(For those of you unfamiliar with the show, here's a basic intro. Tons of total sitcom drama stuff has happened since I wrote that entry, but it'll give you the general gist of characters at least.)
So, tonight. Bay's parents/Daphne's bio parents/the Kennishes are having a dinner thing with one of Mr. Kennish's old baseball buddies. It's because Mrs. Kennish is writing this salacious novel about how all the baseball people used to get their freak on, but she's missing just that one crucial story before she ships it off to the publisher. So Mr. Kennish calls ups the wildest guy he used to know and invites him to dinner, in the hopes that he'll still be a party animal and spill some beans about his sexual exploits so Mrs. Kennish can put it in her book.
But he's not wild and crazy anymore.
He drinks non-alcoholic beer, he doesn't want to talk about the past, and he met his current girl...thing at a yoga retreat. I don't believe in the episode they explicitly say they're married? Maybe they did and I missed it. I'm too lazy to go back and watch it again. It's not really crucial to the main point, anyway.
The main point being.....
The baseball buddy and his girl thing are SWINGERS!!!
Mr. Kennish mentions at some point in the evening that he and Mrs. Kennish have been going through a "rough patch" recently, and then baseball buddy is all like, "we know just the thing to help the two of you feel more connected, and that thing is having sex with another couple." Okay, so he doesn't actually say that in the show. He actually says this:
Pth. No, he didn't really say that, either. But I did really appreciate the fact that Switched at Birth didn't take this opportunity to play up how weird the swinger couple was. They've already got Renzo, the penultimate gay best friend, so it was sort of unexpected to see swingers characterized in such a "normal people" fashion.
Also, I liked that Mr. and Mrs. Kennish don't get all icked out by the idea. They do go into another room so they can discuss the proposition privately, but their discussion is completely absent of judgement or childish giggles about the new weird thing they've just found out about somebody they thought they knew.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Kennish go back and tell baseball buddy and his girl thing that they're not interested. Baseball buddy and his girl thing politely say that they must have gotten the wrong impression, that they still had a good evening, and then they get their coats and leave. Baseball buddy even has a really nice little speech about how being open is really about intimacy, and being in dark places together so they don't seem so dark. I didn't really quite get that last part - it sounded better when he was saying it.
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