Straight Bar City. Liam and Theo are having a nice bro-time at the bro-tastic pool table while Shane sips his cocktail and gamely handles the space invasion of a drunk girl fighting with her boyfriend.
Drunk girl: I never should’ve gotten his name tattooed on my back.
Shane: Uh, can I please see it? It would really turn my evening around.
The drunk girl’s boyfriend, Bubba, gets pissed at her for talking to Shane, and so Bubba saddles up to Shane:
Bubba: Are you hitting on my girl?
Shane: I’m guessing you’re Bubba. But don’t worry, she’s really not my type.
Bubba: Not your type? Are you a homo?
Well, that escalated quickly.
Shane: I am a homo. A Homo SAPIEN. What species are you?
Bubba: I’m a a heterosexual.
Shane: Are you? ‘Cause you’re standing awfully close. But you should know that I’m not into back hair, and I’m guessing you’ve got a lot.
Shane YOU ARE A HOMOSEXUAL AT A DIVE BAR WITH A YOUNG BLACK TEENAGE MALE IT WOULD BE IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO LAY LOW.
But before Bubba can ram his fist into Shane’s moisterized face, Liam dives in to pull Shane away, insisting it’s time to go, but then Theo punches Bubba in the face! Then Shane busts out some weird swordplay shit with his pool cue and then a dude breaks a bottle and WOW things are going REALLY WELL here
Amy and Karma are standing face to face. Will they kiss. They have kissed before. How hard could this be.
Karma and Amy move tentatively towards one another…
… their lips almost touch…
…and then Karma jumps away like a spider just crawled out of Amy’s mouth.
She’d like a truth, please.
Lauren’s got one:
Lauren: How was sex with Liam Booker?
Lisbeth: OOOOH! Good one.
Leila: I’m curious about that one myself.
Lauren is delighted. She is sitting on a cupcake licking her fingers.
Karma: Ummm… it was fine. Nothing to write home about?
Karma picks Lauren and Lauren picks a dare. IS ANYBODY GONNA MAKE OUT AT THIS SLEEPOVER.
Elsewhere on this dark and stormy night, the boys are returning from the bar. Liam’s face looks even worse than usual and Theo’s giving a play-by-play.
Liam’s giving Shane some major attitude, suggesting that Shane picked that fight out of jealousy of Theo, but Shane says that he actually likes Theo, ’cause Theo had his back. Then Liam dares to assert that Shane doesn’t have his back because:
Liam: You kept Amy’s secret at my expense. You basically chose her over me.
Shane: That’s not what happened.
Liam: That’s what it feels like.
Shane: Liam!
Liam: I’m done talking about it. Please go.
Theo is probably like “oh shit, DRAMZ.”
But seriously — I get where Liam is coming from, but I also don’t. Sometimes there is private gay stuff that’s just between gay people. It’s the Gay Code.
Back at the Bitches Who Brunch Girl Party, Lauren’s about to get her head shaved by Karma! This ‘Truth or Dare’ game is like twisted sorority rush or something.
Karma gets real close with the razor, but just can’t seal the deal, so she hands it to Amy, who’s eager to go in for the kill — but Lauren calls it off and submits to a truth, which just turns into a press conference with a bunch of reporters and no Press Secretary:
Karma: How about…were you born different than the rest of us?
Lauren: (to Karma) Are you in love with Liam Booker?
Amy: (to Lauren) Are you taking hormones?
Lauren: (to Amy) Have you ever masturbated thinking about Karma?
Amy: I don’t wanna play anymore.
Lisbeth: (to Leila) is green really your favorite color?
Thank you, somebody, for making me laugh this episode. CHRIST!
Back up in Amy’s nice-looking room, Amy says she wishes she’d never told Karma about her feelings ’cause now when their hands touch Karma pulls away like Amy has Ebola and that’s mean, you shouldn’t be mean to somebody just because they have Ebola.
It’s time to talk about the thing that nobody wants to talk about:
Amy: And that kiss? Admit it you’re grossed out that I’m attracted to you.
Karma: No, I’m not. I swear I’m not grossed out. I’m flattered.
Amy: Yeah, right.
Karma: I just wish that I felt the same way. I know that it’s painful for you and I don’t wanna make it worse. I can’t stop being irresistible.
Karma is, it seems, trying her hardest, and also seems genuinely fine with it, although it’s pretty much impossible to talk a girl you’ve rejected out of feeling weird about it. She wants to know if there are new rules and if so, what are the rules? Like can they sleep in the same bed? Because she’ll sleep on the couch but she’d really rather not sleep on the couch but it’s cool if she has to.
