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“The Fosters” Recap S5E2: Exterminate Her

Tonight we pick up right where the season premiere left off, as Stef and Lena pull up at home with Callie and see a moving van for new neighbors. But the moms are a bit distracted by Callie’s curiosity as to whether she’ll have to testify against creep Pimp or not to pay too much attention to who is loving in. As Stef storms out of the car, Lena and Callie follow up to the front door and discover the Foster family has prepared a surprise party for Callie in light of news that all of the charges against her have been dropped. Said party is thrown in Stef and Lena’s house. Without their knowledge. Straight, white dudes just have no idea.

After discovering Callie’s tryst with the Pimp, Robert sits down with the Moms for a bit of an intervention. He tells Callie that he wants to be more involved in her life to ensure she gets back on the right path. Maybe it’s the defensive lesbian in me, but I don’t jive with this scene. It feels like the implication is that Callie needs her biological father in order get her life together. Even if Lena and Stef are exhausted, they’re enough.

Stef is at her wits end with Callie, and she takes comfort in Lena as the two get ready to face the day and try to decide what kind of welcome gift to give the new neighbors. This brief interaction is just one of the many that serves as a reminder of what a unique, portrayal of a marriage (gay, straight, lesbian, or any other kind) we have here. Their disagreement over the neighbors’ gift is just smoke and mirrors for the stress they’re feeling from all of the chaos, and they get to the meat of their woes swiftly and lovingly, together. Total relationship goals right here.

Jesus approaches Mariana about the tree house and informs her he wants to work on it alone. Mariana responds by pounding on Gabe’s door first thing in the morning to tell him to refuse to help Jesus unless Mariana is also involved since Jesus’s status as an incoming senior isn’t a sure thing. Gabe attempts to school Stef on what she should be telling Jesus, but she shuts him down pretty quickly, and I’m disappointed she doesn’t spray him with that water hose. Just as Gabe walks away, the new neighbor Dean approaches to introduce himself and offer to fix their fence, which is leaning on his property. This situation seems sketchy enough already, and my spidey sense is tingling for the discovery of who the rest of this family is.

Lena threatens to sue Drew after she discovers his plan to publish a “Pro Privatization” piece by one of the students. Mariana scrambles to find a way to shut down the piece before it runs, but she might change her mind after meeting Dean’s son Logan, whose mother is determined to send him to a private school, which she divulges after trashing Anchor Beach to Lena’s face. Is this the other shoe that we were waiting on to drop with these guys? It feels to easy, aside from the eye undressing between Logan and Mariana.

Callie approaches the teacher in charge of the Arts and Design program, but she’s turned down because of her lack of a portfolio. Discouraged by the feedback, Callie tells her teacher to throw out her senior project, but hopefully she can get it back, because shortly after said rejection, the Arts professor calls back and offers Callie the opportunity to audit her classes and help her build the portfolio she needs to apply to the program.

Robert, being the upper middle classic straight white man he is, gifts Callie with an art set for her first class, which starts swimmingly and embarrassingly. Callie is set up to shadow one of the fellow students in class, but begins to doubt her own ability once faced with this badass chick who brings her roller derby skates as the object that defines her.

The skates display Ximena’s derby name, “Exterminate Her,” and color me officially crushing on this girl. Flustered, Callie decides to replace the object she brought with her new art kit. She also suspects that her father’s big fat checkbook is the reason she was permitted to audit the class in the first place.

Once a confrontation with Professor Artsy reveals that Robert did indeed visit her after the rejection, Callie ditches her ride and heads to roller-derby with her new friend Ximena, who proves to be a surprisingly inspirational presence in Callie’s life so far. Is anyone else shipping Callie and Ximena already? I’m naming them Callimena.

Brandon picks Callie up from roller-derby and takes her home, where Moms and Bio dad are poised to have another intervention. This time around we get a happier ending, because Robert didn’t actually write out a check, he just chatted with the Professor about Callie’s struggles to get her a pity invitation. I guess that’s sweet?

Anyway, Moms saved Callie’s senior project from the dumpster run and hugs are had all around. Inspired by these gestures, Mariana boldly selects the necklace she has from her mother as the object that defines her for class. She texts her new BFF (girlfriend?) to let her know, and Ximena calls her fearless.

It turns out Mariana succeeds in hacking the newspaper files and replacing the piece with her own that divulges the real details behind the protest against privatizing the school. In an attempt to retaliate against the school paper email hack, Drew decides to shut down the school newspaper entirely and pull funding from junior and senior projects until his authority in revoking the school’s charter in order to privatize the school is decided.

Speaking of senior projects, Gabe steps over the line by divulging to Jesus why he can’t build the treehouse without Mariana, and he storms in to confront Lena. In light of Gabe overstepping his parental bounds, Lena asks him to leave if he can’t respect her authority as the mother of Jesus and Mariana. One bio dad down, one to go?

In an attempt to seduce Brandon, Grace calls him with a fake emergency just as he’s getting ready for a job interview. When he shows up to see her in lingerie, handcuffed to the bed, he panics to help her instead of realizing that she had set this up for him. Embarrassed, she lies about what she’s doing and allows him to help her get out of the cuffs. Brandon is adorable oblivious to all of this until Callie graciously informs him of Grace’s real motives, sparking him to go back to visit Grace to redeem himself and his manhood.

Lena comes home to deliver the bad news about the lack of funding for senior projects to Jesus and Mariana, but Gabe saves the day by offering to gather the materials himself so that Jesus can complete the treehouse anyway. Dammit Gabe, why do you keep stepping in for the win? You would think Jesus has learned his lesson about taking his sister for granted, but he tells Mariana he wants Emma to help him with the project instead of her, which is likely to blow up in the poor guy’s face since Emma walked right out the door after witnessing one of Jesus’s temper tantrums in person.

Just as family tensions seem to have settled temporarily, Lena and Stef saunter together over to officially welcome the new neighbors, plant in hand, when the most delightfully awkward moment I’ve seen on this show goes down.

Dean introduces Stef to his wife Teresa, whom Stef promptly recognizes as “Tess,” suddenly becoming a bumbling schoolgirl, staring at Lena all dumbfounded. Looks like there’s some spicy history here between these two, but as excited as I am to dig into it, I’m dreading any disruptions in this rock steady relationship. Here’s to hoping Stef and Lena aren’t taken down by Tess and her presumptuous disdain for public schools.

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