The Fosters - Recap: Confess and Be Free
Recap and review of The Fosters - Season 2 Episode 7 - The Longest Day:
Personal accountability is a hell of a thing at any age, as is culpability in acts you might not entirely understand. The Fosters knows this, and has crafted a story that allows us to see that while we all make mistakes, we're not always the ones to blame. "The Longest Day" is an episode that might have actually been better served by a tighter focus, as the desire to service each one of the Foster clan in the narrative led to the episode never really maintaining its momentum. But this was an hour that was much greater than the sum of its parts, as the Stef/Mike/Brandon story alone is worth recommending this for.
Credit: ABC Family
It's interesting for the show to tackle the occasionally warped gender politics that leave some men, like Mike, believing that a teenage boy can't be a victim of statutory rape due to all the subconscious associations that go along with teenage boys (namely, hormones and a constant fixation with getting laid). The Fosters strips away all the B.S. of that argument, and puts it plainly: Brandon was raped, no ifs, ands, or buts. It may have been consensual, but under the law, Brandon was incapable of giving consent since 1) he's a minor and 2) he was drunk at the time. So the conflict becomes less about what crazy, stupid thing Mike is going to do in response to the news, and instead about whether or not Brandon can be made to see that he was victimized by Dani. And that's an intriguing conflict, since it forces us to look at what happened through different lenses. For Stef, it's cut and dry. Dani needs to go to jail. However, Brandon refuses to press charges, arguing that this is humiliating enough for him without having to make a spectacle of it.
More so than usual, Brandon is in a constant state of self-flagellation, believing this was his mistake, and that he deserves to be punished for it. Or, at the very least, that Dani shouldn't be punished more than he is. After all, it takes two to tango, right? It's an opinion that, horrifically, Mike seems to share, as he comes perilously close to siding with Dani (first, wondering if Brandon made the whole thing up to get rid of her; and later, assuming that Brandon must have wanted to have sex, since he's old enough to know what he was doing). Thus, a secondary part of the main conflict (convincing Brandon to press charges against Dani) is getting Mike to recognize that what Dani did was wrong, and that she needs to face justice for it. It's a long walk in getting there, but Stef's argument wins the day, thanks in no small part to Lena, who helps Stef see that she's approaching this entire situation the wrong way by taking out her frustration on Mike and then, later, on herself.
As Lena argues, Dani is the one they should all be mad at, yet Stef is too focused on blaming herself for failing her loved ones, when that isn't the case at all. Ultimately, Mike and Stef have a heart-to-heart that really illustrates some of the problems they had in their former marriage, and how they've both matured as individuals to the point where they can both be parents to Brandon without needing to go to war over every little detail. It's Stef who convinces Mike that Dani is in the wrong, and it's Mike who convinces Brandon, through his implied forgiveness, that Dani needs to be arrested, arguing that, as the adult in the situation, "it was her responsibility to stop it, no matter how it started." It's a storyline with a clear beginning (Brandon comes clean), middle (Who's right? Stef or Mike?) and end (Dani is arrested after Brandon decides to press charges), and it's one of the most affecting that the show has done. And it's all capped off with a beautiful image of Stef lying in bed beside her son, not attempting to understand him, or to force her understanding upon him, but wordlessly offering to be there for him all the same.
Credit: ABC Family
Once again, it's a story about the evolving definition of family, and it carries over into the storyline centering on Callie (Maia Mitchell) and Jude (Hayden Byerly). Jude is still having issues sharing Callie with Sophia (Bailee Madison) and Robert Quinn (Kerr Smith), so Callie offers to take him to meet them. They spend the day on a yacht, and it's a lovely afternoon, except for Jude's continually sour disposition. And Sophia isn't much sunnier in her attitude either, being rude to her mother in order to impress Callie, and then later suggesting that things might have been better if Robert had stayed with Callie's mother so that she herself didn't exist at all. It's such a strange moment, and it's made all the stranger from Jude's conversation with Sophia's mother, in which he indirectly lets slip that Callie had previously run away from the Fosters out of concern that they wouldn't adopt her. Although he corrects himself by saying that the Fosters absolutely do want to adopt her, it wouldn't surprise me if this slip-up placed the notion in Sophia's head that Callie would be better off with them instead of the Fosters. After all, Sophia argues, Callie has only known the Fosters a few months. Robert seems to be seriously considering it, especially after his bonding moment with Callie on the yacht, as he shares photos of her mother with her, and then convinces her to accept his offer of a college fund, saying it's what her mother would have wanted. These are good people with good intentions, but in attempting to take Callie away from the Fosters, they might just find themselves becoming the villains of the season. Contrast this with Jude, who openly admits he wishes Callie had never found out about the Quinns, but is mature enough to admit that this wouldn't change anything. He has to share Callie now, and if he has to share her with the Fosters, he doesn't see why he couldn't get used to sharing her with the Quinns. It's a lovely moment to punctuate a storyline that I wish, along with the Mike/Stef/Brandon narrative, had been the only two stories we focused on this week. But alas, we had more...
Credit: ABC Family
I can't think of a single time in nearly 30 episodes where Jesus (Jake T. Austin) or Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) had the best storyline, or even the most substantive storyline, in a given episode. Granted, this isn't exactly their fault. They're talented performers whose storylines often pale in dramatic comparison to everything else surrounding them. And such was the case here, as Mariana discovers that a lack of funds means not everyone on the dance team can travel with the team to LA for competition. So Mariana decides she needs to step her game up by getting pointers from the best dancer in the squad. However, she inadvertently offends this girl by implying that her ability in the hip-hop genre comes naturally to her because she's black. This prompts the girl to call Mariana out for trying to blend in with the rest of the girls in the group by dying her hair blonde, and while I can appreciate the issues of identity at the heart of the storyline, it all plays out like a lot of high school drama. Then again, that's kind of what this is, and it's well-performed, if nothing else (in that it feels natural). The girls smooth things over after Mat (Jordan Rodrigues) convinces Mariana she needs to stop pitying herself and work harder, and while this all suggests that the story will continue into next week, it's still a better story than what we're getting with Jesus, who looks to be at the start of his own Fatal Attraction storyline with Hayley (Caitlin Carver). Yes, in order to keep Jesus from going to a dinner with the wrestling team, including Emma (Amanda Leighton), Hayley lies about having just found out about her parents' divorce. She uses this to guilt-trip Jesus into skipping the dinner and keeping her company, but it doesn't take long for Mariana to expose the lie...and for Jesus to do nothing about it except mope over having missed the annual dinner. I really hope the show speeds through this "crazy Hayley" stuff.
Occasional misgivings aside, "The Longest Day" is still a strong episode of television, adding to the considerable resume The Fosters is building when it comes to straight-up, engrossing family drama. It would have been great to get a bit more followup from last week's heartbreaking episode -- in fact, it was really kind of strange that Frankie was hardly mentioned once, if at all -- but I still felt the positives far outweighed the negatives here.