Previously on The Fosters, Jesus went on a hunger strike for the sake of his wrestling career, Mariana whined about her suspension from school cutting her chances of getting the clap from Chase down to nil, and Judicorn got semi-sexiled so Jesus could have some time alone with himself. Callie finally figured out that maybe having people who love you enough to help are worth trying for and resigned herself to stay in Girls United Against Brandon for a while longer. Lena might want to have a baby in spite of the bonanza of stupid happening around her house from the teenagers. Stef refused her father’s offer of a BEAUTIFUL TOYOTA because a Prius will not erase a lifetime of shaming your daughter. A Maserati, however, might. Lena called Stef a “mule,” Stef called her a “nag” but then relented and went to make nice with her Pops. Sadly, Frank went to the great beyond without so much as an “I’m sorry we’re so similarly stubborn” from his daughter.
We open with Stef finding her dad asleep in front of a Padres game (that’s the first clue this isn’t real, last week he was watching football). She hands him a cup of tea and they talk about the Padres. They reminisce about when he took her to her first away game in Chicago and it snowed. Little Stef had never seen snow before and her parents laughed at her when she asked why the sky was so dusty. They both laugh at the memory and we catch a glimpse of their relationship as we never saw it before, free, easy, friendly. Frank laments the fact that things are no longer so easy. Life gets complicated. Walls are built, brick-by-brick, with every hurtful word, every misunderstanding, and it’s hard to pull them back down again because mortar made from pain is strong stuff. Stef walks to the doorway and smiles when snow begins to fall around her. She turns back to her father but his chair is empty. Back at home, Stef wakes up from her bittersweet dream.
Mariana is crying in the bathroom when Jude busts through the door. Knocking is for suckers. It’s Mariana’s first funeral so she asks Jude what his mom’s funeral was like. He tells her it was weird and sad and everyone spent their time telling him that his mom was in a better place. Grown-ups do that to make themselves feel better. Mariana asks if he believes in heaven. He says he thinks there are people looking out for him, or at least he hopes there are. Jude you are surely an angel and if anyone would have an inside scoop on heaven it’s you.
In their bathroom/laundry room, Stef and Lena are doing synchronized make-up application. Lena approaches Stef as though she might break at any minute and tells her that she knows today will be hard and she will do anything Stef needs to help. Stef says, “It’s fine” half a dozen times and, when Lena points out she knows Stef is upset about not talking to Frank, Stef throws in a “it is what it is” for good measure. Say “fine” again, Stef. Lena makes a joke about her mother bringing enough bitter to make Old Fashioneds for the entire city of San Diego and Stef cracks the smallest smile. They switch gears away from the death of Stef’s father to deal with the real issue of the day, how to keep Callie and Brandon from getting handsy during the funeral. Lena leaves to get everyone ready. Stef hunts for her mascara and stumbles upon Lena’s prenatal vitamins. Well, this is just going to be most fun ever!
Callie is sitting the Girls United van. She watches Jude walk up to the church surrounded by the Adams Foster clan and says she has to go to the funeral so Jude won’t have to face it alone. It’s funny all the things we say we’re doing for someone else just to cover up our own aching needs. Dana hugs Stef and apologizes for Lena’s dad not being able to come. Meanwhile, Captain Roberts asks Lena if Mike is around and makes sure Lena will keep Stef from reading the paper. Lena spies Callie and says she’s glad that she came and that she’ll always be a member of the family no matter whether so makes foolish choices to live on her own and make out with Brandon. Stef says, “Hi, love, I’m glad you’re here” just before Sharon walks up, shrouded in dark glasses, and says, “This is going to be a little harder than I thought.” Sharon, you just summed up this entire recap.
Callie’s voice wavers when asks Jude if he’s all right. He says, “Sure, are you?” She nods and takes his hand and they walk up the ramp into the church. We cut to two tiny kids holding hands and a voice saying, “We are here to celebrate the life of Colleen Jacob.”
The family of forty rushes through the door into the Adams Foster home and Lena sends everyone to his or her prearranged battle station for the rest of the afternoon. Stef yells for everyone to put on their Padres colors because death is much easier to take on in matching team apparel. In the midst of the chaos, Jude says, “Mom?” Lena’s face is a marvel as she tries to act like calling her mom is no biggie. He asks if it would be okay for him to invite Connor over. She tells him to go call his buddy and then blinks away a few tears before she tells Stef he used the “m” word. Stef notices Callie standing in the corner and asks if she needs anything. Callie says no and stares at the photo of the family from the wedding.
