User Reviews

I wish I could give this negative 5 stars based on the ending scene alone. It just surprises me that there is an audience for this nonsense -- unless it is meant to show that most people act like idiots by creating their own problems --- wait this is actually how 30 year olds act today. America is getting so dumb. The new Law and Order confirms just that. Maybe these young writers need more time but I doubt it. Oh more words are required? Ok fine. This show sucks. Terrible. The kind of show Harry and Meghan probably find monumental and riveting and gut wrenching. Just fails. Writers need to watch the first 6 seasons of Law and Order or even Colombo ffs to learn how to make TV. If after watching the first 2 episodes you don't know what I mean then you're the exact audience for this ridiculous crap. Moral dilemmas brought on by dumb, emotionally unbelievable choices to kill your son instead of call the cops or kidnap a baby instead of mind your own damn business. This is not how real people should act -- wait is this a comedy? It is hilarious.

This was such an amazing episode of television. A deaf woman is acting as a surrogate for a wealthy couple that have struggled with infertility. Ironically, the baby is born deaf and although the mother is dealing well with the news, the father is disappointed because he wanted a "musical" baby. Fast forward to the father wanting to put in a cochlear implant in almost immediately and the surrogate "overhearing" a very bad argument between the couple about their baby via eavesdropping with a special app on her phone. She freaks out and takes the baby trying to get to Michigan where she thinks she can adopt the baby because they don't honor surrogacy laws. She wants to protect this child from the same life she experienced with a mom who never bothered to learn to sign and also gave her a cochlear implant which made her miserable. She turns herself in when she realizes that her plan won't work. The court scenes are heartbreaking and I loved the conclusion. The acting is fantastic and the story was well paced. Great follow up to an outstanding first episode and I'm excited to watch what comes next.

There wasn't really a "bad guy" here (although Max had his moments). It was a really interesting exploration of communication, listening and perspectives and I enjoyed it.

Everyone did a really beautiful job acting. Ava's connection with Jenny was very lovely and was the thing I really mourned as the story unfolded. Most hearing parents of deaf/hearing loss kids don't have a person who can help built right in and if Max had been able to CHILL for a minute I feel like they all could have built something really beautiful for Lucie right off the bat. It's this perspective that leaves me not unhappy with the ending. I agree with the judge, it would have been a miscarriage of justice to lock Ava up for 15 years. I do think some consequences were necessary, like mental health support but that's not always interesting television. In the end I thought this was a really important 44 minutes of television and I encourage folks to forget about the realities of the justice system for a moment and really listen to Ava on that stand because she's saying some incredibly important stuff.

Do not watch this episode right after the first episode! The shows are like night/dark and trash! How do you go from an intense and rocky episode to an irrational, hyper-emotional, poorly constructed, waste of time - episode??? HOW!!

No, the husband does not snitch. No, the police are not overzealous. No, the justice system did fail. No, there is nothing gruesome.

Persons with hearing problems do not have it easy, sure. Neither does any other person with a disability.

The lady gets off on child kidnapping charges because the parents start to cry! That's it. That is the WHOLE story line!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the thing. I support the right for parents to choose if they want to provide their deaf babies with the opportunity of being able to be oral!

That I can't seem to understand why hearing impaired parents believe that it is a sin to choose cochlear implants for the child. It is not fair that if you are deaf, you can't try to give your kid the best of both worlds!

Why am I so passionate about this? My son was 4 yrs old when he started losing his hearing due to a genetic predisposition of having head trauma. He fell from a swing and that's how it all started. He had hearing aids up until another head trauma, this time during recess at school and a friend who was shorter than him running into him and hitting his forehead. A month later he was implanted and another month after that, to assure complete healing, the device was "turned on".

As my soon usually explains it, it does not sound the same as you have to get used to it. Even after the programmings to ensure he is getting the full benefits of the devices, he says it "sounds a bit robotic until it all clicks in".

That second head trauma at 11 was a blessing in disguise. He can hear sounds he was never able to and pronounce words he used to struggle with the hearing aids. I will never forget the first time he was able to recognize a song playing on the radio, or to recognize the voice of Phil Collins, while listening to the radio!

He is proud to be deaf! He sees this as an advantage over us because if he's tired, stressed, has a headache or whatever you can think of, he says that he can take them off and enjoy the silence. Still, he is grateful we made the decision for him to have a choice to take them off if he did not like it.

Two sides of the coin! This episode shows how a dead baby will have to wait to make this decision when all grown up. But what about giving them the choice of not wearing them if they choose to stick to sign language.

Giving them this opportunity is precious. Not all hearing impaired get to have it, as it all depends on what caused the hearing loss. My son learned ASL in high school, and even though he might not carry a conversation nowadays, it's been a while, still he does try to help those hearing impaired by making sure to repeat words while looking at them.

