TV Review - Deaf U

The title is a reference to Gallaudet University, a school in Washington, D.C., that is specifically designed for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. The series has Nyle DiMarco, a deaf celebrity, as its executive producer. DiMarco is a model and actor who made a name for himself about five years ago. He won America's Next Top Model in 2015. He also won Dancing With the Stars in 2016. He has been a political advocate, trying to raise awareness of the Deaf community, as well as providing access to resources to families with deaf children. This series is a way of showing what life is like for deaf children as they get older and then start to enter the world at large, starting with the college experience. This is essentially what we get, but, anyone hoping for an insightful look at how a school that caters exclusively to the deaf would operate differently from other schools, both from a practical standpoint to a psychological standpoint, is going to be somewhat disappointed.

The series focuses on about a half-dozen or so students and centers mostly on their dating lives. The majority and indeed the thrust of the series is who's dating whom and who's having sex with whom. It would be one thing if their dating lives were interesting or engaging in more ways than just superficial reasons. Yet, by the nature of college relationships, these relationships usually aren't meant to be deep or long-lasting. Most of the people here aren't looking for anything serious. They're just having fun and being casual in any kind of romance or sexual activity, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not much to hang a TV series. There is one exception. There is one student whose dating life is somewhat interesting, but the series doesn't devote enough time to it.

Obviously, everyone on campus uses American Sign Language or ASL. Presumably all the teachers use ASL. We even see the football coach using ASL. In the dorm rooms, instead of a doorbell or knocking on a door in order to get someone's attention, there is a button that a person outside can push in order to flash a light inside the person's dorm or apartment to signal that someone's outside. Other than that, there really isn't any exploration in this series as to how Gallaudet operates. When the students are off campus at restaurants or clubs, we get some clue as to how things are different for them. For example, at a restaurant, deaf people don't like certain objects placed in between them on the table. At a club, deaf people prefer to have furniture like chairs arranged in a certain way. Yet, we never see much of that in the context of Gallaudet. We never see how teachers and classrooms arrange their desks or manage their classrooms.

When it comes to their education, we don't get much of anything from the students. One student named Alexa is revealed to be a psychology major. Another student named Daequan or DQ is revealed to be a physical education major. However, we don't get any clue what any of the other students are studying or what their majors are. My criticism is similar to my criticism of the recent documentary series, Cheer (2020), which was also about college students but was supremely lacking in any depiction of their academic lives. This series also is about college students but practically ignores any exploration of their academics in the slightest.

There are some depictions of the students' extracurricular activities. Some of which might be indicative of what these students might do beyond the bubble of Galluadet, but, mostly the series is all about what it's like inside this one specific bubble. Putting aside that they use ASL as a primary language, what's learned is that life inside this bubble is not unlike most bubbles, conforming to most high school cliques that we've all seen, from jocks to slackers to artistic types. The series doesn't really go beyond those stereotypes, except for the occasional, brief moments.

Daequan or DQ is the one who I feel is the one who benefits the most from those occasional, brief moments. He talks about the death of his mother and how his childhood being what it was motivated him to try to want a family of his own, and even to do something to achieve that, something he shouldn't have done. It allowed a peak into his character that was deeper than what we got from most of the others.

What is refreshing is the conversations that we see some of the other students have with their respective family members. Specifically, Alexa, the aforementioned psych major, has really honest conversations with her mother and father. We see another student named Rodney, a black football player, also have honest conversations with his family, but it's a wonder if that's endemic to people who use ASL or if that just happens to be these specific people. I like those honest conversations. I just wish it were for characters for whom I cared more or were developed more.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 30 mins. / 8 eps.

Available on Netflix.