Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga REACTS to... Switched At Birth (S05E04) Relation of Lines and Colors Airdate: February 21, 2017 @freeform Ratings: 0.521 Million :: 0.24 18-49 Demo Share Score: 2/10 **********SPOILERS BELOW*********** Once again, the intent is there, but Switched At Birth seems to be executing stories without any kind of acumen or real insight... And some of these topics are pulled from real life, yet the details are hacked and screwed like an old mixtape, there's a deep understanding of these issues missing, facts blacked out like an FBI document. It's as if Lizzy Weiss and her crew pulled out of book of important issues highlighted the titles and forgot to actually put in the work and really understand any of them. After the initial 'Mingo/Lil Wayne' costume incident, which they forgot to actually make insulting, Lizzy Weiss was accused by many viewers (at least the ones that are still here as we're dipping below 500k now) of not taking the matter seriously. She said she wanted to get people talking, but all she did was get them talking about her incompetence as a writer and creator. Many, including me, accused of her of lacking perspective or the gall to take it and run with it. If you want us to talk about the actual issues you simply have to have guts to take something to the edge. If you don't, it makes it look like a bunch of people look petty, like they're blowing something out of proportion. I talked with many women and men of color, and various ethnic backgrounds, who were horrified at what we saw... The same way I felt when they carelessly tackled campus rape/sexual assaults, as both a survivor of sexual abuse at a young age and a witness of watching my best friend go through a high profile rape case. In response to the outrage over the inoffensive costume, Lizzy Weiss decided to hold a Q&A and tout black cast members and staff members who she claimed helped write and loan perspective, yet rolling the credits back the people beyond the actual acting cast seem to be ghost writers because their names were nowhere on the original credits list. At this point I wouldn't put it past this woman to go back and whitewash the credits, but let's be clear... Lizzy Weiss wrote that first episode, that was ALL her, she might have someone with some perspective actually lined up for some these future episodes, but it very much feels like this is an unsalvageable mess, Issa Rae & Donald Glover couldn't save this mudslide. It's come to a point that a show that once was on the forefront of bringing 'hard of hearing and deaf' issues to a mainstream audience is desperately trying to make each scene more soapy and over-the-top than the last. Out of touch, liberal Hollywood is literally slapping the face of people dealing with these issues and now the people who were involved with the actual incidents they are attempting to recreate. On top of all of this, the show has resorted to the oldest trope in the book... The love triangle. I'm sure that the majority of the paltry 500k viewers who are still watching (some S1 episodes were hitting near 3.5 million viewers) know that Bay & Travis lack chemistry... Kill this triangle & kill it fast. It wasn't until S4 when they ran that poorly executed Tank episode that viewers started to bail... And now, once again, they are bailing by the thousands. What happened, where did everything go wrong? Is this simply a case of writer's block? Show fatigue? Or are we finally seeing the vapid execution for what it really is now that they are branching out into issues that we are familiar with? I just remember binge watching the first two seasons, thinking how cool it was that we were seeing a show tackle something as untouched as the issues of both the diverse community of the deaf and hard of hearing to massive hospital blunders and the neatly cross-stitched family issues colliding into extremely compelling programming. Maybe the show should have stuck with continuing to push the limits on those issues as I'm sure there are tons of material they could work with. What we are seeing now, it's just plain sad. Before I move on I want to address one more thing, and I'm dead serious here. We are all different, we are all unique in shade, in life experiences, in coming of age, in learning and understanding empathy and 'oneness'. Right now, in our world, 'Free Speech' is under attack. People are scared to discuss their opinions in fear of being called homophobes, racists, bigots, misogynists, etc... All this show is doing is perpetuating these fears. Show us something ballsy, Lizzy Weiss, you only had 10 episodes... How could you get this far and fail so bad? Come out the gate strong and show us something we can really talk about, something that will help us learn from each other, show us a real issue that's worth fighting for. The cotton balls were a much better go than the harmless costume, but it was a building block that was built on that original experience, so it loses its punch too.