The pandemic was a extremely hard time for him because he still reads lips when he can't understand the person speaking. Imagine all those that do not have the blessing of being implanted, or wearing hearing aids! As parents, we should try for our kids to enjoy all the resources available!

ASL is a beautiful language indeed, as they mentioned on the show, unfortunately hardly anyone knows it. Why have our kids struggle unnecessarily when options are available?

With all that said, the surrogate had no right to do what she did, let alone not pay the consequences for her actions. And on top of it, she ended up being the hero! Heck no!!!!!

It was hard to watch from as a mother of an implanted kid's perspective. We did not have any more kids but if we had and they had been born deaf, as soon as the doctor understood it was safe for the baby to get implanted, we would have done it in a heartbeat! It's all about researching the best doctors to choose the best one.

Any type of surgery is a risk. I had major surgery just 3 days after I was born and here I am many years later. Why not take full advantage of how much science has evolved!

Sorry for me having to vent. But this episode struck a nerve! Completely unreasonable!

Only two episodes in and this is diving for my "Nope, dump it" list.

Seriously bad fiction, written by people who have apparently never seen how a court works in the US. In this episode alone we had:

1 ) A defense lawyer who puts the defendant's mother on the stand without ever appearing to have interviewed her.

2 ) A defense lawyer who quits in the middle of the case on his own initiative in order to allow the heroic deaf lawyer to take over. A judge would never allow this, as it's grounds for immediate appeal without a delay in the trial, net of an event akin to the death of the original lawyer.

3 ) A judge who decides it's a miscarriage of justice to convict a defendant of kidnapping immediately after the defendant has confessed to the crime on the stand.

4 ) A kidnapping trial that has apparently taken place so fast that the parents of the child haven't had the cochlear implant operation for their child, although they both felt that earlier was better.

Comes across as Judge Judy directed Oprah Winfrey. Feel all the feels.

Seems to want to stand on a soapbox and wave the trendy flags of the day.

One more like this and I'm out.

This episode is someone's wet dream, being it the writer(s)'s or some individuals'.

For the record, hearing/auditory challenged individuals have all the rights to pursue the lifestyle, occupation, education, and opportunities etc. They aspire to. For example, the ability to maximize their auditory ability through surgery, augmenting implants, or other medical/therapeutic means. Or, choose to adopt a sign language system if it suits their needs the best.

However, "Ava's story" portraits a hearing challenged surrogate mother Ava, who is not only unbearably egocentric by projecting her grossly subjective speculations and making it her version of reality and narrative; but also so appallingly self righteous, it borders pathological narcissism.

Ava believes that she has baby Lucie's best interests at heart, that the parents are not suitable for the baby because of the experience from her own upbringing, and that a surgical procedure without the baby's consent is not legally progressive, resulting in Ava "studying" the adoption law to find an enforcement loophole in Michigan, also having the entitled audacity to go to the supreme courts and "change the law".

Ironically enough that at the opening, Ava was studying for a test on joint replacement surgeries, procedure which helps many regain quasi full functions. Yet she accuses Lucie's parents' decision of surgery or implants to make the baby "like them" is backward, that being "normal" is not an inclusive progressive notion. She even falsely compares auditory surgery to "gay treatment". Well, "normal" isn't a bad word unless you spin it that way, or let's reword here, not "normal", fully functional or at least quasi fully functional.

The driving mentality in Ava or in this episode is the unfounded and ungrounded narcissistic over compensating belief that "I'm deaf and that makes me better than you." ASL might be a beautiful language, but did you know that sign languages are highly localized, that there are 300 different types of sign languages in the world and they could not effectively communicate between each other? Mastering sign language might cognitively develops certain nexus paths for one's brain, but that doesn't mean an infant's access to a normal or almost normal sensory function via a surgery with benefits usually out weighting the risks should be denied by someone who has no custody nor rights over the infant.

In the writer's/Ava's rose tinted reality, a mess of a situation that has free fall spiralling written all over, with police officers not responding to Amber Alerts promptly but approaching a vehicle straight up guns blazing, with Ava's partner KJ who used to be the voice of reason goaded to commit perjury, with the court of law and legal proceedings which ought to be based on proofs, evidences, facts, reasoning, and human compassion, reduced to a game of "make the jury like you" and a farce of emotional manipulation, with an ending adding insult to injury on the joke of a US justice system, it all eventually made it to the screen.

For all that, I say, whatever, 50 minutes of my life wasted.

Someone else mentioned this, but it is completely unrealistic. To commit a crime and then somehow walk away unscathed as the hero. It really makes me question if the writing was genuine, without even pulling in political ideology.

Hearing is a disability. Are we saying that parents can't take actions to attempt to cure a disability that their child has? Terrible episode. She compared it to trying to "fix" a homosexual person. So off base and completely missed the mark. If the case in Michigan gave her the precedent she wanted, she would have never come back.

It only got a 2 because I liked the cast.