‘Switched at Birth’: A Tale of Two Parties

I'm guessing that most of you feel the same way, but I think Switched at Birth is at its best when Bay and Daphne actually get to interact. That's the fundamental conceit of the show, right? Two girls who have spent their lives apart, finally getting to know and learn from each other? Granted, we're three seasons in and I'm guessing that lots of that bonding happened in the two I missed, but still — why keep isolated the best parts of your show? It's like a buddy cop comedy where they're working separate cases the whole time.

So what happened with Bay this week?

As predicted, Bay’s “friends only” stance toward Tank changed almost immediately after he helped her deal with her cut-up hand. Lucky for her, Tank didn’t take the 45 seconds between her rebuffing him and needing his assistance to find a new love interest, and so everything turned out great for the two lovebirds on tonight’s episode. They even got to enjoy Katherine's murder mystery party! That is, until Bay discovered the reason Tank didn’t want her to go to his fraternity’s party: because the party was actually a “dogfight.” And not the kind Michael Vick used to host, no — a “dogfight” wherein fraternity brothers competed to bring the most ugly date. Bay’s disgusted, naturally, and uses this as proof that she should not be with Tank. But then he called in an anonymous complaint to the Inter-Fraternity Council and got the party shut down. That is how much Tank cares about Bay.

So what happened with Daphne this week?

Campbell (RJ Mitte) is BACK to continue his wheel-chaired reign of terror against Daphne’s heart. He and his girlfriend are broken up now, sure, but Daphne has been seeing the other guy at work, Jorge, which causes love-based confusion in the office. Daphne decides that it would be nice to throw Campbell a surprise party to cheer him up and gets all his snowboarding friends to show up. Obviously a big move, one that doesn’t go unnoticed by Jorge or Campbell’s ex-girlfriend. How is a girl supposed to reconcile these conflicted feelings she has in her heart?

So what happened with Katherine and John this week?

Oh boy. It didn’t take long for John’s smooch with his son’s mother-in-law to get around to everyone — most significantly Katherine, who doesn’t exactly take the news well. By episode’s end, she’s kicked the guy out of the house and made it clear that the two of them have some very serious things to talk about. Until that point he’d held the upper hand, having stumbled onto the book proposal that would have mined their history for lascivious. But when you kiss your son’s mother-in-law, that sort of leverage goes right out the window. Sorry, DW Moffett!

Image: ABC Family