Speechless – S-T– STAGE MOM

By starrymag | November 16, 2018

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

It’s Maya’s (Minnie Driver) birthday, and she is disappointed that every gift her kids get her says mom on it somewhere. Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) tells Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) that her present doesn’t say that and remembers Maya mentioning she wanted it. Desperate to make her feel better, Jimmy tells Maya that every gift she received thus far was a gag and that Dylan is going to give her the real one. When she opens it, however, she finds bags to pick up after the dog.

 

Maya sulks, wishing that her kids would see more than just the mother side of her. JJ’s (Micah Fowler) physical therapist Joyce (Liz Cackowsi) says that Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) broke up with her because he only saw one side of her as well. She discovered more about herself through the local community theater that does knockoff productions of popular shows. Inspired, Maya decides to follow suit.

 

Joyce tells Maya that everyone at the theater is great besides Richard (Jonathan Slavin), who Maya knows as Mr. Powers from the school. Everyone auditions for the play 142nd Street, but the director is so unimpressed he cancels the production due to lack of talent. Though everyone is prepared to quit, Maya isn’t ready to give up, determined that they try to put on a play themselves.

 

Everyone immediately begins fighting over roles in Mr. Powers’ new autobiographical script, and Maya realizes putting this together won’t be possible without a director. When they all nominate her to do the job, she is flattered, but she quickly becomes stressed out at the massive leadership task. The actors start acting just as demanding as her children, and she resorts to making pizza bagels, stopping fights, and picking up dog poop.

 

Maya decides it’s time for an intervention and sets down her theater family and real family. She tells them she’s tired of being taken advantage of and feeling like a servant, making them promise to do more so she can do less. Her hope is that her children will see her differently, but more importantly, she wants to see herself differently.

 

The next day, Maya goes to the theater and sees everyone in their costumes prepared for dress rehearsal. She is touched at their dedication and problem-solving without her. Unfortunately, they all get sick from food poisoning right before the curtain is set to go up. Maya is about to call the whole thing off, but Jimmy tells her the show must go on, encouraging her to put on a one-woman show. The entire family is emotionally moved by her performance, and Maya is ecstatic she finally got her moment to shine and show different sides of herself.

 

Kenneth announces that he got JJ a job at the supermarket he manages, and the DiMeos all congratulate him. However, Kenneth hasn’t really thought about what he’s going to have JJ do. He comes up with the idea to have JJ direct people away from the broken self-checkout lanes and into the regular lanes, assuring him it’s a real job.

 

When JJ goes into the back, however, he sees a cutout man named Quincy pointing left and realizes Kenneth has given him the job of a piece of cardboard. When the customers seem to like Quincy better than him, JJ gets furious and puts Quincy in the trash compactor. Kenneth rushes in, asking why JJ would do such a thing, and JJ says even the cutout did a better job than him and frustratedly quits.

 

Kenneth apologizes for not finding the perfect fit for JJ but promises they’ll figure out a great real job for him. JJ decides to take the matter into his own hands, reading the manual about how to fix the self-checkout lines and pushing the buttons on the screen with a special tool. Kenneth promotes him to self check-out specialist and gives him his first paycheck: twelve cents since he broke the trash compactor and killed Quincy.

 

Jimmy has Ray (Mason Cook) decode what some emojis mean on Dylan’s phone, realizing she got invited to a chaperone-free party. Jimmy tells his friend Dane (Paul F. Tompkins) about this, who wants Ray to start spying on his popular daughter Sammy and feeding him information about her whereabouts. After Dane gives him a few compliments, Ray is willing to do whatever he wants.

 

Jimmy exploits Ray’s talents in order to get free seafood from Dane’s restaurant. Ray tells a group of concerned parents what their kids are really up to from who they’re dating to how much weed they’re smoking. He continues narcing on all of the kids, telling parents whenever he hears about a party and immediately getting them canceled. The entire school starts buzzing about a mole, but nobody suspects Ray. When one of the football players (Javier Bolanos) invites Ray to his party, Ray is torn on whose side to take.

 

The parents pressure Ray to give them more details on the rumor of a big Friday night party going around, but Ray tells them he wants out. They won’t accept this, blackmailing Ray by threatening to tell the whole student body he was the mole if he quits.

 

Jimmy apologizes to Ray for getting him into this mess just so he could get free shellfish, and Ray continues to panic over what he should do. Dylan overhears him talking about his problems, shocked that he’s the mole.

 

Ray goes to the party and has a great time besides the fact that parents keep texting him asking him where the fun is. Dylan intercepts the message, leading them to an empty house. Jimmy tells Dane about the entire cast getting sick from his fish, telling him not to tell anyone about Ray lest he want everyone to find out about the food poisoning.