Hey there, spider monkeys! Below are two recaps of The Fosters to close out a dang remarkable second season. Thanks for your patience as I’ve been juggling all these zillion recaps this year.
“Not that Kind of Girl”
Previously on The Fosters, Jude and Connor decided the best way to make out with each other was to sneak out of their houses in the middle of the night, meet up with some girls, break into one of the girls’ kitchens, steal some liquor, drink the liquor, and have a foursome. Obviously their plan ended in someone getting shot. Stef had a similarly unassaible plan for getting Callie adopted, which was: Make her go to school full time, work full time, volunteer full time, save enough money to live on her own, get off probation, get a judge to grant her emancipation from Robert Warbucks, and then they’d adopt her. No one got shot because of Stef’s plan, though. Well. This time.
But can he still father children with women, because if not, pull the plug.
It was Connor who was shot! But luckily, he was only shot in the foot and it’s not going to ruin his major league baseball career, which is his dad’s main worry about Connor’s life after the whole gay thing. But Connor refuses to ease his dad’s mind; he straight up says he only went to such extremes because he wanted to see Jude and his dad won’t let him see Jude, especially at night time when there’s no lights on or parents around. So, Connor’s dad pokes his head out to the waiting room, where Lena and Stef and Jude hanging out, to tell Lena that Connor told him that it was Jude’s idea for Connor to get shot.
Jack Daniels, Jude? Really? We’re going to WhiskeyFest next summer. You’ve got a lot to learn.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day because you haven’t eaten or gotten passive aggressive with your wife in ten hours. Lena has some eggs and snipes at Stef about how two can keep a secret if one of them is dead and so go ahead and figure out how to get Callie adopted all by herself, she guesses. But Stef doesn’t have time to hear that. She’s got to arrange driving lessons for Mariana and Jesus, and get Mariana a ride to the dentist, and keep everyone from being monsters to Jude just because he committed one tiny crime.
Brandon: I do not have time to take my sister to the doctor, okay? I have really important and emotionally exhausting things to do like maybe sell another piece of sports equipment on Ebay.
Mariana: It’s cool. I don’t really need lessons anyway.
Jesus: You failed your written test!
Mariana: The answers were too obvious. Only an simpleton would pass that test on the first try.
Is it possible to do a one-for-one trade with Jesus and Callie?
Maybe.
It’s a rough morning for Callie. For one thing, Jude has exactly zero time and patience for her lectures about not doing dumb stuff just because the people around you are doing dumb stuff. Kidnapping, is one example, just off the top of my head, of why Callie should not be giving advice on this subject. And then Callie meets with the lawyer Stef and Lena hired and finds out someone has stolen her identity and racked up a zillion dollars worth of credit card charges. That sucks, no matter what, but it super-sucks when you’ve only got one single afternoon to get yourself emancipated. What can they do? Nothing. No one can do anything. Stef’s got it all under control and she’ll handle it all by herself and so no one talk to her or try to help shoulder her burdens because she’s got this and it’s all good and she’ll fix everything and no one needs to worry and she’ll just take care of every single detail on her very own and it’s just fine.
Oh, Stef. I feel you, but STOP.
Everything’s cool. There’s room for two Holy Ghosts between us.
At school, Lena and Monty are best friends. Dangerously so. They laugh when one of the science teachers brings Monty some coffee, because no one ever brings Lena some coffee, and Monty says, “Aren’t you a tea-drinker?” Which is code for something gay, and ooooh, y’all better be careful! Y’all need to take a time out! Y’all need to work over Skype for a while! (Monty, though, I have a friend I want to hook you up with. You guys would be perfect for each other. It’s not like there’s a road block on your path toward inevitable lesbianism, but Lena is a wrong turn! Sometimes the obvious answers are the right ones!)
Mariana and Tia’s dance team is the shiz. Their dystopian robot theme is unstoppable! And Emma is super feeling it until the wrestling team arrives in the gym and start talking whatever League Of Their Own male gaze malarkey about who knew Emma was a girl?! That hurts Emma’s feelings, but it also freaks her out, because those dudes don’t objectify her when she’s wearing a singlet and beating their asses, but the slippery slope of men taking away her agency starts with men viewing her as their own personal spectacle. And the horror of that reality starts choking her even harder when she and Mariana get relegated to the marketing team for the upcoming STEM competition, even though she’s hands-down the best coder in the whole club.
Hey girl, let’s dismantle the patriarchy.
And then let’s do some rhetorical analysis of your bedroom.