Then they get cute and start tickling each other on the bed like ol’ chums. See: FRIENDSHIP IS FOREVER! Cuddles!
Cut to Shane and Pablo having a heart-to-heart on a split-screen.
Shane: Amy was really struggling and she needed me. Liam’s straight, he doesn’t understand how hard it is when you’re figuring out your sexuality.
Pablo: Have you thought about things from Liam’s point of view?
Shane: I don’t wanna understand things from Liam’s point of view, I wanna bitch to my boyfriend!
Pablo is too nice and fair so they break up. The end!
In the clear cool light of morning, Amy apologizes to Lauren for inviting her just to make things less awkward and for saying that she felt sorry for her. Lauren says that it’s okay, Amy is the one she should feel sorry for because…
Lauren: I think you slept with Liam, and now you have to live with the crushing guilt.
Lauren explains that she found the box, obviously. Amy’s like, oh fuck I FORGOT TO RECYCLE.
Amy: Well, I don’t pity you. Actually, I feel closer to you. That’s what happens when you let people in.
Lauren: I should write that down. “Life Lessons From My Sexually Confused Stepsister.”
But before shit can get EVEN SASSIER, Leila and Lisbeth bound downstairs, having detected the intoxicating scent of Eggo Waffles, which must mean that Lauren’s toaster doesn’t smell like something she toasted two months ago that won’t leave its tiny crevice in some backroom of the toaster and come into the light.
Lauren takes a deep breath, and goes for it — she’s gonna tell her friends the truth.
Lauren: I have a medical condition called androgyne insensitivity syndrome and the side effects include good hair, great skin and no body odor.
Lisbeth: Oh, cool, can we get it too?
Pause. Moment of truth. Is she ready to take the plunge? She is:
Lauren: It’s not something you can get. I was born with XY chromosomes but I developed as a female. Okay? The pills I take are estrogen because my body doesn’t make any. There.
Leila wants to know if she can have kids, and Lauren shakes her head no. Lisbeth and Leila hug her and I ALMOST CRY. See Lauren, your friends love you just the way you are. This is a blue oasis in the red state of Texas!
Lisbeth: If it makes you feel better, I have eczema.
Lauren: This is not group sharing, Lisbeth.
Aw. And that, my friends, is the end!
This is what’s gonna happen next time:
http://youtu.be/mXH0SzARAcc
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What is worse, that I think Lauren is my fave or that I could PAINFULLY relate to the Amy and Karma situation from this episode?
Ditto!
Ugh, so close with that kiss!
I saw on tumblr someone being all “Karma’s tshirt is covered in arrows and Amy’s is covered in holes this is significant” and now I want to look for symbolism in EVERY costume (obviously the #karmy tshirts are kind of…obvious.)
Oh man, I remember reading into the outfit coordinations with Quinn and Rachel on Glee………………..siiiiiigh those were the days.
Amy’s trying-not-to-cry face is the actual worst. It’s like my heart time travels back to high school and I feel all of those hopeless-crush-on-my-best-friend feelings all over again.
Ugh those feels were the worst feels. #NeverAgain
when will this show not be boring
I really like this series, but honestly my favorite thing about it is reading your captions! Perfect as always
This recap is hilarious and I lol at this show/enjoy it. It kind of hurts my insides to relive all this shit from high school/crushing on the friend though??
Amy’s overalls and striped shirt outfit at the beginning was very cute and awesomely gay. And her expression when Karma took off her shirt was spot-on perfection.
I though it was kinda eerie just how closely the characters and the plotlines from Faking It mirror those of the Twilight series. And I loved how they got all meta and snuck in an OTP mention and the #Karmy shirts.
Riese, I was thinking the same thing too when I saw Lisbeth and Leila’s faces with Karmy’s almost-kiss dare! Except I can never seem to remember the term GPOY, so I was thinking “My reaction exactly!”.
When Lisbeth and Leila hugged Lauren at the end, my heart just melted and I “AWWWWWED” as if I had just seen an adorable fuzzy baby animal.
Also, once I was at the bridal or baby shower of a close family friend, and my friends and their cousins played Truth or Dare, and they totally Dared me to also drink a greenish-brown glass of a gross combo of random stuff, but I wouldn’t do it. I don’t remember what the punishment for that was (I was called a chicken and I had to answer two Truths instead?) but I do remember that Truths were considered easy and Dares were the ones that everyone was scared to do (interesting how it seems to flip as you get older – maybe?).
