The Fosters Episode 311 Recap: The Circle of Life

At Anchor Beach, Lena tells Monty that she shouldn’t quit her job because she is a good principal, but they’re just going to be co-workers and not friends, okay? Monty says okay. She’s relived! (She shouldn’t be! She’s not going to fall out of love with Lena while staring at Lena’s next level beautiful face and listening to Lena weave her empathy and intellect around every problem, every day! It’s not like you’re going to stop craving ice cream when you live inside an ice cream factory!)

Stef said you can keep your job, but if you say the thing about our lips touching again, she’ll murder you.

Was she cool with my Buzzfeed list idea: 15 things that are swoony in movies but you should never do in real life?

AJ’s grandma died. I loved AJ’s grandma. AJ loved her too, and so did his brother. Mike makes a good decision followed immediately by a horrible decision, a genetic trait he apparently passed on to his son. He says he’s going to pay for AJ’s grandma’s funeral. And then he calls down to the precinct and tells them not to run the prints on the pen that he knows will match the prints on the SUV that smashed into half the Adams Fosters in the season two finale. Because those prints belong to AJ’s brother, and AJ will run away when he find out Mike is the one who’s helping prosecute him.

How long does it take Stef to find this out? Eleven seconds, and boy, she is livid. Her head is doing that controlled vibration thing that lets you know it’s about to ricochet off her head like a bottle rocket and her eyeballs are bugging out of her face. She confronts Mike about it and he shrugs. Stef agrees to quell her Mama Bearness until after AJ’s grandma’s funeral, but when that’s done, she’s going to deal out some justice.

I think, when you really pull it apart, Piper is the actual hero of Orange is the New Black.

After work and school, Stef and Lena and Callie meet with the foster care advocate, who really is ready to just drop a fifty grand in Callie’s lap. All she’s asking for, in return, is unrestricted access to the app’s database of foster care children, including their names, addresses, social security numbers, known associates, hair color, internet browsing history, phone records, transcripts of all their incoming and outgoing text messages, DNA samples and fingerprints, and shoe size. NBD. Lena is mostly worried how Callie is going to manage the workload of her senior year of high school while running this blue chip tech company. Callie is mostly worried about the kid who told her about the privitization of foster care. (The advocate just needs his info, that’s all, and she’ll take care of that little snitch him right away.) Stef is mostly worried about where her mother is creeping off to again.

Grandma Annie’s got herself a lover! He drives his RV right up to the curb and she hops in and they get their sexual healing on. Stef marches to the RV and bangs on the door and goes, “Police, open up!” Which is actually Grandma Annie’s hangup about introducing him to the family. Stef assumes it’s homophobia (Grandma Annie: “I am so sure I would let a homophobe near my waterlily!”), but actually it’s anarchy. Rob hates the government and police officer especially, but he’s a real stallion in the sack, so she’s seeing where it goes.

No, I did NOT order a subscription to Finger Banging Weekly.

What? You both seem so tense lately.

Lena’s less worried about Grandma Annie’s boyfriend and more worried about what they’re going to do with Jesus. They swoop into his bedroom in full tag-team formation and he knows he’s doomed. He’s not flunking out of school like he told Mariana. He’s not homesick like he told his moms. The wrestlers at Wrestling Academy are on steroids and he tried them once or twice, but once he got a whole new face and body and voice and mannerisms from doing them, he decided to stop. And now he can’t go back.

The problem is: There’s a waiting list for Anchor Beach and Jesus isn’t on it.

The solution is: Monty wants to make Lena the happiest person on this or any planet, so she cheats the system and gets Jesus in.

One other problem: Callie knows that “foster care advocate” is a lying capitalist from Wall Street, USA.

One other solution: She and Mariana trick her into registering for Fost and Found and now all her secret information is at Mariana’s brilliant fingertips.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love it when the third act is just a big party! Everything happens at big parties! It’s why Gossip Girl and Shakespeare loved them so much! Grandma Shirley takes everyone out to dinner and all the plotlines comes to a head. Brandon’s got an invite to Julliard, Callie and AJ are flirting again and going to an indie comic con together, Annie made Stef an appointment for another mammogram (all she needed to obtain Stef’s medical records was her mother’s maiden name), Mariana’s girlfriends are feuding over her, and Jude is deeply deeply depressed about Connor.

Guess who’s luck swings back to Pot O’ Gold levels first? One guess, go on. DING DING DING! It’s Brandon! He gets a job as a teenage piano player in a bar, which will obviously net him enough money to cover his tuition to Juilliard.

I’d marry the shit out of you all over again, you know it?

I do.

Okay, let’s sprint that last hundred meters and set up the season. One of Marianna’s girlfriends (Lexi) has decided to run against her for student council. The kid who chided Callie for not fixing the world in one fell swoop was dimed out to the foster system and is headed to a group home. Ty bullies AJ into skipping town with him, before their grandma’s funeral. Jude is busted up about Connor, but he’s still leaving, even though Connor’s dad took Lena’s advice to try to help Connor not give up on him. Jesus left a steroid scandal behind. Callie is responsible for fixing foster care. And poor old Brandon has lost one of his diamond shoes.

Stef and Lena and Grandma Annie go to the doctor with Stef for a second opinion about her mammogram and she has stage zero cancer. I hope they’re able to stop it before it metastasizes to stage Chaiken cancer. Life expectancy is only about 45 minutes after it gets to that point.