I admit, I\'m confused by this review. You\'re upset JJ doesn\'t speak, while Micah can? It\'s a sitcom, not a documentary. Micah Fowler is portraying a character and that character\'s experiences, not his own.
My alignment is Chaotic Cute.
Well, yeah, that\'s about the size of it. The big deal about living with a disability is facing the challenges that a disability presents and living well despite them. That\'s typically found to be inspiring because it\'s a testament to how much people with disabilities and all of us can do as people. The show falls flat because the role Micah has played has inhibited his ability to show what he can do as a person; it\'s secondary to his being an actor. This - this show and life itself - is about inspiring people to be the best individuals they can be. It\'s not the right kind of thing to fake.
You ever see King Gimp before? That\'s a documentary on cerebral palsy, and it illustrates my point.
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Disabling in its Design
As a person with cerebral palsy, I had high hopes for Speechless, especially upon learning that an actor with the had been hired to portray a teenager with the same condition. I saw the show as an opportunity to give voice to the disabled community. What's the deal with JJ having an "interpreter?" Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of JJ having a device which speaks for him and his knowing how to use it? In real life, such devices can speak up loudly and quickly for their owners. Look them up if you don't believe me. Also, we have the fact that the only "interpreters" JJ has wound up with are total eccentrics... Since Speechless is supposed to portray disability realistically and demonstrate overcoming disability to demonstrate ability, it strikes me as counterintuitve that the production team allowed any discrepancy between what Micah Fowler is able to do as a person and the abilities of his character, JJ [DiMeo]. Micah can speak, albeit with difficulty, but JJ cannot. Because of said discrepancy, Fowler is less able to connect to others via his craft as an actor, and unable to convey the totality of his life experience. Speechless suffers greatly for its absence, whether it might have served to resonate with other people with disabilities and what they experience in their lives or to convey that experience to able-bodied people who don't know what it's like. Micah Fowler might not have had the most to give physically, but as an actor with relevant life experience more helpful than any research could be, he had a lot more to offer his role than it has allowed him. Perhaps it's more disabling than Fowler's cerebral palsy. It's unfair that the disabled community, which is pressured to work hard to be normal represented by a disabled character and actor who don't work to the height of their abilities. It hurts me and makes the entire production team seem like jerks. Micah's being a person is secondary to his being an actor. This leaves us with a paradox: Are we to focus on JJ, who's not making the most of his resources, or on Micah, who put so much energy into differentiate from himself in order to play a role? The bottom line is that JJ is taking a dive, and Micah took a bigger one.