Switched at Birth Review: Could you live with being “Switched at Birth”? - TV Reviews, Television, TV, Television Reviews, Movie Reviews, Movies, Film, Film Reviews, Entertainment, Film Entertainment

Quite a few TV shows recently have taken something of a soap opera approach to storytelling when it comes to creating their basis for their ideas. Most notably there are shows like Pretty Little Liars which focuses on the problems you run into while lying coupled with a murder mystery plot, Ringer which was about a twin who took over her sister’s life to escape her own problems, and Switched at Birth, the story of two families who took home each other’s daughters, only to discover the truth almost 16 years later.

This sets up an interesting twist on the concept of family and how it is defined in the modern world that you don’t generally see in a lot of places outside the soap opera genre. How does one define family? Where does the connection between you and the family you were born into begin and where does it end? This idea is taken on in many different genres and stories but it often takes a backseat to the other themes within the shows. It seems to be a foregone conclusion by most storytellers these days that family is what you make it, not what you were born into.

And that’s where this show is different. Switched at Birth takes the concept of how to define family and puts it front and center. From the very beginning, the show focuses on the two young girls who were switched, Bay and Daphne, whose life has been turned upside down by the chance decision of Bay who questioned her place in her own family. After a DNA test reveals the truth about their birth, two families attempt to deal with how their lives are changed.

Everything stems from that one moment and the way in which they deal with the fallout. The families develop all sorts of insecurities and fears because of the new dynamic between all of them. Bay and Daphne start to question who they are and who they want to be and the friends they spend time with, but also who they would be if they hadn’t been switched the way they were. Their parents, Katherine and John Kennish, and Regina Vasquez have to deal with each other and figure out a way to parent their respective children together without crossing any boundaries.

As things progress for the Kennish and Vasquez families, we are introduced to other friends and family members who have their own problems with members of the two families and this helps to broaden the characters and the way they deal with each other. That in and of itself would be enough for most television shows to sustain itself for several years, but Switched at Birth adds another dynamic to the mix which makes it fascinating for me and fans of the show. About half of the characters and some of the cast themselves are hearing impaired or deaf.

Watching the show then becomes even more interesting for someone like me as a writer, because so many of the scenes are told without any audio dialogue. It relies heavily on the actors to show the story and the character’s stress in the moment rather than tell it. They do have subtitles for those of us without a working knowledge of sign language but rarely do they tone things down for people who can’t read them as they go by. I’d also say that I have picked up a sign or two from watching it and I love that they have managed to do that for the hearing and hearing impaired alike. Ultimately they never lose sight of the truth of the show, which is the characters and the question they often ask themselves either figuratively or metaphorically.

Could you live with being Switched at Birth? I probably couldn’t, but I love watching it play out on TV.

Does Arrow hit its mark?

The final pilot that I managed to see in the recent 4 day weekend of fandamonium that is FanExpo was Arrow, the newest show based on a DC Comics superhero character after the end of Smallville which chronicled the story of a young Clark Kent as he grows up to become Superman. Many attempts to get something else off the ground in television have been tried since the success of that show and so naturally they are often compared to Smallville and I am sure that many will be in the years to come. Attempts were made to do a Smallville spinoff of the Supergirl character which appeared on the show, as well as an unconnected Robin story which follows the same formula of a young Dick Grayson before he came to be trained by Batman. All of which seem to have fallen by the wayside. So the fact that Arrow managed to make it as far as it did is something of a feat in and of itself.

What I think contributed to Arrow getting itself off the ground is that it didn’t try to trade off the success of Smallville in the same way that previous superhero origin story attempts have. Despite the fact that the character of Green Arrow appeared in Smallville and would eventually become a main character in its final years, Arrow doesn’t seem to take the easy way out. It cast new actors in the roles of Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance when it could have easily brought them over and pleased the fans of both Smallville and many comic book fans as well, but it didn’t. The show attempted to stand on its own and tell its own story in its own way. For that, people should be grateful.

This is not to say that I am not a fan of the idea of a shared universe or that I don’t want to see what I like about characters I have followed for a long time represented on screen. I do. But as a writer I understand that this isn’t always the best way to go. Part of developing a TV show or a movie which has a built in audience is making sure you don’t alienate any potential new fans you can create by telling a story not steeped in too much history. That’s one of the fundamental lessons of a show like Smallville. The story of Superman is not a new story, people know the origin and they have seen it represented in so many different ways. Smallville took what that history and gave it a different tone, a different viewpoint, and weren’t afraid to have a sense of humor about it.

In watching the pilot of Arrow, I think that seems to be a lesson which the creators seem to have learned well from and taken to heart. They seem to have great respect for the character’s history in comics, as well as his importance on Smallville, but it’s by no means an ode to the fans who love him already. Fans of the character and of DC Comics characters in general will definitely appreciate the show and the respect the character is given, but there are all kinds of aspects which even a casual fan or someone who isn’t a fan at all can enjoy. You have the hero with the cause worth fighting for, an unrequited love story, the importance of family and the question of how that is defined, and most of all you have humor.

All of these elements are portrayed quite well by Stephen Amell, and yet the other characters are no less interesting or well thought out. Each of the characters have their own problems and their own struggles to face that don’t rely on Oliver Queen to be told, but ultimately I think what will make the show work is how his alter ego the Green Arrow will interject himself into those problems and help them solve them to come out better for it, much like the show seems to have done.

So does Arrow hit its mark? With pin point accuracy.