Switched at Birth (TV series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Tons, the biggest example being Bay. She's either a selfish bitch or a poor, neglected Woobie.
    • Regina: a well-intentioned and caring mother, or someone who selfishly held on to a child that she knew wasn't hers?
  • Broken Base: Daphne or Bay?
  • Die for Our Ship: Some of the Ship-to-Ship Combat between the Daphne/Emmett and Bay/Emmett shippers mentioned below got up to these levels. The more vocal D/E shippers would often take Bay's intial selfishness and Bratty Teenage Daughter tendencies from earlier in the series and turn her into a domineering vixen that has a wimpified Emmett under her thumb while completely ignoring her Character Development over the course of the season. On the flipside, the more rabid B/E shippers will twist Daphne up into a possessive and psychotic Yandere that wouldn't think twice to Murder the Hypotenuse, conveniently forgetting the fact that the worst things Daphne ever did were mostly a bunch of failed attempts at Relationship Sabotage. Thankfully, it's died down with the passage of time, and from Daphne ultimately pulling a genuine I Want My Beloved to Be Happy in regards to Emmett and did give him and Bay her blessing.
    • Ty also received some, despite Bay and Emmett hooking up after they broke up, though that's thankfully died down as well.
    • Part of the fandom went berserk when Simone (of all people) became A Naked Shoulder to Cry On for Emmett.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Emmett, the Deaf motorcycling drummer.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Regina says she followed Daphne and Emmett for weeks after she let her ride on his motorcyle. Neither Daphne nor Emmett seem to know this. She's later revealed to have been following Bay since she was three.
    • Regina's line to her boyfriend about how him sleeping with his ex and her, "In my experience, history usually wins" makes much more sense after it's revealed that she knew about the switch.
  • Fridge Logic: Daphne tells Bay how, when they were eight, Emmett stood up for her and introduced her and her mom to sign language. She was three when she lost her hearing. Did it really take five years to figure this out? Most hearing people at least know the concept of signing....
    • That, and given that Daphne went deaf due to antibiotics given to her by doctors to combat the meningitis, you'd have thought the first thing the doctors would do after making sure she's recovered from meningitis, was to check her hearing then go through the options with Regina. Including (if not especially) sign language, reading lips and the like. If I were Regina I'd have sued those doctors for incompetence and negligence!
      • The Fridge Brilliance in that backstory is that a lot of doctors/audiologists are trained to see deafness pathologically in a "we must make this child normal" way. There is also the fact that a lot of hearing parents of deaf children have this vision of "perfect"/"normal" that they want their children to be, so when they're introduced to the oral method, they spring on it, clinging to any hope that their child can learn to speak and use their residual hearing in order to function like a "normal" hearing child. It makes perfect sense that Regina could have chosen oralism first before really being educated about ASL, Deaf culture, Bi-Bi, and the like.
  • Ho Yay: After only a couple scenes together, Toby/Emmett has gained an impressive amount of shippers.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The new deaf kid, Travis. He's abrasive, rude, and gets on Daphne alot for no apparent reason. It turns out his parents, who are hearing, made no effort to understand him or communicate with him.
  • Les Yay: Between Regina and Melody.
  • Narm: The Soup had fun with a scene from the pilot, where John is thinking about Daphne's disability, and hears an ice cream truck driving by while playing a tune. At night.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: Bay/Emmett vs. Daphne/Emmett.
    • Now there's something brewing between the Wilke/Daphne shippers and the Travis/Daphne fans. If Wilke does indeed get Put on a Bus to boarding school, things might only start heating up for the worst...
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: Bay seems to believe this--she is something of a secret Banksy and puts modern artwork all over town.
  • The Woobie: Take your pick. Bay, Daphne and Emmett all have their moments. Bay feels she doesn't fit with the parents that raised her and think they like Daphne more, and she feels her birth mother chose Daphne over her. Daphne feels angry with Regina for not telling her about the switch and keeping her from the Kennishes, then has Emmett choose Bay over her. Emmett watched Daphne date other guys for eight years, before having her express her feelings after he started dating Bay. Not to mention the Lonely Piano Piece that plays when he can't understand what someone's saying.
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