Brandon appears on the stairs and says it’s too bad his grandfather wasn’t there but that he will always remember that day. Callie’s like, “Yeah, moron, it’s the day your moms got married.” He goes for cute with, “No, it’s the first time we kissed” but overshoots and ends up in Barfsville. She’s smiles but then leaves to go help set up. I’d pick pigs in a blanket over Mr. Creep, too.
Stef is out back wiping down tables when Mike walks in. He and Lena share a laugh over his Padres cap, which he is only wearing because he liked Frank so much. Sure, wearing a Padres cap seems like a small price to pay for the guy who shamed his daughter into marrying you. He asks how Stef is doing and Lena says, “Well on a scale of getting shot to our wedding night? Let’s just say better than I expected.” She asks Mike how he’s doing and he huffs and puffs after she says she talked to Captain Roberts. He says the story is nothing, just a journalist trying to make a story where there isn’t one. Before Lena can press further, Stef walks in and Lena asks Mike to help her set up the poker table.
At the kitchen table Mariana and Callie are filling deviled eggs. Side note: I hate deviled eggs. But when I got married my mother made about 75 dozen of them under the misguided belief I liked them. It’s the danger of having four kids in the family, at some point we all blend together. So this scene is extra hilarious to me. Mariana dares Callie to eat some of the filling and offers to pay her one million dollars if she does. They wrestle over a spoonful of the stuff until it smacks Mariana in the face. They laugh and Mariana says misses Callie and is sad they aren’t going to be sisters. Callie says she’s not going away and she is used to being on her own. Mariana says but you had Jude then who is, in case you hadn’t noticed, an amazing kid. Callie says he freaked out when their mom died and tore apart Callie’s room and we get our second flashback to tiny Callie and Jude standing in a sea of broken toys and ripped apart posters. She just hopes he’ll be okay. You keep saying “Jude” but I think we all know who you’re really talking about.
Brandon appears and asks if he can talk to Callie. He steers her up the stairs with a hand placed a little too close to her ass for either Lena, Mariana, or the entire adult audience’s comfort. Lock it down, dude!
Stef weaves her way through a poker table, a roulette wheel, and a stripper pole to get to the buffet. What? It’s what Frank would have wanted. Sharon starts in on how beautiful the eulogy was and Stef cracks that it went on forever, just like the eulogy that pastor gave for her sexuality. Sharon is a bit confused and Stef clues her in that Pastor Rowley is the same one who her dad sent her to talk to when he caught her cuddling with a friend when she was sixteen. Did Stef grow up in Rosewood? How does Sharon not know where her husband sent their kid? Anyway, Sharon is aghast and wants to know why the hell Stef asked him to do the service? Stef says it’s what her dad would have wanted but she’s shocked that he dared enter “the home of the damned.”
Upstairs Brandon takes Callie to his room, closes the door, and says, “Let’s tell my moms were a couple.” Bless her heart, Callie doesn’t smack him upside the head but does remind him that this is his grandfather’s funeral and maybe not the best place to break that news. He’s like, oh right, totally. Let’s tell them tomorrow.” Lena opens the door and sighs at the sight of these fools. She sends Brandon to go fix the player piano downstairs. Callie stays behind and takes a moment to walk into her old room and have another flashback. Little Callie is sitting on her bed reading when her mom walks in. Callie refuses to look at her and her mom asks her not to be mad. She and her dad will be back soon. She asks Callie for a kiss good-bye but Callie doesn’t budge. Her mom says, “See you in the morning.” Back in the present Callie fights back tears.
Stef is arranging black licorice with Mariana. Mariana think there are less depressing candies for a funeral but Stef says it was her dad’s favorite because it was the only kind of sweets Stef wouldn’t steal. She takes a bite and says she loves it now. Funny how we become our parents. Mariana tries some and says “not bad” while Stef watches her wife play peek-a-boo with someone else’s baby. When Stef walks away Mariana pulls a face and says “ew, it’s like evil in my mouth.”
Mariana opens the front door and finds Emma there. Jesus calls for Emma to come in and Mariana says, “Oh you’re a lunatic who wrestles with dudes.” Jesus tells Mariana to take a hike. Emma hands him a noodle kugel, which she notes is dye free, organic, and one hundred percent approved for Jesus to eat. Dude, I think she just asked you to eat her kugel, isn’t that more of a third date thing? Mariana watches them flirt and stabs at a voodoo doll with the evil licorice. How dare you flirt while your girlfriend who is out of the country and never coming back?
Stef drags Lena in the kitchen and asks if there’s something she would like to share with the class. Lena says, “You mean about Mike?” Well this just got weird. She tells Stef about the article. Whoopsie, now Mike’s being dragged away from the party to answer to Stef. He says that the paper all but accuses him of murder and because of it he’s not going back to work. Gather around everyone, let’s put the “fun” in funeral!
