“Switched at Birth” delivered a doozy of a penultimate episode.
In “The Wolf is Waiting,” Travis (Ryan Lane) was put through quite an emotional wringer with Bay by his side, Daphne’s budding relationship with Chris continued to blossom and she takes a huge risk to help him, John and Kathryn had to make tough decisions, and Regina’s lost love returned for one last time.
Let’s recap what went on as we prepare to bid goodbye to “Switched at Birth” on April 11. Yes, the show ends tomorrow!
In what will be remembered as Lane’s best performance over the course of the show, Travis went through a lot in just 40 minutes. The punch he delivered last episode to a fellow college-mate for mocking people with disabilities came back to haunt him. The guy’s father is an important donor and as payback, he wants John and Kathryn to remove Travis from the baseball team or he’ll just stop giving money to UMKC. Seeing as they have no choice, John informs Travis he’s off the team. And that’s not even the worst of it all.
Travis invites Bay for dinner with his mother Karen (Suanne Spoke), with whom he’s trying to reconnect. When he was younger, she didn’t know how to sign and didn’t care to learn in order to communicate with his son, making their relationship very rocky. She’s finally stepped up, is learning to sign, and wants to patch things up with her son. At dinner, we also meet Travis’ uncle, and upon seeing him, Travis becomes very anxious and for good reason. Turns out, Travis was molested as a kid by this uncle, whom his mother worships. Bay urges they leave but Travis wants this chance to make things good with his mother, so they stay on for an extremely awkward dinner. Travis’ mom suspects something’s wrong so Bay makes up an excuse for them to leave.
She later tells Travis he needs to tell his mom about this but he refuses. He thinks she won’t believe him. He’s so distraught and it’s heartbreaking. Karen visits Bay the following day at the tattoo parlor to figure out what went wrong at dinner. Bay, unable to tell her, suggests she talks to Travis instead. Karen, trying not to break down, tells her to please convince Travis to open up to her. And she does. Along with Bay to help interpret, he visits his mom to finally tell her about his uncle.
Travis emotionally tells his mother about the molestation, and when she refuses to believe him, assuming he’s misunderstood, he goes into great detail about how/where it happened and finally breaks down, yelling at his mom in the process. Karen not knowing how to sign made it impossible for him as a child to tell her what was happening. Her brother knew this and took advantage of the Travis and his deafness.
Lane was brilliant in this whole episode, especially in these scenes, bringing out visceral emotions. Karen asks Bay what to do. She tells him to simply let Travis know she believes him. Bay even teaches her how to say it in ASL.
Later, Travis thanks Bay for supporting him through all of this. These two have cemented themselves as one of the sweetest relationships on “Switched at Birth.” I was sure that Bay’s love triangle with Travis and Emmett would be a focal point in this final season and while they’ve dealt with it, I hope they don’t dive back in during the finale. This is a good ending for Bay. Or is it? Because in the closing moments of the episode, John tells Travis that he found a team who would love Travis. The caveat is the team is based in Japan! Uh oh.
Meanwhile, Daphne continued her descent into the feelings she’s developed for John’s other ace baseball player Chris. He’s in trouble now because of how she told her parents someone in the team was taking steroids while he was only doing it to repair his arm in time for a big game. It takes a week for the drugs to pass out of your system and because she’s guilty, she tells him she’ll help him so he can ace the drug test John and Kathryn have mandated for all of UMKC’s sports teams. Despite the training, Daphne learns there are ways to detect drugs in the system.
In order to help Chris out, she “accidentally” drops his sample and now he has to come in the following Monday, which will allow enough time for the drugs to leave his system. Naturally, this is the opposite of what she expected to be contributing to medicine. She’s distraught and when she comes clean to Chris, he tries to thank her with a kiss. She’s not having it. I suppose the finale will deal with this aftermath with Daphne’s conundrum on whether or not she wants to continue in this field.
Regina also had heart troubles this time. Luca’s away and Toby’s installing security cameras at The Cracked Mug. He takes a two-hour break while Regina does her inventory, only she’s interrupted by Eric aka her former boss aka her former boyfriend who’s on the run with his son Will so his ex-wife doesn’t track them down. Whew.
He’s returned to collect some cash he hid in the apartment above the cafe. Yes, the same one where Bay and Daphne now reside. He and Will are tired of moving from one place to another so they’re moving countries instead! He’s got a cafe set up in Belize and everything and he wants Regina to go with him! Bold move, buddy.
She momentarily gets distracted and they start making out but she puts a stop to it. She refuses to go with him, she can’t. Her daughters, her job, her family, her boyfriend are all in Kansas City. She can’t just leave and be on the run. He doesn’t give up, though, and tells her she has 48 hours to think before he leaves with Will to never return.
Regina’s been on such a journey since the show began. Will she leave all of it to go crash with Eric? Guess we’ll have to wait till the finale to find out.
What did you think of this episode? Are you sad the show is ending this week and what are your hopes for the finale?
