Speechless – F-A– FASHION 4 A– ALL

By starrymag | February 7, 2019

By: Taylor Gates

 

Maya (Minnie Driver) and Melanie (Sarah Chalke) show Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) and Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) their new adaptive clothing line commercial. Although they both think it’s beautiful, Kenneth suggests that they shorten their company name, and Jimmy pulls him aside, saying that their opinions don’t matter.

 

At the expo, Maya and Melanie are excited to be around their people. However, they quickly notice that almost the entire room consists of enemies they’ve made. They hide behind a cardboard cutout of themselves until Maya spies Nina (Rondi Reed)–a special needs mommy blogger–and she refuses to hide from her.

 

Maya tells Kenneth that she and Nina had the very first internet flame war. Back in 2004, Maya thought Nina and her blog had all the answers. However, over time she realized she had no idea what she was talking about and posted a takedown. Nina responded, and things got ugly. She only stopped when the president of the internet (aka Jimmy with a Hotmail address) emailed her and demanded she stop. Melanie refuses to let this one bad experience sink their company, and she drags Maya over to apologize to Nina.

 

Maya says she’s sorry, but Nina refuses to accept it. She inquires whether they are vendors there, wanting to give their product a writeup, and Melanie quickly pulls Maya away so Nina can’t sabotage them out of spite.

 

While Maya and Melanie are speaking to Nina, a woman approaches Jimmy and Kenneth who are behind the table of adaptive clothing. She says the product is remarkable and is happy people are doing something that really matters. Jimmy and Kenneth don’t correct them, taking credit for the idea.

 

Maya and Melanie see them onstage, having been hand-picked by the convention leaders to talk about their exceptional product. Nina is the moderator of the Q&A, and Jimmy and Kenneth have absolutely no idea how to answer any of the questions. Melanie and Maya yell “their impression” of the product from the audience.

 

They finally admit that they’re the founders, but because they’ve argued with so many of the people in the audience, nobody is interested in hearing from them. They want to give up, but Jimmy refuses to let that happen, giving them an inspiring pep talk.

 

Maya and Melanie go onstage, recognizing that they’ve wronged many people and are sorry about some of it. Melanie says that this product will make their kids happy despite how they may feel about its creators–they’ll love the clothes more than they hate them.

 

When JJ (Micah Fowler) realizes Maya will be out of town all weekend for the convention, he asks Ray (Mason Cook) to come on an overnight college visit with him. Ray accept the invitation, excited to get rejected by college girls.

 

At the dorm, JJ quickly gets annoyed with Ray, who tries to take care of him just like Maya would. When Ray follows him to a party, he insists he’s going to do dangerous things until Ray leaves him alone. JJ tells Ray he has no idea how to have fun, and Ray chugs a beer to prove him wrong. He also stuffs a brownie in his mouth, not knowing it had five shots of vodka in it.

 

Ray is incredibly drunk, standing on the table and talking about how he is a math magician. JJ takes him home on his wheelchair and gets him water. He’s glad Ray let loose, as they’re brothers and supposed to look out for each other.

 

Mr. Powers (Jonathan Slavin) shockingly announces to Dr. Miller (Marin Hinkle) that the test results are in and Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) is the smartest kid in her grade. He decides to take Dylan under his wing, as the gap between her test scores and grades are so big and he feels he can change that. Dylan tells him that she zones out whenever someone tries teaching her something, and they have the breakthrough that it’s because that’s what Ray always does.

 

Mr. Powers says they can make academics Dylan’s thing too, hypnotizing her so she can confront Ray about being an obstacle to her academic success. It works, and Dylan begins to see Mr. Powers as Ray. Naturally, she goes to hit him and chases him around the table.

 

Dylan then goes right to the source, FaceTiming Ray and confronting him about claiming the “smart” territory in the family. However, Ray tells Dylan he knows she’s smart. After all, her pranks are genius, and everyone is pretty much her puppet. Dylan then decides to believe in herself, but not because of his words–she realizes that if he can act dumb and drunk sometimes, she can occasionally be smart. Mr. Powers wants to talk strategy for getting her grades up, but Dylan says she doesn’t need that kind of external validation.