Another 2 weeks without Speechless, and I really needed a laugh last night. The show definitely delivered.

The main arc of this episode revolved around JJ getting to know an injured gymnast named Claire (Mckaley Miller). What started with JJ showing her the ropes of using a wheelchair around the school, ended up with him inviting Claire on what I can only describe as a “physical therapy date”. The beauty of this, was the fact that JJ actually became Claire’s motivation, and cheered her on to standing for the first time after her injury.
If there’s one thing in this episode that hit home with me, it was that even with Kenneth as his smooth-voiced wing man, JJ expressed something about dating as a person with a disability that gets to a lot of us sometimes: many of us definitely feel like we as people with disabilities aren’t seen as more than friends or teddy bears. However, it wouldn’t be a TV sitcom without a happy ending, and this one was a good one for JJ. I can’t wait to see how this develops.

While JJ got his (apparently amazing) charm going with Claire, young Ray was having issues of his own. Still recovering from Jillian breaking his heart in the last episode, Ray began to obsess about something being wrong with his nipple. What did he do about it? Well…he took a picture of it on his phone. However, when his friends found the pic, he spun a tale of a girl having “sexted” it to him, basically turning Ray into a high school idol. This status, however, couldn’t last through Ray’s sudden HUGE ego boost, and ended up landing him in some hot water with both mom Mya and the school’s principal.

Speaking of Mya, this episode was a bit lighter in her presence. Mya organized a get-together for the special needs moms, and what was a smaller arc to last night’s episode was no less funny. The moms were all about talking about their kids, while all Mya seemed to want to do was drink sangria & have a good time. Too much sangria, though, resulted in her making things difficult for Ray in front of his friends…

Dylan (whom I have grown quite fond of as a character) had been displaying some stress reactions to the way the school handles competition, and broke one of their (patronizing) trophies. In order to help her cope with this, dad Jimmy took her to see how he handles the (very) stressful environment in which he works – as an airline ticket agent at the airport. The amount of abuse that Jimmy deals with daily really didn’t sit well with Dylan, however, so there were some epic moments of Dylan’s famous attitude.
In a scene right out of 1992’s Wayne’s World, Jimmy pulled out all the stops & took Dylan for some “airport scream therapy”. With the pair lying on the grass & screaming into the sky just as planes flew overhead, we discovered that “trophy” may just be a trigger word for Dylan.

I was so glad to have Speechless back last night, as the amount of laughs that episode brought to me made me feel a lot better than I have all week. The show does not ever disappoint.

5 blue parking tags out of 5