Speechless – One A-N-Angry M-Maya

By: Taylor Gates

Maya (Minnie Driver) gets summoned for jury duty, but instead of being annoyed, she’s excited to have an excuse to do nothing. She internally sings a joyful song about getting to read magazines and drink coffee instead of taking care of the house and kids.

Maya arrives at court with a vacation beverage and new novel. All is going splendidly until she spies her mortal enemy Melanie (Sarah Chalke) across the room. When the judge asks if anyone feels they can’t be impartial in the vandalism case, Maya and Melanie campaign against each other. The judge disregards their comments and decides to keep them both.

In addition to photos from the scene, the defendant confesses to having committed the crime. This saddens Maya and Melanie, who wanted more vacation time. Maya and Melanie decide to call a truce and not make up their minds, prolonging the case as long as possible, much to the irritation of the other jurors.

Maya and Melanie quickly become friends, but when Maya asks Melanie to put in a good word for Ray (Mason Cook) to Taylor (Sedona James), the friendship turns sour, as Melanie thinks Taylor is out of Ray’s league. Maya forces the other jurors to decide if Taylor is in fact too good for Ray before they will agree to settle the vandalism case.

After giving lengthy presentations about Ray and Taylor during their lunch breaks, the jurors all agree that Ray is in Taylor’s league. Melanie reluctantly admits that she liked Ray and promises to put in a good word for him. They finally admit they find the defendant guilty before leaving.

Ray is upset when finds Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) playing ping-pong with Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) that afternoon, having forgotten they were going to spend time together. In order to make Jimmy jealous, Ray asks their neighbor Donny (John F. Schaffer) to teach him how to drive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t have its intended effect, and when Ray spies Jimmy and Dylan fixing up a car together later, he’s even more upset.

However, Jimmy and Dylan finally admit they’ve been working on building the car for Ray the entire time—they just wanted it to be a surprise. Ray is dumbfounded and grateful but still a little nervous that Dylan is Jimmy’s favorite. Jimmy assures both of them he loves all his kids equally.

Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) matches with someone on his dating app, inspiring JJ to make a profile of his own. JJ meets up with a few of the girls at a coffee shop, but all of them either have a weird wheelchair fetish, only want to date him because it would look good to a college admissions office, or think they can heal him with crystals.

JJ is bummed about his awful few dates and decides to omit the fact he is in a wheelchair from his profile so people don’t only see his disability. He starts chatting with a girl named Lauren (Juliette Angelo), and the two set a date for the next day. Kenneth thinks lying is a bad idea, but JJ calls him out on his hypocrisy, noting that he uses old pictures on his own profile.

Lauren meets up with JJ. She tells him she doesn’t think it’s going to work out—not because he has a disability, but because he lied. She’s looking for something real, and that can’t start with dishonesty. JJ changes his profile to include a witty sentence about having cerebral palsy. Kenneth follows suit, deciding to be honest about being twice-divorced on his own page.