The Fosters has quickly
become one of my favorite new TV shows since it first premiered a little over a
month ago. Honestly, I didn’t realize that the show was going to be about a
lesbian couple and their family consisting of biological children and adopted
children until about a week before the series premiere aired when I looked at
the show’s Wikipedia page. Before that, based on the promos for some reason I
thought it was going to be about kids that were in the foster care system who
were all living in various foster families and were friends with each other
because they grew up in the foster care system together.
This show has definitely turned
out to be much better than I had originally been expecting it would be. I’d
also like to mention that I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Peter
Paige is one of the co-creators of the show. I had always known him primarily
for his acting on the TV shows Queer as Folk, Grey’s Anatomy and Will &
Grace, which is the first thing I had ever seen him in. One of the reasons why
I was kind of skeptical about whether or not the show would be very good was
due to the fact that Peter Paige is one of the show’s co-creators, and I saw
the movie Say Uncle a few years ago, which was his writing and directing debut,
and it’s a rather average movie. Don’t get me wrong, I like Say Uncle and I
would definitely recommend checking it out, but I still think it’s a rather
average movie, so I just kind of assumed that this show was going to be merely
average as well. I’m very happy that I was proven wrong, because the writing
for this show is truly fantastic. Although, I have to admit that while I loved
this episode, I definitely liked the previous episode “The Morning After” a
little bit more.
My favorite storyline in
this episode was definitely Stef and Lena hosting a dinner party so they can
meet Lexie’s parents now that Jesus is dating Lexie. This whole thing started
when they found out that Jesus was interested in going to church camp with
Lexie, which instantly made Stef feel uncomfortable, because she was afraid
that going to the church camp would turn Jesus against them since they are a gay
couple. I have to say that I was rather amused about how high-strung Jesus was
being at the beginning of the episode about the whole dinner and what Lena and
Stef were planning to make Lexie’s parents for dinner and what kind of wine
they would be serving with dinner. He’s a freaking teenager! I’ve never met a
teenager who got hung up on what kind of wine their parents served to the
parents of someone they are friends with or are dating. That was just weird,
but it was also kind of amusing at the same time.
Until this episode, I found
myself being drawn more towards Lena as a character than I had been to Stef.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked Stef, but Lena is definitely my favorite
of the pairing. This episode really made me view Stef differently, because
being bisexual myself I can really relate to what Stef said about how she feels
about religion in this episode. The reason she’s so uncomfortable when it comes
to religion stems from the fact that her dad had apparently had a minister come
talk to her when she was younger and told her that being gay is a sin and an
abomination after he saw her being affectionate with a girl. That experience
had apparently caused her to really struggle with her sexual orientation and is
apparently part of what prompted her to marry Mike.
Honestly, I don’t blame Stef
for feeling uncomfortable when it comes to church and religion and their views
on homosexuality and gay marriage. I’ve felt very uncomfortable at times too
when it comes to religion and church since I was raised in a Christian
household and was brought up in the Lutheran church. One of the first things
that my parents did when they found out that I’m attracted to men was have me
go talk to the pastor that’s in charge of counseling and care ministries at my church,
and they also pressured me into seeing a therapist too. I don’t want to get all
preachy and talk too much about religion in this post, but I really have to
give the writers kudos for how they handled the whole storyline with Stef and
Lena having dinner with Lexie’s parents and the role that religion and the
church’s views on homosexuality played in the episode.
Lexie’s parents were
surprisingly nice and accepting about Lena and Stef being a gay couple, and
they were pretty much all in agreement about how they should handle things when
Jesus and Lexie spend time together at either families’ house. It wasn’t until
Stef’s father crashed their dinner party that things started to get a little
awkward once Stef’s father started grilling Lexie’s parents about their
religious beliefs and their attitude towards homosexuality and gay marriage. He
was surprised when they said that what mainly mattered to them was that Lena
and Stef, as well as their kids were all a family and that in their minds
nothing is more Christian than family. What ultimately ruined the dinner party
was the fact that Mariana came home, drunk, and spilled the beans about Jesus
and Lexie having unprotected sex in the previous episode and that Stef had
gotten the morning after pill for Lexie. Yikes!
Despite Mariana ruining the
dinner, I definitely liked the scene where Stef talked to her dad towards the
end of the episode. Stef’s dad apologized to her for driving her away from God
and his role in making her feel uncomfortable about religion and church. He
also said that in his eyes driving a wedge between her and God was the worst
sin of all.