In a nice throwback to the pilot episode, Callie is in the bathroom washing her hands. She stares in the mirror and has another flashback. Little Callie dumps out the contents of an envelope containing her mother’s possessions. She digs through the little that is left and finds her mother’s necklace. She puts it on and we come back to the present with Callie holding the pendant and looking at herself in the mirror.
Lena is fussing about the kitchen, just naming off 47 different types of food, the combination of which surely led to Frank’s early demise, when Callie walks in looking for Jude. Callie offers to help and Lena sends her away with some meatballs for the buffet. Dana waltzes in and senses a disturbance in the force. Lena rattles off a bunch of excuses but her mom knows she’s hiding something. She “Lena Elizabeths” her daughter and Lena confesses that she thinks she wants to have a baby. Her mom laughs and says if she wanted a baby she’d already have one. Way to be supportive, Dana.
Upstairs, Mariana, Jude, and Connor are playing with a Ouija board. Mariana wants to know if she will ever have a boyfriend. Connor and Jude roll their eyes but make the board say yes and indicate that this boy is her friend, the ambiguously gay, Zach. She freaks and runs away.
Downstairs Stef is on her laptop reading the article about Mike. Lena says the article is only going to upset her. Stef scoffs and says, “It’s my father’s funeral, the priest who told me I was going to hell is eating my guacamole, my son is off trying to nail his foster sister, you have secret vitamins, and you think this is the thing that’s going to ruin my day?” Stef has a point but I am mostly impressed she can say anything with Lena standing there looking like this.
Sharon sidles over to Stef and asks her what the hell her problem is. Stef says she thinks Lena is trying to get pregnant and Sharon makes a face and wonders if Lena is having an affair. Now it’s Stef’s turn to make a disgusted face. Sharon voices her opinion that having a baby is a stupid ass idea since they already have more kids than they can handle. Stef is most worried that Lena isn’t talking to her about it and Sharon tells Stef she better go to Lena. Listen to your mother, Stefanie Marie, women like Lena don’t just grow on trees. Stef doesn’t know what to say other than that they can’t have a baby.
Mariana and Brandon are eating on the stairs and she asks if he and Callie are a couple now and makes the same face she did when she tried the licorice. Evil in my mouth, indeed. He says no, she just wants to be on her own and Mariana asks if he’s sure that’s really what she wants. He’s like “Yeah, I know I have a surplusage of parents and siblings but, really, who needs a family?”
Callie is in the kitchen helping clean up when Dana comes in and praises her for being such a helpful kid. She cuts to the chase and asks why Callie has decided she doesn’t want to be adopted. Callie says she’s sixteen going on seventeen and doesn’t need a family. Dana tells her that you don’t stop needing a family at eighteen and that family is there to help you through the tough stuff forever. Callie leaves and Dana turns her attention to telling Lena how to take out the garbage. Lena snaps and tells her mom that she loves her but she needs to leave her alone and stop telling her what to do. She doesn’t want to hear anything other than “I love you and I understand” from this day forward. Dana takes a moment to recover but then tells Lena that she’s proud of her for saying something but doesn’t know why it took her so long. Lena laughs through her tears and Dana tells her she better go talk to her wife about a baby.
Upstairs Jesus and Emma are flaunting the “no girls upstairs” rule to play computer games. Lexi calls to talk to Jesus and Emma answers. Lexi is a little taken aback to find her boyfriend hanging with another girl in his room and to find that his teammate looks a whole lot more like Haley from One Tree Hill than Karofsky from Glee.
Across the hall, Jude and Connor are still playing Ouija board and Jude asks his mom if it’s OK with her that he gets adopted. Connor and the spirits of Ouija make it say yes. Judicorn (and anyone with a functioning heart) tears up.
Down in the kitch Stef opens up the cupcakes and finds that the bakery screwed them up and sent over Dodgers cupcakes instead of Padres. Oh man, if they had only gotten it right this funeral would have rocked! Hold on to your hats folks because that is all it takes to let all the emotion simmering away beneath the surface to break free. Well, that and Callie losing her necklace. She starts tearing apart the kitchen looking for it. She looks in the trash and Lena suggests that if it’s lost they can get a replacement. Callie won’t let her finish the word, she runs out to the backyard leaving Jude to explain that the necklace belonged to their mother.
Jude follows her out back where she’s digging through the leaves. He tells her that she’s freaking him out and acting like she did when they found out their mom died. She says no, you freaked out and tore apart my room. He says no she did that, and she is pulled back into another flashback in which we watch as tiny Callie rips posters from the walls, breaks toys and furniture, and scares the bejeezus out of Jude.
