Also, at school: Brandon’s music teacher tells him his classical music camp gave away his no-questions-asked spot, but he can still audition if he wants. And Lena peeps Mariana’s new literature teacher lulling everyone to sleep.
At the courthouse, the judge is pretty annoyed that Callie isn’t just adopted already by someone, but Robert pipes right up and tells him not to be too hard on these hysterical womenfolk and their indecisive ways. Menses, you know. He also offers up Callie to Stef and Lena for the rest of their 180 days and the judge is so taken with his selflessness, whiteness, and manness that he agrees and says Callie also needs to start spending every other weekend with her father so she can have good influences in her life.
Lena has a real hard time believing Robert just came in there of his own volition with Callie’s best interests at heart. Stef is all, “But that surprising, out-of-the-blue-clear-sky thing that I had nothing to do with has bought us some time for the next phase of my plan! Er, I mean the first phase of my plan! We have to get Callie emancipated!” Which means Callie gets to choose where Callie gets to live and anyone can adopt her if she says so and it’s a whole other court system so Robert doesn’t even have to know it’s happening, but it takes 179 days, so they’ve got to get started right now.
Lena doesn’t have time to process the depth or breadth of Stef’s scheming because they bump into Monty on the catwalk. Stef invites her to dinner this very night, and Monty gladly accepts. Lena is not too keen on it but she smiles politely anyway.
Dance tryouts! One of the funniest things ever! Emma shows up and crushes it because Emma can do any damn thing she wants and I hope she is Mariana’s vice-president (of the entire United States) one day. Callie shows up too, just to be supportive, but Mariana doesn’t know that. She thinks Callie is for real and she also thinks Callie is the best dancer in the whole world. It’s so sweet and ridiculous! She’s so blinded by love-eyes! Callie dances like left shark and Tia tries to approach it with this leading statement like, “And Callie was…” And Mariana legit goes, “AWESOME!” Tia’s face. She whips her head around like, “Whaaaaaa.” But Mariana doesn’t even see her; she’s rushing over to hug Callie and welcome her to the team.
I love that they’re making Mariana this unapologetic feminist. She’s like the face of Tumblr right now. “We’re every woman!” she proclaims during the tryouts.
Brandon is over at his dad’s practicing his classical music when Ana comes in crying. She apologizes for a lot of things, including taking his money when he bribed her to change her story about the night when Stef got shot by her boyfriend. She says she’s trying to make amends, including sending out these letters to the people she’s wronged, but some of them keep coming back. Brandon tells her not to worry about paying him, that Mike paid him for that and for his baseball and would honestly pay Brandon for a bucket of water in a hurricane if Brandon asked him to.
When Connor arrives at the Jonnor Bench of Feelings and Covert Flirting that afternoon, Connor is making out with Daria. He blows her off to go study and play footise with Jude, during which:
Jude: So, um, is Daria a thing that’s going to keep happening?
Connor: I mean, I guess? As long as my dad thinks I want to sproink her, I can keep, you know, hanging out with you.
Jude: Hanging out.
Connor: Yeah, like the four of us can do this very night. The girls want to sneak out and toilet paper someone’s house.
Jesus barges in and tells them to scram so he can do his homework. I’d be mad at him if he was anyone else but I also have ADD and cannot concentrate when other people near me are blinking. Connor and Jude hit up every nook and cranny of the house but they are all occupied with other teenagers, and also with moms preparing to feed the principal dinner at the fancy table. Jude walks Connor outside and Connor is like, “Just sneak out tonight and come do TPing with us and afterwards we can hang out in the dark by ourselves.” Jude’s never done a single wrong thing in his life, never even jaywalked probably, but dang man, he sure does like kissing Connor.
Stef and Lena explain Stef’s plan to get her adopted. Step one: She has to get off probation. Step two: She has to get a full-time job. Step three: She has to save up enough money to live on her own with her minimum wage-paying full-time job. Step four: She has to keep going to school full-time also. Step five: She has to keep her grades up. Step six: She has to keep seeing Robert every day for a third of the month. Step seven: She has to not tell him any of this stuff. Step eight: She has to not commit any more felonies, accidental or otherwise, to keep her friends out of trouble. Step nine: She has to get a judge to agree that she can be emancipated.  Step ten: Stef and Lena adopt her! Easy peasy!
