Switched at Birth is about two teenage girls, Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano) and Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc) who, as it says in the title, were switched at birth. Bay, who is from Mission Hills, comes from an affluent neighborhood while Daphne, from East Riverside, comes from a working class neighborhood. It is set in the Kansas City metropolitan area. When Daphne was 3, she got meningitis and went deaf from the illness. She learned ASL and to read lips and her mom, Regina Vasquez (Constance Marie), learned ASL. Bay grew up doing art; she did not inherit the sports gene from her dad, John Kennish (D. W. Moffett), who was in the Royals for baseball. But Daphne did inherit that gene since she is a Kennish and Bay is not; Bay is a Vasquez. When Bay’s biological father, Angelo Sorrento (Gilles Marini), figured out that Daphne was not his daughter and she went deaf, he left them and moved back to Italy. Bay’s mother, Kathryn Kennish (Lea Thompson), was a stay at home mother.

The thing that is great about Switched at Birth is that it has ASL in it and deaf people. I think it’s great to have diversity in a show and that definitely shows diversity. What would’ve made it even more diverse and better would be having one of the main characters be deaf and black. That would have made it even more diverse. Another thing I feel like they did well with is being able to keep the plot going for five seasons. I feel like it would be tough to do that, because it’s not as interesting as some other shows are. 

I loved Switched at Birth because every time it would start to get boring, they would make it interesting again. The show kept my interest and that is cool to think about because how could a show that is about two teenage girls who were switched at birth keep your interest for almost 5 seasons long. That’s super intriguing to me. The acting was also very good. At first, I felt like I might not be able to get into the show, but then once I watched a few more episodes, I loved it. The show helped me to empathize more with people who have disabilities. Especially the one episode where it was just ASL and there was no sound at all, except for occasional background music. During that episode, I was a bit frustrated, because I wanted to hear voices and sounds, but once I watched more of that episode, I was glad that they made it so that you could not hear and they only did ASL.