Emma finally cracks when Mariana tells her to do more sexy hip stuff when she dances. She says she doesn’t want to do more sexy hip stuff because she doesn’t want to be objectified because she doesn’t want to spend her life fetching coffee when she’s smart enough to be a neurosurgeon. And so she quits. But you know Mariana talks her right back onto the team, like, “We are the future. We exist on a TV show with a married interracial lesbian couple and the youngest gay guy couple in history. Yeah, in some ways it’s still a Peggy Olson world, but we’re Beyonce girls. Come on now, girl. Who run the world?”
(This is a good story! This season of The Fosters is remarkably unapologetic with its feminism!)
After school, Brandon does take Mariana driving. She freaks him out because she’s like ZOOOOM! BREAKS! ZOOOOOM! BREAKS! He finally tells her they need to go home so he can take a Xanax and lie down, but she says she only even asked him to give her the driving lesson so she could coerce him into taking her to the bakery her grandparents own so she can meet them and deliver Anna’s letter to them.
We’re doing a membership drive for the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.
Spew?
Her grandpa — who also was Betty Suarez’s grandpa on Ugly Betty; I’d recognize those enviable eyelashes anywhere! — knows who Mariana is right away, but he doesn’t want to talk to her and he doesn’t want to read Anna’s letter and he certainly doesn’t want Mariana to meet his wife. But she comes scooting out of the kitchen anyway, and Mariana’s grandpa is like, “Um, these riff-raff who are no relation to us were looking for jobs but I told them to scram.” Marian’s grandma tells them to come back in the winter, when people in California actually eat carbs.
When Mariana gets home, Jesus accosts her about going driving without him and she’s like, “Don’t be a Brandon, dude. I had actual traumatic shit to do today.”
Fine, Mike, you can have Jesus.
Stef spends her whole day trying to crack Callie’s identity theft case, calling all sorts of credit card companies and yelling about the time-sensitive nature of her “investigation” and how she’s going to set someone on fire if they don’t send her what she needs right goddamn now. The whole time she’s hollering on the phone, Mike’s lurking around in the background like a regular old Buster Bluth with this bottle of prenatal vitamins he wants Stef to take to Anna at her new apartment because she moved out of Mike’s apartment because Mike wouldn’t stop whining about how he never gets to have anyone’s extra babies.
Pages: 1 2 3 4See entire article on one page
YAY! I was waiting for this. It was definitely worth it!
Fav line might be “Mike wouldn’t stop whining about how he never gets to have anyone’s extra babies.”
Also, “Robert doesn’t find this ominous in any way because people who own actual yachts hear things differently than the rest of humanity.”
And honorable mention to all of the photo captions and the listing of various gifts that each would teach to the baby.
The finale had of the feels with the Jude & Connor stuff. I cant wait to see their lil romance blossom.
:)
❤
Yasssss
The Buster Bluth reference was perfect
Man, can YOU write season three!? Because that just all sounds lovely.
I love these recaps so much because it is so clear how much this show means to you. You write about it with such immense love (and silliness) and I can’t wait for season 3!
“Don’t be a Brandon.” I’m going to cross stitch that on to a pillow.
Thank you for the double recap! I laughed hysterically and also cried, and it was just what I needed.
I do believe this summary might possibly be better than the actual episodes. Fantastic job!
i would love it if lena and stef had other lesbian couples to talk to, awesome recap!!
It cracks me up to no end how merciless you are with poor, put-upon Brandon! :-D
The #Jonnor scene in the hospital room actually comes after the part where Lena is comforting a crying Jude and then Lena tells Connor’s dad what’s what. This is significant because it holds out the hope that Connor’s dad might at some point not be a total douchecanoe about the fact that Connor has an incurable case of Jude Fever.
Okay, I hope I’m not stepping on any toes by doing this, and I’m pretty sure I’m not breaking any rules, so here it goes. Quite a few fans of the show have didn’t like it that what transpired between Jude and Connor in the hospital room happened off-scene. It occurred to me that perhaps the producers of the show were faced with time-constraints and just decided to leave the filling in of those details to enterprising gay male fan-fic authors such as yours truly. So feel free to let me know what you think either here or in a guest-review on the linked site, even if you think it’s garbage and I shouldn’t have posted a link to it here:
The Conversation In The Hospital Room by Venuspluto67
It was predictable that Robert would give in when the battle went too far (or he would get run under by a car.) I hope they’ve a storyline for them next season – I liked his guilt and their relationship. And, Sophia being Callie’s mini-me amazes me probably too much.