Out of all the characters on
the show, Mariana is definitely my least favorite. She constantly acts like a
mean-spirited bitch in my opinion, and this episode did absolutely nothing to
endure me to her. Mariana wanted to avoid Lexie and her parents while they
where having dinner at Lena and Stef’s house, so she convinced Callie to go to
a party that Wyatt was having where he and a bunch of kids from their school
were trashing his parents’ house since it had been foreclosed on. Since Callie
is on probation, she didn’t want to go because she was worried what would
happen if she got caught up in a bad situation involving the cops.
Callie spent most of the time
that she was at the party trying to keep an eye on Mariana who was hanging out
with Kelsy, who is now out of rehab for an addiction to pills, and as I
mentioned earlier, she along with Kelsy got drunk. When Callie wasn’t trying to
chaperone Mariana, she was trying to spend time with Wyatt who was acting wild,
but he finally broke down towards the end of the episode, lamenting the fact
that he and his family were being forced to move out of the house he had grown
up in. However, he removed a mural that he had painted on one of the walls in
his bedroom when he was younger, and that seemed to cheer him up a little bit.
Honestly, the whole
storyline with Callie and Mariana going to Wyatt’s party was fairly boring in
my opinion, at least until she saw the infamous Liam at the party, which
freaked her out. That was probably the most interesting party of that storyline,
and I can’t wait to see what happens next with the whole Callie/Liam situation.
Callie also had another side
storyline in this episode that involved her going to a mandatory therapy group
for foster children, which was bit more interesting than the whole storyline
with Wyatt’s party. Callie met a girl named Sarah at the therapy group meeting
and they seemed to hit it off and went somewhere else where they talked some
more about growing up in the foster care system. However, things turned sour
between them after Callie instinctively referred to Sarah’s foster brother as
Liam based simply on Sarah’s description of him. This freaked Sarah out and prompted
her to leave.
While I really liked the
scenes between Callie and Sarah and the role they played in Callie and Liam
ultimately running into each other at the party towards the end of the episode,
one thing that struck me as being a little weird is the fact that they showed
Sarah talking in group about how wonderful her current foster family is and how
they refer to her as their daughter as opposed to them calling her their foster
daughter, and yet when she was talking to Callie after group therapy she
referred to the mom as her foster mom. Given how much Sarah gushed about them
in the group therapy session, I thought she would want to simply refer to them
as her mom and dad. Maybe that wouldn’t have bothered me if the writers had
included a line where she said that regardless of the fact that they refer to
her as their daughter, she still refers to them as her foster mom and her
foster dad. I’m guessing that was just an example of the writers failing to be
consistent when it comes to Sarah’s lines in this episode.
Brandon had an important piano
performance that he was getting ready for in this episode, because it could
lead to him getting a scholarship for college. Mike said that he would give
Brandon a ride to the performance, but he ended up being late picking him up,
which led to Brandon botching his audition. After Brandon’s audition, Mike came
to pick him up and give him a ride home, but it was obvious to Brandon that he
had been drinking. Brandon told him about his audition, which prompted Mike to
convince the guy holding the auditions to give Brandon another chance to
audition. Brandon ended up not getting offered a scholarship, but the guy
holding the auditions said that he would take him on as a student. The lessons
would be very expensive, but Mike insisted that he pay for the lessons even if
it meant that he had to get another job in order to pay for them.
Given the fact that Stef
already said something to Mike in a previous episode where she alluded to the
fact that Mike has a history of drinking too much, I can’t help but think that
Mike is going to end up getting drunk and getting killed in a car accident at
some point in the future. It doesn’t sound like she considers him to be an
alcoholic though, but based on his behavior in the past several episodes, I’m
thinking that Mike is indeed an alcoholic regardless of what Stef or anyone
else says.
All things considered, while
I liked the previous episode more, I still think that this was a good episode.
I thought that the writers did an excellent job of handling the subject of
religion and the church’s views on homosexuality, showing both sides of the
world’s views on homosexuality without being too bias or preachy towards one
particular side despite the show’s overall premise trying to portray the LGBT
community in a positive light. That was definitely my favorite aspect of this
episode.
I would definitely give the
award for most annoying character in this particular episode to Mariana.
Although, I would probably give her that award for almost every episode of The
Fosters that has aired at this point in time with the exception of the episodes
featuring Mariana’s biological mother, in which case I would give the award for
most annoying character to Mariana’s mother. I just can’t help but think she
only wants to use Mariana in order to get money. I definitely missed Jude as I
was watching the episode since Hayden Byerly didn’t appear in this episode. I’m
guessing the reason he didn’t appear in this episode was because either the
writers simply didn’t have enough screen time to work with in order to give him
anything to do, or perhaps it was due to child labor laws. For the record, I
don’t know how old Hayden Byerly is in real life, so I have no clue whether or
not the producers have to deal with child labor laws when it comes to Hayden
working on the show.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 7 out of 10.
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