Has anyone ever done a Truth and just lied if you didn’t want to have people know the real answer to the question? It seems so easy to do and so obvious now that I say it, so I wonder why it seems like nobody does this when they totally should?
I tried reading the After Ellen recaps, and I can’t anymore. I get more out of these recaps, and feel that over in After Ellen they are looking for what to nitpick on purpose.
That being said, I my sleepovers in highschool had more UNO and drinking! We always got bored with truth or dare…
I feel like sometimes the lies reveal just as much as a truth would? like if nobody would believe your lie than you may as well tell the truth. i think the risk of lying is that IF EVERYBODY LIES, THE WHOLE MOVEMENT SINKS
Yeah, the ideal way for it to work is that you only resort to lying for the few big secrets that you absolutely don’t want anyone else to know (Lauren, Amy, and Karma are the perfect example of this) and only when you don’t want to be dared to do something like drink inedible green goo liquid. It’s like, you’re not hooked up to a lie detector machine, if you don’t want someone to know your deepest darkest secret then you can just make something up, so people will believe it and nobody would even know the difference, rather than feeling cornered to talk about that one thing you’re totally not ready to share.
I tried reading the After Ellen recaps, and I can’t anymore. I get more out of these recaps, and feel that over in After Ellen they are looking for what to nitpick on purpose.
That being said, I my sleepovers in highschool had more UNO and drinking! We always got bored with truth or dare…
AfterEllen is always the worst. Yesterday someone sent me a link to a recent and thoroughly disturbing piece over there about femmes that made me want to tear my hair out.
I love this show, but it quickly went straight (pardon the pun) back to being boring after the first episode of the season. The Karma/Liam tension is mundane and overly drawn-out and literally nobody cares about them, the end.
Side note: it really annoys me that the one Asian person in the show is a ditzy prop rather than an actual character. When am I going to get racial and queer representation in the same show? What do I have to sacrifice to Satan??
How about that other MTV show, Underemployed? It has an Asian lesbian as the lead.
http://develop.autostraddle.com/queer-lead-sophia-swanson-makes-mtvs-underemployed-worth-watching-151824/
(it was cancelled though and her role faded as the season went on)
Sacrifice all the things to Satan.
I tried watching this show, it’s boring. I watch Popular if there is ever a need for me to watch a show with a majority white cast set in a hyper-reality of high school life. I did the same thing when I got bored with Glee.
and once again, i must add yet another lesbian-themed show to my I WANTED YOU TO BE GOOD BUT YOU ARE SO NOT GOOD list. the list groweth.
JESUS joseph and mary, I cannot watch this show without wanting to straight up immolate Liam. What an entitled douche.
“Oh hey, I’m mad at you because you didn’t totally OUT THIS GIRL to me while she was in the process of discovering her sexuality”
When, ironically, Shane totally did? I mean, they all started the season under the impression that Amy totally loved Karma – and that never mattered to him…ever.
On the one hand, outing an intersex person during Truth or Dare is not acceptable even if she’s being a jerk.
On the other hand, Karma’s general kindness to Amy is actually heartwarming in that it indicates that straight girls have come a long way since I was in Amy’s position.
I have to say though I am getting bored with the lack of girls making out, I am happy that though Karma doesn’t really know how to handle Amy being in love with her, she tells her straight up she isn’t into her like that, and doesn’t string her along.
Also, if we could have more captions of Amy bragging about her mad sex skillz, that would make my day.
Caption game is en pointe today, Riese. Excellent work, as usual :)
“KARMA STRUGGLES TO FIGHT OFF THE GHOST TRYING TO EAT HER HEAD”
And this is when I died from the brilliance. Riese, these captions were PHENOMENAL, good job.
I kinda feel like this episode was just a giant waste of time? I mean, I love Lauren exponentially with each episode, but the whole side-plot with the dudes was totally boring and unnecessary, and the sleepover scene seemed awkwardly timed (like it seemed that the episode stopped a good 5 minutes too early). Hoping that Amy gets some makeout time next episode…sigh.
In case anyone on this site didn’t already know: when you fall in love with your straight best friend and then tell her and then you stay friends even though you’re crawling out of your skin to be around her….. in real life it’s not resolved in one damn chat at the end of an episode. And the hardest part is not any one particular moment, it’s the sum of a long long long timeline of getting over it.
Still, for all the people bored with this show (and trust me I get really bored at points too), I was invested in this plotline because I lived it at one point. However I agree that I want all this stuff to be over and Amy to just go date some queer girls already.
P.S. In case anyone cares, we’re still besties years and years later. It can be done!