Mariana is the best, I wish she would start dating Emma – but, I guess the show has maxed out their gay quota (or – “same story” quota.)
I re-watched the Lena & Monty kissing scene, and the kiss is actually 3 seconds (hmr, counting the duration of kisses is usually a sign of shipping.) So, my guess is that storyline is far from over – but will probably end up with Monty imploding. I think Monty is great (aside from the kissing of married people) and Stef not so much, I really didn’t like her railroading Callie.
One of the people, who were in the car, tweeted on twitter that they won’t be returning next season, whether she or he is the fatality or not, I don’t know – but, next season will be sad (too sad if it is Mariana who dies, really.)
Thanks for the recaps, Heather :)
Next season I really want to see some drama related to the very complex chore chart depicted in the opening credits.
Going on a tangent here, but is it just me or is Tia a total babe? I lowkey ship her and Marianna
I 100% thought Tia & Mariana were gonna hook up when she first showed up.
also “and Brandon can bitch about how much space it is taking up” after all the heartwarming stuff everyone else will do with the baby was easily the best line of the article. I laughed.
I have become obsessed with the Fosters, marathoned it on youtube in 2min clips. I just wish I’d been able to watch it when I was 14! It makes me so happy that this kind of show is what is out there now for the next lot coming up.
Anyone know if it’ll be on DVD in the UK?
How I imagine each of Jude’s siblings reacting to learning of the official genesis of #Jonnor:
Callie: “Jude, are you sure you aren’t filling in the blanks with your imagination here? This sounds kind of hard to believe.”
Mariana: “Oh Jude, that’s *great*! You two are *such* an adorable couple! I’m so freaking *happy* for you both!”
Jesus: “Okay, if I come back on vacation from boarding school and walk into my room to find you two making out, I have to tell you that I’m going to royally freak.”
Brandon: “That’s great, I’m happy for you. Now back to talking about me.”
I actually find myself dreading the fatality in the car crash being Jesus or Mariana because I really don’t want Jude to be sad anymore right now.
“What’s not real is magical parrots who solve mysteries.” – Former Best Friend, I hope!
I’m like 99% sure it’s the other driver who’s dead. It won’t be Ana because she just decided to keep the baby and we already lost a baby this season. It won’t be Mariana cuz she just broke her ankle (let’s be real, that’s how TV logic works). If it’s any one of our characters it would be Jesus seeing as the truck slammed right into him, but he just got into bording school and I don’t think the writers would risk losing all the teenage girls who show up to see his abs (my little cousin being one of them.)
I think you may be right. They’re just not going to kill off Mariana, period-end-of-sentence. And having a baby get killed right before it was going to be born (which would be very likely if Ana were killed) is just, well, “Law and Order”-worthy. And I would hate to see Jesus die, even if the actor who portrays him is a habitual drunk-driving jerk-face. (I’ve also heard scuttlebutt that Jake Austin doesn’t really get along very well with his co-stars.)
If the other driver is killed, that driver’s family seeking legal retribution would be plenty of the sort of drama-fodder on which “The Fosters” apparently thrives!
And here’s another thought: If that scuttlebutt about JA not getting along with everybody else is true and Jesus is toast as of the end of the finale, it would be difficult not to conclude that the producers decided to kill off his character so that they could totally wash their hands of his sorry, drunk-driving, diva ass.
But I still don’t want them to end poor, silly Jesus. :-)
I know I really shouldn’t ship this, but I’m kind of hoping for more to happen between Lena and Monty. Not in a “I hope they get married” way, just in a “this is really hot to watch like Bette and the carpenter” way. I’ll see myself out.
omggggg …. i ship monty and lena too. i love stef, i truly do, i feel like I am so much like Stef and Lena is so much like my girlfriend. but there’s been so little lesbian action this season (thanks to the one million foster kids) that i find the Monty-Lena romance/friendship cute. I think Monty really does care for Lena and if the Fosters were’t married, I would totally be up for Monty-Lena as end game. now i’ll see myself out too :)
SOMEONE ELSE WHO LOVED BETTE AND THE CARPENTER. I cringe too much to notice the hot with Monty/Lena but maybe I just need to, er, watch their scenes again? I just love Stef/Lena so much that everytime I see Monty I hiss like a cat.
Heather you are a national treasure
Finally watched the season, and these recaps are the best ever. Can’t wait to watch Season 3!