“The End of the Beginning”
Morning kitchen drama at the Adams Foster house again! If you guys aren’t going to honor such a gorgeous table, you need to give it to me. You can eat off the floor! (Except you, Jude.) (And you, Mariana.)
Brandon cannot believe that his moms would ask him to sleep on the couch so a nearly homeless pregnant woman who happens to be the birth mother of two of his siblings can sleep in a bed. Like what if he wants to shine his diamond shoes in the middle of the night? Where’s he supposed to do that, huh? The living room?! (Brandon is an entitled wanker a lot of the time, but I actually kind of love that because it’s exactly what the only straight white guy living in this house would act like, especially if he was a teenager. Like truly, completely oblivious to the fact that there are worse things in the world than having to decide which kind of rockstar to be.) Anna doesn’t want scrambled eggs. Lena doesn’t want Anna talking to Mariana about The Way Things Used to Be. Callie doesn’t want to spend the weekend with the Quinns. Stef doesn’t want Callie to tell Robert about her emancipation.
Jude uses the commotion to slide on out of there and stare at himself in the mirror and summon the courage to be a hero today. He takes a deep, steadying breath; plucks his lucky blue nail polish out of the pile; and prepares for battle. Next thing you know, he shows up at the hospital with his nails painted blue, and the music is like, “And this is how the patriarchy is slain! On the wings of a unicorn!” He tells the nurse at the check-in desk that he is Connor’s cousin, but when Connor’s dad appears in the hallway, he grows ten feet tall right there in front of him and says, “I want to see my friend, and I’m not leaving until I do.”
And so Connor’s dad lets him in.
Connor smiles like Christmas when Jude walks in, clasps his hands, says, “What’s this?” Jude looks down at his blue fingernails and says, “War paint.” And then he crawls into bed with Connor, and that is how Tumblr died.
You think that’s that, but that is not that, because Connor’s dad will not let it go. He calls Lena and tells her to come get her son and also he’s pulling Connor out of Homo Beach High School like right this second. Lena does go to the hospital, and she’s like, “I mean, you can lock Jude out, fine, but what are you going to do, put Connor in a tower and stand outside with a baseball bat, swinging at any boy who comes his way? And even if you do that, you’ve heard of the internet, right?” Connor’s dad is fine with Lena being gay. Fine with Jude being gay. Fine with Ellen being gay and Neil Patrick Harris being gay and whoever else who isn’t his kid. Michael Sam and Jason Collins and Robin Roberts and Brittney Griner and Portia and Rosie and Anderson Cooper. He’s just not fine with Connor being gay.
What a sad, poignant, very realistic thing.
On the hospital floor.
Lena:Â I’m so sorry, Jude. Losing friends is the hardest thing.
Jude: He’s not my friend.
Lena: Oh, honey.
Jude: There were no girls in that tent. It was me and Connor in that tent. We kissed then, and we kissed later. We’re not friends.
And then he cries and I cry and you cry and Lena cries and the angels weep a million tears when they realize even they are not as perfect as Jude Adams Foster.
Have there ever been any second generation gay kids on TV? I don’t think so. This whole season of TV is so good I want to frame it and stare at it adoringly every day forever.
Mariana spends the morning back at the bakery, trying to explain to her grandparents how she has changed her mind and they should not adopt Anna’s baby after all, because Stef and Lena want to adopt it. And it’s all good because Stef and Lena are the best and the grandparents can come visit whenever they want and Mariana will teach the baby to code and dance, and Jesus can teach the baby to wrestle and not get tattoos from random men on the street, and Jude can teach it to see the colors of other people’s souls, and Callie can teach it what it means to be a true Gryffindor, and Brandon can bitch about how much space it is taking up. The grandparents give Mariana a thumbs up, but when she leaves, they’re like, “Man, how many of our grandkids are these women going to get?!?” Mike shows up and asks them to sign a White House petition to make President Obama stop letting lesbians have everything they want.
Mariana spends the afternoon getting ready for the dance competition. Rigging up the costumes with glow sticks and working on the program she coded to make the lights in the auditorium go berserk. Anna feels very proud of her and very glad she ended up with Stef and Lena. And then Mariana trips on Jesus’ skateboard and the whole day goes to shit. Luckily, Emma arrives just as Mariana is falling, so Jesus gets a double hate-glare from the two of them. Emma and Mariana worry about how they’re only going to have five dancers because Mariana’s foot is broken or sprained or something. Whatever is happening, she can’t walk on it.
And then! Her grandparents show up at the door looking for Anna.
Good grief, talk about a Callie-kind-of-day!
Speaking of which, Callie is at Robert’s house, and so is everyone else in Robert’s family. Sophia is home, and she has been diagnosed with a personality disorder. She is so shy and so sweet around Callie. She’s wearing the hair thing Callie bought for her, and explaining about her chemical imbalance and how therapy and meds are going to help her, and she’s right. Callie is actually really glad to see her, because Callie is good at forgiving people, which is one of the best traits you can have as a human being in this world.
