More speaking about Speechless

   JJ isn’t the only one with an alarmed look. 

   In my last post, I wrote about how much I appreciate Speechless, the new sitcom on ABC about a family that includes a boy with Cerebral Palsy who uses a power wheelchair and a speech device.  I said that I like the show and am glad that it’s on, despite some flaws, including that JJ is strangely mute.  As I said, I don’t know of people with C.P who can’t vocalize at all. 

   This flaw stuck out so much in last week’s episode that it was nearly fatal.  If JJ’s not speaking continues to be used this way, it will ruin the show. 

   I actually liked the episode.  I thought it was pretty good, pretty funny.  JJ and his attendant take off for a day, and it’s hysterical that they keep getting special treatment and free stuff (yes, this happens!). It’s funny to see the attendant taking advantage of and having fun with this and how this eventually pisses JJ off.  Meanwhile, the rest of the family goes off and does things – paintballing, ice skating – that JJ can’t do and, amusingly, end up guilt-ridden about this. All this was a rather smart send-up of how the non-disabled react to and feel about the disabled. 

   But there was one scene that almost derailed the whole thing.  In the scene, JJ and the attendant are getting into the van.  For whatever reason, the attendant puts JJ’s communication board into his backpack and then puts the backpack on the ground outside the van.  The attendant then proceeds to start the van, and all we see is JJ in the back looking alarmed and angry, knowing that his communication board is being left behind. 

   Why doesn’t he yell, if he can’t actually say anything?  Why doesn’t he scream?  Why doesn’t he cry? 

   No wonder he looks alarmed and pissed.  Not only has his mode of communication been taken from him; he is rendered completely mute, with the show’s title taken all too literally. 

   I did love the subsequent scene, with JJ expressing his rage, letting his attendant have it, quite literally.  But then, to make up, the attendant lets JJ drive the van.  Really?  Come on! 

   It can be said that this also sends the show off the rails, but it’s easier to see this as just the usual, over-the-top sitcom schtick.  And it’s pretty funny to see, in the episode’s closing, how the over-protective mother reacts when JJ tells her that he drove the van.        

Not quite speechless about Speechless

  I want to hear JJ talk.  Yes, he should always speak up for himself and not have others defend or argue for him, but, more than that, I want to hear JJ speak. 

   Why does JJ, who has Cerebral Palsy like I do, not talk at all, as if he’s mute? Why can’t he talk and be hard to understand, as with me?  This is the case with many people with C.P. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I’ve never met anyone with C.P who can’t talk at all, who is mute.  The only time JJ vocalizes is when he laughs, groans or exclaims.  

   And why doesn’t the communication device he uses, with a laser attached to his glasses, speak?  Most such devices nowadays speak.  Why is JJ stuck with needing someone to read what he points to? 

   Yes, I have these quibbles and gripes about Speechless, the new sitcom on ABC about the Dimeo family, whose three children include the teenaged JJ, who has Cerebral Palsy and uses a power wheelchair and a communication device attached to it.  But I have to say that these complaints are nothing.  Overall, I am amazed that such a program, let alone a comedy, with a vital, young, severely disabled character, is on broadcast television. One of my attendants said that, because of this, watching the show is “surreal.” He means he has never seen anything like it on T.V. A huge bonus is that the boy who plays JJ, Micah Fowler, has C.P, albeit reportedly not as severely.  Wow!  This is a gigantic step for television, especially for those who know how hard it is for disabled actors to get work. 

   There are many things I really like about the show.  I like it the whole family is sort of disabled, not picture-perfect, with their messy and frenetic lifestyle.  I like it that the mother, played by the driven Minnie Driver, is a handful and sometimes downright unlikable, in her efforts to get the best for JJ.  I like the tension with JJ’s siblings, with his brother resenting all the attention JJ gets and his sister wondering if she runs track because JJ can’t. 

   There is also the wonderfully snarky humor, like the oh-so P.C school principal pointing out that the school mascot has been changed to the banana slug, which has both male and female genetalia. 

   Yes, some things are awfully broad and over the top, like JJ suddenly announcing in the first episode that he is running for student council to the cheers of the whole school.  Such is par for the course in a sitcom, though. However, I really hope JJ’s attendant/reader (a funny character played by Cederic Yarboro, and perhaps the reason that the communication device doesn’t speak) defending and rescuing him, as he did in this week’s third episode when students get angry at him because of the inaccessible homecoming bonfire being moved indoors, isn’t a trend. 

   Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that JJ doesn’t drool or has many spasms and that he isn’t seen eating. JJ has been sanitized, even made pretty, with the messier aspects of C.P air-brushed away.  (Maybe this is why, or part of why, he doesn’t speak.) But then there’s a stunning scene, like in the second episode, when the attendant assists JJ, lifting him up, at the toilet.  This is breath-taking – a young, healthy man being assisted to go to the bathroom in a sitcom.  Even now, thinking of this extraordinarily intimate, tender and real scene on national television nearly brings tears to my eyes. 

   Hearing JJ, when he laughs or exclaims, is also quite moving to me.  This is why I want JJ to talk.  When I watch this show, I am seeing myself in a television show for the first time.  This is quite powerful.  I also want to hear myself.