Stef arrives and asks Jude if she can have a minute alone with Callie. These two are quite a pair and together this scenes is pure, heartbreaking, magic. Callie says that necklace was all she had left of her mother. Stef tells her that she’s wrong because she has all her memories of her mom, all the time they spent together and nothing can take that away. Of course she’s right but it doesn’t take away the meaning we silly people give to objects, particularly those that once touched the people we can no longer touch ourselves. Maybe it’s a shirt that your grandfather wore whenever he grilled and has burn marks and grease stains on the placard. Maybe it’s a ring that once was your grandmother’s or your mother’s that you gave to the woman you love. Maybe it’s a book your mother read you when you were sick and that has her name printed on the inside in a child’s hand. To another person, it’s just stuff. You might not notice it if you passed any of it at the thrift store, but for you they have the power to grip your heart or hold your hand or allow you to feel the pressure of your grandmother’s lips on your cheek and the way she always smelled of old lady cream. It’s just stuff but that doesn’t make it less powerful.
Stef asks Callie to sit and tell her about the woman who made her so amazing. Callie chokes on her words and can only say that she didn’t kiss her mother good-bye. Stef doesn’t understand at first but when she does she wraps Callie in a hug and tells her that the last thing she told her dad was to take the car and shove it. They laugh. Stef tells her that it hurts to lose someone you love but if you cut yourself off from the world, if you refuse to love again, you’re only hurting yourself. She feels like she has five separate hearts running around, one for each kid. Callie looks overwhelmed with the idea of Stef loving her that much. These two peas in a pod hug and Brandon watches from the kitchen window.
On the front steps Jesus helps Emma with her coat. She says gee whiz it was nice to meet your family so I could figure out why you’re such a weirdo. He thanks her for making kugel and they have an awkward exchange about Lexi and her travel plans and whether they include coming back to San Diego any time soon. Jesus is like, “Whoops, gotta go, pretty girl! I look forward to pinning you in practice.”
Inside Pastor Rowley is trying to leave gracefully. He tells Stef that she has a lovely home. She tries to pull on her armor with a crack about being surprised he would come at all. He tells her that people’s attitudes evolve and that her father came to him many times to try to reconcile his religious faith with his love for his daughter. She asks if she is supposed to be happy about that and the Pastor says yes, she should be happy that her father loved her so much that it made him question his fundamental beliefs. He thanks her again, tells her she has a beautiful family, and leaves her there with tears in her eyes and maybe a new glimpse of her father.
Captain Roberts walks in as some of the crowd is thinning and gives Stef a hug and an apology for being late. She goes and finds Mike to tell him that the DA is opening an investigation into whether or not he should press charges against Mike. Mike is pissed, he thought he was going to be able to go back to work, now he needs to find himself a good lawyer.
Out on the back deck, Brandon sits next to Callie and pulls her necklace out of his pocket. Odds that he took it just to engineer this moment? Pretty darn high. He puts it around her neck and she calls him is hero, but in the kind of way you say it to a person who gets a bowl down from a shelf you can’t reach. She says she loves him and he says it back and then she says “but.” He cuts her off and tells her he knows. She wants to make sure this knucklehead really gets it and says she needs a family, she needs all of them, not just him. He cries and says that he didn’t realize before that for them to be together she had to give up absolutely everything. Buddy, this is what we have all been screaming at our televisions for months. Ah well. They hug and cry and Sharon wanders out in Frank’s suit jacket. She asks Brandon to liven the place up by playing the piano. He wonders what she’s doing in the coat and she smiles and tells him that Frank was wearing it when he last told her he loved her. It’s just stuff, a coat, a necklace, maybe a note scribbled long ago, but it’s powerful stuff. Sometimes it’s what we need to get by.
Callie stays outside and Jude finds her. She tells him she wants to come home and we flashback once more. Callie and Jude are sitting listening to a social worker tell them about how they are going to go live with another family for a while. They ask where their dad is and learn he’s in jail. Callie says, “You aren’t going to split us up, are you?” The social worker promises to keep them together until they can find a home for them both. Back we go to the present and the home that’s just right for the two of them.
While the family listens to Brandon play, Stef sits in the Prius and wrings every last tear out of anyone watching. She thanks her dad for the car. She says she’s going to miss him and that she knows he did the best that he could. She forgives him. She whispers, “I love you Daddy. Go, Padres.” Then it starts to snow because climate change is a real thing. Lena walks out of the house pulling of the very rare, heels, skirt, hoodie combination and gets in the car. Stef says, “So, do you want to have a baby?”
So just how hard did you guys cry during this episode?
