parents, yet Emmett not only accepts Melody’s care about Travis but he also embraces Travis as his brother. They became a family and so close family that Emmett doesn’t mind talking about “girls” with his mom and Melody doesn’t mind telling Travis girlfriend (Marybeth) about the bathroom “rules”..that was funny.

It is impressive how Marybeth (MB) learned signing so fast. Remembering that she and Travis started to go out end of summer and they are now in the beginning of school year, so technically she has been studying it for about 5 months (max, I believe that it is even less) but she can sign and understand pretty much everything. Of course she mixed up some signs, but in the overall, that was pretty amazing signing. In comparison, it seems that MB learned faster than Bay when she was dating Emmett. One thing that I couldn’t really figure out, was it the first time that MB met Emmett? Does she knows about Emmett and Bay past history? If she does, what would be her thoughts about it, specially knowing about Ty? After all, Bay is her friend, she was hurt by Emmett and MB is allowing her to be hurt again in the same way by Ty, but she knows that Ty is not true..what a confusion may be in her head about this whole issue!! So again, does she know?

As the boys are suppose to be off to college, Melody is also finding her way to a new path in her life and giving the opportunity to Gabe, which by the way, seems to be an awesome guy. Maybe we will see more of this relationship on the 2^nd half of the season and I hope to develop on another Deaf-Hearing successful relationship, after all, Gabe is an audiologist, who better than him to understand how the Deaf world works. And that will bring another discussion about episode 9 of season 1 (Paradise Lost) when Melody strongly believed that Hearing people could never understand how Deaf people are/live. I’ll talk about that if this storyline evolves more.

One thing that I personally didn’t like much was the amount of blood showed on camera. I was thinking, well, it is a Disney Family program, so that won’t be too explicit, but it was more than I was expecting. On the other hands, Daphne courage was unbelievable and so gracious to see. Daphne has came back to her personality, she is again the good girl she was in the beginning of the show, always trying to help, always being nice to everyone and best of all standing up for herself and being brave on her actions.

Another family drama that was presented on this episode was the Vasquez family where Adriana proved to Regina she was being used as the minority class. Sometimes I feel that the parents really don’t know how to cheer their children. I mean, yes, Regina was being used to make Wes look good with his development project but the way Adriana talked to Regina is really putting her down and making her doubt of her skills. It was good to see that she apologized for what she did, but words out of the mouth cannot be erased from the memories that easily, and if it goes deep it can really create a chain of impacts to the child, so parents take chill pill before talking with your kids on situations like that. OK, Regina is not a child, but words can still hurt adults too…remember John and his father, Bill? I’m just giving my opinion.

I wanted to take a moment to compliment the costume designer. I know I will talk about her clothes next week too after seen the promo for next week episode, but I’ve been noticing a great improvement or better say a retrospective of Bay’s clothes. Lately, Bay has gone back to her old fashion style which is so lovely. The clothes are tighter, darker and trendy, much like season 1. Not only the clothes but the hair style has also returned. I don’t recall seeing Bay wearing buns in any of this season episodes, and the ponytails are very natural for her type of hair. She just seems to be Bay again. Congrats to Courtney Stern and Patricia Vecchio.

The big cliffhanger of this episode, will Bay be able to paint again? She will have a treatment that should make her hands, better yet fingers, good again but the uncertainty of the results is what is driving her crazy and mad. Here is the thing, as talking to other fans of the show and being an admired of art done by people with disabilities myself, it seems to me that this is the greatest challenge Bay will have to really discover what she wants to do in her life. If art is what she really wants, no amount of disability with her hand will stop her. Look for example her role model, Frida Kahlo, even stuck in bed and all cast in she was able to paint her amazing paintings. Foundations and more foundations of disable artists presents the most amazing paints done by feet or mouth and Bay still have her left hand, so at this point it is up to her and how bad she wants it, and that goes also to signing.

Next episode is the special episode with numerous dancing scenes; let’s see what we will get from these amazing producers and writers that keep us hooked every week!

Here it the promo for episode 8 (next monday)

Time to re-watch last Monday's episode. If you do not have abcfamily app or dvr or hulu, you can try this link: http://www.zzstream.li/2014/02/switched-at-birth-s3-e7-memory-is-your-image-of-perfection.html We do NOT endorse or support the website or its content and strongly advise you to get your abcfamily app or register with a secure website endorsed by ABC Channel.