The Fosters - Recap: Hide and Seek
Recap and review of The Fosters - Season 1 Episode 7 - The Fallout:
There's a cause-and-effect relationship between the mistakes we make and the consequences we have to face, regardless of whether or not what happens is entirely our fault. "The Fallout" goes a long way in illustrating the differing reactions people experience when faced with hardship. Granted, most good drama does this, but even in its most melodramatic moments, The Fosters still has a feeling of authenticity to it that keeps it from coming across like something cheesy.Credit: ABC Family
Again, sometimes the things that happen aren't the fault of the person they happen to, such as with Callie. We're meant to recognize how brutal it is that Jesus and Lexi's consensual act of youthful passion is being condemned while Callie's rape goes unpunished and kept hush-hush, yet this is the skewed justice system of the world in which these characters live. As Callie tells Brandon (David Lambert), if she gets involved with a foster sibling, she's the one who gets labeled as high risk, whether she was at fault or not. It's a messed up system with a skewed set of values. Yet a person is in control of how they respond to their circumstances, and it's the way in which the show depicts this that made "The Fallout" one of the better episodes of the season so far.
Credit: ABC Family
Most of the episode centers on the search for Lexi, as she runs away from home once her parents resolve to send her to a boarding school in Texas to keep her away from Jesus. This creates some solid drama that resolves some of the more lingering issues at the center of the plot, namely what an unlikable character Mariana has become. When Lexi decides to run away, Mariana is the one who sets her up in Wyatt's abandoned childhood home, then keeps it a secret from Lexi's parents. It's kind of sweet to see the girls going back to acting like best friends, even if there's a bittersweet undercurrent to it. It's clear that Lexi really cares about Jesus, but her uncertainty about her future, and her ambivalence towards her parents makes it difficult for her to reconcile those feelings. When Lexi tells Mariana that her first time, with Jesus, prompted her to feel closer to him than she ever had, it's as striking an admission for Lexi to make as it is for Mariana to hear, as she suddenly realizes the damage she's done. Lexi and Jesus weren't just going behind Mariana's back and keeping it a secret out of spite. They genuinely cared about each other, and didn't know how to tell her the truth. She realizes that she essentially sold out her real family, which wouldn't be as poignant if Mariana hadn't also come to the realization that her birth mother is simply using her for money. The look on Mariana's face is heartbreaking when she once again meets with her birth mother, Ana (Alexandra Barreto), and discovers that the woman only wants her money. Ana even goes as far as to ask Mariana to steal something from her house that she can sell. Mariana recognizes that her priorities are all out of whack.
Credit: ABC Family
Of course, Mariana isn't the only one going through a conflict of priorities. When Stef (Teri Polo) goes out searching with Lexi's father, Mr. Rivera admits that his wife wanted to send Lexi back to their native Honduras, apparently having forgotten that they left Honduras specifically to escape the dangers of the community in which they once lived. But his wife was stubborn, and persisted, so Mr. Rivera came up with the boarding school idea as a compromise, but he doesn't really want to send his daughter away. However, there's another layer to the story that only comes out once it becomes apparent that they'll have to file a missing persons report: the Rivera are avoiding getting the authorities involved because they're undocumented. Jesus overhears the admission, and learns that Lexi is undocumented as well. When Jesus relays the information to Mariana, she comes clean about Lexi's location and, together, they bring Lexi home to her parents. But things take a bit of a dark turn. One would think the series would find another way around having to ship Lexi away. Maybe her parents would see the light, maybe realize that they're being too hard on their daughter, or come to the conclusion that sending her away won't make her any less of a teenager, with teenage impulses. But nah. Lexi just blackmails her parents with the info she's learned. "If you send me away, I'll call immigration myself," Lexi says, and just like that, her parents are seemingly cowed. It's a peculiar, jarring development and I'm not really sure it works. But it's certainly a bold direction to take the story, as Lexi has apparently brought out the claws.
Credit: ABC Family
This was all very engaging stuff, but I found myself far more fascinated by Callie's storyline. Wyatt (Alex Saxon) presses the issue about Liam and ends up getting Callie in hot water: 20-year-old Liam still thinks Callie has been talking about him, and confronts her at school. He grabs her by the arm and threatens her, at which point Wyatt comes flying out of frame to tackle him. The two brawl and the fight is eventually broken up by Callie and Brandon, but the damage is already done. Callie and Wyatt are apparently splitsville. Ultimately, this conflict worked primarily because one could see where both sides were coming from: Wyatt wanted to protect Callie and doesn't understand why she's mad at him for trying to defend her; Callie, meanwhile, is mad at Wyatt for refusing to trust that the best way to protect her is by not pressing the Liam issue. It's a clash of two reasonable perspectives, and it works well. Yet this is hardly the end of Callie's troubles...
Credit: ABC Family
Callie ultimately confesses the full, sordid Liam history to Brandon: she had been infatuated with him, given how handsome he is and how rare it was for anyone to pay her any attention like Liam did. She felt special to him, and so she allowed herself to be taken in by the idea that this older guy cared about her. Yet Callie reveals that things quickly got dark, as Liam forced himself on her. He took her virginity by force, and then lied and said she'd been the aggressor in the relationship, getting she and Jude kicked out of what had been the best foster home they'd been in. Maia Mitchell does outstanding work in the confession scene, and David Lambert continues to be valuable to the series as a sympathetic presence, even though his emoting is either too subtle or nonexistent, at times. With the recognition that Liam is continuing in his abusive ways, Callie attempts to sway Sarah, her young friend in the therapy group, from getting involved with him. However, Sarah doesn't want to hear what Callie is saying about Liam, and threatens to deny it and blame Callie if she tries to insinuate anything bad about Liam to the authorities. It's a sad development, but it leads to an interesting close for the episode, as Callie confesses the truth about Liam to Stef and Lena. The entire story is the most poignant of the season thus far, and I feel like the show really has something with Maia Mitchell. That girl is talented.
Credit: ABC Family/Randy Holmes
There are also two sweet, though perfunctory, stories in which Jude (Hayden Byerly) bonds with school pal Connor (Gavin MacIntosh) while Lena and Stef go through some hardships as a result of Stef's decision to give Lexi the birth control. The latter storyline is far more interesting than the former, yet both have merit. I found it incredibly touching when Jude was making up lies about his father (as much for himself as for Connor), at which point Connor told Jude he didn't have to lie around him. I just loved that moment, along with the eventual gifting of a PSP to Jude, who doesn't really have anything of his own.
Ultimately, "The Fallout" succeeds by keeping a tight focus on the consequences of each characters' actions: Mariana learns and grows, and eventually makes amends with Jesus and Lexi, while Callie learns to let others in, as a method of processing her emotions about her past. It's mature storytelling for a teen show, and while The Fosters isn't the flat-out best new show of the summer, it continues to stake its claim as my favorite new show of the summer.