What Stef finds out is that someone is using Callie’s identity to open credit cards and buy designer handbags with them and then sell the handbags on the black market. I laughed about that. Like really hard. About a handbag black market. And my best friend was like, “Wait, you don’t think that’s real? That’s real. The designer handbag black market is super real. What’s not real is magical parrots who solve mysteries.”
Stef explains to Callie about this “designer handbag black market” that is somehow more of “a real thing” than Tippi the Bird.
Callie spends her afternoon volunteering at the foster kids care center. She’s thrown a little bit when Sara shows up there. You remember Sara. She’s the girls Callie got moved away from the foster home she was living in because her foster brother, Liam, was using and abusing her, a thing Callie knew because he’d done the same to Callie when she was his foster sister. Callie told the truth about Liam raping her, and so Sara got pulled from his house. She hated Callie for it, remember. Raph agrees to deal with Sara so Callie doesn’t have to, and that’s really the least he can do after spending three hours telling Callie about how easy it is for foster kids to end up homeless after their identities are stolen.
But Callie notices that Sara has a designer handbag. There’s no way she could afford such a thing, so Callie pickpockets her designer wallet out of there and opens it up and finds like 20 credit cards with her name on them. Dammit, Sara!
Taylor and Jude hang out for a little while at school and are flawless, as per the usual.
Jude: It’s weird that Connor told his dad it was all my fault that he got shot when it was really all your fault that he got shot.
Taylor: I mean. It was kind of my dad’s fault since he’s the one who opened fire on us.
Jude: Yeah, I guess. I just don’t understand why he won’t text me back.
Taylor: My dad and I are going to see him today to apologize for shooting him. Do you want me to tell him you love him?
Jude: Yes. What? No! Just, uh, tell him I said, “What’s up … bro.”
Instead, Taylor goes to the hospital and gives Connor her phone, and the first thing he does it text Jude. It’s one of my favorite ever coming out scenes on TV because it’s just what the world is like now for so many teenagers. Jude wants to know why Connor pinned the whole getting shot thing on him, and Connor goes, “What? I didn’t. But I told my dad I’m gay.” Just so breezy. Just over text message. Just telling the boy you love that you told your dad that you’re a boy who loves boys. Jude smiles so sweetly and happily, because he doesn’t care about the label; he cares that what Connor is saying is, “I want to be with you.”
This is such an important storyline. The best eight-year-old boy in my life/the world is getting bullied mercilessly right now in his second grade classroom, and it’s breaking my heart into a zillion pieces. Because he’s working some stuff out in his young little brain. Because he wanted another boy in his class to be his Valentine. Because he also likes fingernail polish. Because he lives in rural Georgia and so many of the brainwashed Baptist kids in his class are horrible. And I’m watching Jude and Connor and I’m wishing the eight-year-old boy in my life was just a few years older, so he could watch them too. And what a world when he only needs to be a few years older than second grade to be able to see something of himself reflected on TV! With the exception of Ellen, I didn’t see my first lesbian character on television until I was in my mid-20s! What a time to be alive, y’all. Bradley Bredeweg and Peter Paige, I just want to hug you and buy you a drink (and hug you again)!
Mariana goes back to the bakery to see her grandparents, and to deliver Anna’s letter, which she has read now. Her grandma recognized her the first time; she looks just like Anna used to look. Mariana explains that she and Jesus have a wonderful home with wonderful moms and she’s a super genius and he’s going on a wrestling scholarship to Testosterone Academy maybe, but there’s a new sister on the way, and maybe her grandparents can adopt it and have a second chance at saving Mariana and Jesus. She thanks them for the Christmas presents. (Remember those signs that were their names that they got for Christmas but they didn’t know who sent them? They were from their grandpa. He has handmade signs of all his grandkids’ names hanging in his bakery.)
Stef is all femmed up and ready to buy a blackmarket handbag. She meets the seller in a parking lot, and the seller is Liam. Liam does not recognize Stef, but she sure as hell remembers him. She does the deal with the purse and then reveals herself as Callie Jacobs’ mom, and when Liam tries to run for it, Mike pops out from behind a fence with a gun and Liam is going to jail.
The next part is so good I was just crying and air-punching the whole time. Part of it was I was still very teary about Mariana and about Connor, and this really just sent me over the emotional edge (but like in a good way; like jumping into a pile of fresh-from-the-dryer towels). So Callie comes to the police station to confront Liam because he was the one behind her identity theft and Sarah was just his pawn. I know this isn’t how real police things work, but I don’t care. Stef lets Callie go into the interrogation room and look her rapist right in the face and explain how she busted him, how she got Sara to turn on him when they showed her that he’d stolen her identity and let another girl use it to do the same thing he was doing to Callie, and she wins and he loses and now he’s going to jail for a long, long time. This show is the antithesis of Glee in every good way. WHO RUN THE WORLD?
On the way home from the precinct, Stef swings by Anna’s new apartment to drop off her prenatal vitamins. It’s a scary, dangerous place, and so you know exactly what happens: Stef brings Anna home so they can adopt her too.
