Discussion Forum: Television Series

There are plenty of television series to fill your evenings when you feel like a couch potato. The one really worth seeing and the one I would like to recommend you is Switched at Birth.

The plot of this series revolves around two girls, Bay and Daphne, who were accidentally switched just after their birth. Daphne grew up in poor neighborhood with her mother and grandmother. Her father jumped ship, and when she was three years old, she lost her hearing because of a high fever. Since then she has dreamt of the perfect family with a mother, father, and sibling. Bay, on the contrary, is raised in a wealthy and famous family, and she also has got a brother. She is very artistic and loves creating pieces of art.

This show is full of drama and classic teenage problems. However, there is something more to it than just that. The TV series devotes a decent portion of its air time to exploring community of hearing-impaired people. Not only does Switched at Birth acknowledge that they exist like most of the media do, but it actually takes an in-depth look into the challenges they face in everyday life as well as with hearing people.

For example, in the sixth episode Daphne decided to take a cooking class in a regular school for hearing kids. When the timer went off she didn’t hear it simply because she was accustomed to the one that starts blinking whenever the time is up. And in the episode thirteen the best Daphne’s friend Emmet, who is also hard of hearing, was arrested by the police. He had a wrench in his hand and he could not hear what the officers were saying to him. As a result, he was treated very harshly and handcuffed. By doing so police officers disabled him from the only way of communication he had.

This television series will give you an interesting insight into this whole different culture in our society.