As cheesy as this sounds, the season two premiere of Speechless indeed left me… speechless. Only for a quick moment though and more on that later. This past Wednesday, ABC’s night for funny kicked off for Fall with Speechless premiering its season 2 opener just after The Goldbergs.
Summer is now over and when we last left the DiMeos, they were sending JJ (Micah Folwer) off to summer camp despite Maya’s (Minnie Driver) hesitation. The show starts off just a few weeks prior to JJ coming home from camp when the rest of the family – minus JJ and Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) – have come to realize JJ was able to overcome his hurdles. So, this leaves the family to decide they can no longer use JJ’s disability as an excuse to let their lives make a lot of mistakes in life.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the family or need a refresher, the DiMeos are… lazy and crazy. Lazy as in they cut the corners and do everything for their benefit. That is, with the exception of Ray (Mason Cook), who swears he was born into the wrong family since he’s the only “well put together” one out of all of them. And they’re crazy thanks to Maya, who will do anything and everything with absolutely no shame, which should be celebrated! If only we could live with the same mindset as Maya.
With this new family decision, each member of the family starts to make better decisions in life. Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) decides to start to show up on time, Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) goes out to make money for herself, and Maya literally takes the life of her neighbor’s to live some kind of organized life. While all the members of the family are reaping the benefits (Jimmy gets a raise, Dylan is swimming in money, Maya has a completely filled calendar), Ray is receiving the absolute opposite outcome. He realizes his main position in the family is to call them out on everything they do. But now that they’re doing everything the right way, well, does he really have a purpose?
Even JJ’s helper, Kenneth, jumps in on this action to promise to gain more strength in time for when JJ comes back from camp. Someone still has to help lift JJ from point A to point B.
When JJ eventually comes back from summer camp, he receives a note in his backpack and realizes he has a dilemma on his hands: a girl he met at camp, Alexa, wants to give JJ his first kiss! It took a bit of convincing to get the whole family on deck with this idea, but once Maya realizes how foolish she’s been, all the family members forget about the lifestyle they created and end up going back to the lifestyle they were used to from before. From there, the family is on a social media hunt to find Alexa while she was on a family road trip. As you can guess, they were able to find the girl. And JJ was able to get his first kiss.
The part that left me speechless? The moment where JJ got his first kiss. It was something about the family determination, plus the good feeling of inclusiveness. I mentioned before in a previous article regarding Speechless, this show views special needs not as an inconvenience, but as a way to create a conversation. Even though there’s a family full of characters we can be focusing on, we always tie the storyline back to JJ. Is this a bad thing? No! It just shows us how even though we go through huge monumental moments in our lives (such as first kisses), it doesn’t mean individuals with special needs never get these moments as well. We just never highlight it on primetime TV that much.
Welcome back to our screens DiMeos. We’re ready for another crazy season.
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