Speechless – O-S– OSCAR P-A– PARTY

By: Taylor Gates

Maya (Minnie Driver) has fellow special needs moms over to socialize, inviting them all to her annual Oscar party that weekend. A new mom to the group named Becca (Michaela Watkins) shows up and the rest of the women are shocked—she’s put together and cheery unlike they were the first time they attended the support group. She even gives Maya a gift she made in a beautiful, homemade box.

Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) complains about having to hang out with the dads during the Oscar party; they’re boring compared to the moms. Some of Maya’s friends show up wearing makeup and having had their eyebrows done. Maya is repulsed that they’re all changing themselves to impress Becca. She stands by the fact that they have to love each other for who they are, hot mess and all. She rearranges the house back to its dilapidated state.

Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) and JJ (Micah Fowler) face off to see who is the biggest movie buff by playing a trivia game. To level the playing field, they race to see who can spell out the answer with lasers on a board first. When other special needs kids ask to join in, he challenges himself to find a way to be inclusive and fair to everyone. JJ and another kid fight over whose answer is correct in trivia and it starts getting physical. Instead of putting a stop to the fight, Kenneth accommodates them so they can have a fair brawl.

Jimmy spies all the dads setting up chairs just because their wives told them to. Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) observes they’re like lemmings marching to their deaths, which gives Jimmy an idea. He leads them into the garage, convincing them their wives wanted them to help him out with chores. He gets to talking to them as they build him a cabinet out of scrap wood, finding out about their interests. He starts feeling bad about exploiting them, admitting that their wives didn’t ask them to do any of it. He understands they just want to make the lives of their families easier, but Jimmy wants to know what they want to do for themselves. Their answers are so pure: to do a jigsaw puzzle, to watch TV, to dance, etc. So, Jimmy declares a dad party.

Becca shows up to the party, but says she can’t eat because she’s on a cleanse. This causes the other moms to immediately drop the pigs in a blanket they had in their hands. Maya gives an opening monologue before turning on the ceremony, but a gust of wind blows the tarp on the roof and knocks out the cable. To compensate, Maya watches a blurry live stream on her phone and relays what’s happening to the room as she plays it off as a metaphor to find out what it’s like to have special needs. The room is annoyed and disappointed. Jimmy asks if she wants to shut the party down, but Maya feels the self-esteem of all the women is on the line—they need to realize the way they live isn’t inferior to Becca and her methods.

All the ladies happened to bring cups to the party so there’s no more real food. Becca invites everyone to go to her house and whip up some snacks as she’s just done a grocery run. They’re all anxious to go, but Maya is a little hurt by them choosing Becca over her. Nevertheless, the make the trek to her pristine, Pinterest-y home. Everyone gets googly-eyed over her estate, but Maya is disenchanted. Every mom has a problem, she insists, and they’ll figure out Becca’s eventually.

The cable company finally fixes the DiMeo TV, but all the special needs moms want to stay at Becca’s house anyway. Maya refuses to let this happen, saying she doesn’t like the way Becca makes them feel and she really doesn’t like the way Becca makes her feel. Maya tries to convince herself she’s still the better mother, but Becca rubs salt in the wound by putting Dylan’s hair into a perfect French braid (something Maya had told her that Dylan’s hair couldn’t do). Maya loses it, demanding the Becca get out of their lives.

After things calm down, Maya apologizes to Becca for the way she acted, but Becca remains snobby. Becca admits that she was judging Maya and does think she’s better than her so she’s not sorry for it. Maya unseals all of Becca’s perfectly stored grains as revenge, throwing them on the floor. However, this doesn’t have the greatest effect, as they’re all vacuum sealed “for freshness and aesthetic purposes.” Dylan takes matters into her own hands, calling a meeting of the moms. She tells them she doesn’t understand why they judge one another so harshly. Both Maya and Becca admit that it’s their own insecurities that makes them do this, but they realize they don’t need to be enemies: they’re sisters. The only people they need to hate are moms without special needs kids.

Earlier in the night Ray (Mason Cook) meets a cute and quirky free spirit who goes by Zelda (Reylynn Caster) at the party. All she wants to do is build a blanket fort and spin around. While Ray finds this endearing at first, it quickly becomes dangerous. She starts up Jimmy’s old car and they decide to take it for a spin. They go into Ray’s school, wanting to break into an art classroom. Unfortunately, all the rooms are locked. Zelda spies a “Student of the Month” plaque with Ray’s picture on it in the hallway, accusing him of not really being a manic pixie dream boy. To prove he’s not a conformist, he throws a chair through the classroom window. Much to their dismay, this plan backfires as Zelda says that felonies are not fun. Afterwards, Zelda kisses Ray goodbye. She says they can’t be together as Ray is too wild and free for her.

Maya and the moms return to the DiMeo house to find it in chaos. Kenneth is letting the children—some blindfolded, some duct-taped—battle each other in the name of inclusivity. Jimmy and the other dads are dancing and sleeping while a record plays in the background.