The Fosters: Mixed Messages

Hey, Fosters viewers (and Serial Drama readers who don't watch the show but just like reading TV blogs!), I think I'll skip doing the beat-by-beat recap this time because it does get a little dull. I'm going to shake it up a tiny bit. I AM LIVING ON THE EDGE, PEOPLE. Here we go!

Wait, so this is the car Brandon drives?

Somebody's going to have to refresh my memory. That can't be his car, right? Is that the one that Callie's bio-dad bought for her? It has to be, doesn't it? Anyway, just more of Brandon's horrible life, just having to drive around in a sweet ride like that. Pretty sure that car could pay for a year at Juilliard, but if it's Callie's, they better not let her sell it FOR LOVE or whatever. (Okay but seriously, is it Brandon's?)

Basically the A-storyline starts when Jude is reading Romeo and Juliet for school and quotes a passage, asking what it means. Dream-teen heartthrob Brandon knows! "It means Romeo wants to bang his sister," he says. Or really something about how hard it is being apart from the person you love, and he and Callie exchange gross incestuous looks. If this show is trying to sell some crap about Callie and Brandon being like Romeo and Juliet, I suggest someone on that team re-read that play and realize that Romeo and Juliet did not have a great love story but in fact were total idiots (okay, that part is an awful lot like Brandon and Callie) whose adolescent obsession with each other left them AND MANY OTHERS dead forever. Families ruined. Souls destroyed. And they were kept from dating (and probably breaking up after not too long) because of a hateful, horrible, foolish, deadly ANCIENT GRUDGE. You know, NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE SIBLINGS. (Oops, I got a little wound up. I have a long history of overreacting when pop culture tries to parallel contemporary stories with R&J because they always treat it as if it was a great love story with a sad ending instead of one of the more brilliantly and astonishingly devastating tragedies of all time.) Anyway, they closed it out with Jude being all, "Tell me about it," and let's hope that he and Connor are no more like Romeo and Juliet than any other healthy, breathing humans with parents who are not dangerously insane. But really, they don't even let up. Later, Brandon tells that new chick about the whole thing and she refers to Brandon and Callie as "star-crossed lovers" and I almost puke and actually wish she would finish out the sentence with the original "take their life" (I'm just kidding, show, please no suicides!). 

Does the R&J nonsense end there? It does not. Brandon, in fact, is writing a new song that he plays for Mat and the lyrics to the song are just the effing prologue to Romeo and Juliet. I'm going to need an apothecary myself. Any second now. Oh, he decides it's going to be a rock opera. Is this R&J musical adaptation (that is not West Side Story, by the by) going to be an extended storyline, continuing to imply some nonsense parallel to Brandon and Callie? WHAT, HO! APOTHECARY! BRING ME SOME MORTAL POISON PLS.

(Can confirm. Upside? Corbin Bleu from One Life to Live will be Mercutio! Because he's still playing high school students? And it's also an actual musical written by Bradley Bredeweg called Romeo and Juliet: Love Is A Battlefield, which kind of sounds like cheesy hilariousness. Horrible downside? Again, hideously implied parallels to Brandon and Callie.)

Worried Callie is worried.

This means that Callie has to tell Brandon that she told Daphne about their sibling sex, but (as someone smartly suggested in the comments last week) Daphne thinks the "sex with your foster brother" might refer to Liam. All is well! Later Callie gets gussied up for a Fost and Found photo shoot and looks super-slick.

And then Brandon brandons it up by telling her she doesn't look like her and there is a god because she fully calls him out for that bullshit. But then what's the first thing she does? Scrubs it all off. Is this impostor syndrome, or is this really all just guilt about that terrible choice she made with Brandon?

Mariana is not having it with Lexi running against her for junior class president. Nor should she be having it, as the campaign slogan is "Lexi for Prexi!" Naturally, Lexi is stealing Mariana's campaign ideas because everyone at that school steals stuff from Mariana because Mariana is the most perfect person at Anchor Beach and maybe also most American schools. Emma plans a debate, but then both she and Hayley bring up some pretty gross things they happen to know about Mariana and Lexi in front of all the students and it gets really ugly.

At least Mariana chose the right photo, check it out!

Jesus needs a new wrestling uniform because he grew two feet in the three months he was at wrestling school, but also he had a head transplant, so he's got a lot more to worry about than whether or not the uniform fits or the fact that his moms aren't going to let him wrestle this year. Wait, the moms are actually giving one of their brood a CONSEQUENCE?! He also gets a riveting story in which he meets Nick, a new kid, and drives Nick's car super-fast and I guess is now an adrenaline junkie. Boy, I'm glad they recast Jesus, they certainly had some exciting stories that just had to be told!

So Teri Polo's hair is actually naturally curly? Her post-shower wet curls were so pretty. I'm having straight-hair-girl envy (and bafflement as to why she fights it!). Speaking of beautiful curls, Sherri Saum got a mention on this excellent list today. As for Stef's breast cancer situation, everyone has an opinion on whether or not she should have the mastectomy. Sharon sure thinks she should, and attempts to use reverse psychology on her middle-aged daughter to manipulate her into doing it. Classy! Stef is scared that Lena won't be attracted to her anymore, which of course Lena insists is not the case. Ultimately Stef decides on a lumpectomy for now but about five seconds later gets some medical news that her risk is increased because of heredity -- a result of "positive" from the BRCA-1 test . (And she quickly hides those test results from Lena. Ruh roh! It wouldn't be a serial drama if nobody kept pointless secrets for absolutely no reason!)

It's worth noting that Teri Polo has recently(ish) gotten a super-cute super-short haircut. I have a feeling that tells us something about where this plot thread is going. 

There was about a half-step of movement in the AJ/Ty storyline in that Mike realizes they've taken off, Stef asks Callie if she's heard from him, and Callie realizes he's commenting on her website. 

Next week: civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

What?

Comments

[Kim]

Seriously what is the point of the new JEsus??

[Ziyal]

I knew you wouldn't be able to stop watching this show, Louise! ;)

There is absolutely no point to Jesus, and I have to say that the first two episodes have been complete letdowns. The characters are still lovely and what I tune in for, but they are doing absolutely senseless things with them that I find it hard to stay engaged.

Lexi coming back and getting visas....so unrealistic.

And not that it should've been Brandon to tell her what to do, but Callie totally didn't look like herself in her photoshoot and she should've gotten that even without Brandon's help.

[Neia]

No it is not Brandon's car. That car was bought by Steph and Lena for all the kids to share. Callie turned down the car her father bought for her.