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“Chasing Life” recap (2.05): Kiss and Tell

Previously on Chasing Life, April decided she wanted to be friends with her ex like some kind of lesbian, Brenna donated stem cells and then met him at school unknowingly, and April found out her dad was the worst so she decided to write the novel he always said she couldn’t.

We open with April and Dom on a coffee date like it’s normal, but even though he’s being supportive of her desire to write a publishable story, it’s a little accidentally flirty and therefore awkward. For me to watch, at least.

April then makes her way to Beth’s place, where she is informed that it’s time to start planning her bachelorette party.

April is excited, and while she likes strippers in theory, she wants to include Sara and Emma in the celebration, which is weird but sweet, so Beth agrees. They decide on wine tasting and dinner; Beth already spoke to Brenna, who understands that bachelorette parties were meant to involve alcohol, so she’ll take the night off.

At first, it seems like Brenna is bummed about missing the party…

But really she’s excited to get a night off from the wedding talk. Ford asks her if she has any new public school friends, and Brenna admits she hasn’t made any, except she’s been talking to this one boy who has cancer. She started talking to him because she felt bad that the other kids were treating him like he was contagious, but she also recognizes that she feels this need to fix him so she’s not sure how genuine her own feelings are. Brenna shoves some pickle chips in her mouth and Ford suggests that maybe that’s why she doesn’t have any friends, and they both giggle like old times.

Sara finds Brenna and April packing up April’s stuff and the girls bring up the manuscript and the missing links in their memories of the last year of their dad’s life. Sara isn’t interested in talking about the past though, she just wants to enjoy her last few days of having a full nest.

Sara is getting nostalgic and Brenna and April are trying not to cry when they hear Emma shouting. They go out in the hall to see Emma kicking her boyfriend out, claiming she’s done with him and ready to move on.

April goes to meet a publisher who tells her that it could be two or three years before April gets published. At first I got really angry at April for balking at the length of time considering she hasn’t even decided what she’s writing yet, let alone started writing, but then I realized she’s on a bit of a different timeline than me, so I let her have it.

April points this very thing out to Leo and his “best man” who is not a man at all, but a girl named Frankie. April describes her, quite rightly, as “the most beautiful person ever.”

(I’ve seen Amber in real life with my real eyes, strolling down the streets of NYC, and she’s just as knock-down gorgeous as she is on TV, in case you had any doubts.)

Leo and Frankie are given the mission to find a new wedding band, and April is staying behind to start her new writing adventure.

At school, Brenna overhears Finn telling some guys he can’t go to their party because it’s a little too germ infested for even a healthy person, so Brenna invites him over to hang out with her and Ford; their house is already a sterile environment because of April. Finn seems surprised but delighted and accepts the invitation.

While on their quest for wedding bands, Frankie informs Leo that she hasn’t totally forgiven him for emailing her that he had cancer and then totally falling off the radar. She smacks him and I decide we need to keep her. Leo explains that he’s changed, that he’s not the selfish asshole he was before he had a tumor in his brain, and she’s willing to take him at his word.

When they get back from their failed mission, April tells them that she talked to Dom and he said he could get them a band. Leo tries to say they can totally handle it because it should be the dude that finds the band and also kills the meat with his bare hands, but Frankie and April tell him to get over himself and accept the favor.

Leo says the least he can do to help is to go see the band play tonight with Frankie…and Dom.

After wine tasting, April’s bachelorette party ends up at the Charles, where Meg and Vanessa (two of April’s cancer group buddies) show up. They all chat and giggle about role playing and fantasies and it’s a very tame but enjoyable time.

Across town, Leo pretends to be unfazed by hanging out with Dom, but Frankie has known April for like two hours and can already tell there’s a weird triangle thing going on. Frankie tells Leo that he already has the girl so he can stop whipping it out every time Dom is around and just be nice to Dom, since that’s what April wants. Seriously though, can Frankie stay forever?

While everyone else is out, Finn goes over Brenna’s house to hang with her and Ford, but he feels like he’s being treated weird. He thought Brenna would be better about it, having a sister who went through it, but Brenna says that’s kind of exactly why she IS being weird. To try to prove to himself and Brenna that he can be just a normal kid, he asks Ford to make out, who is obviously very down for that plan.

At the Charles, Vanessa buys April a whiskey shot and tells her why she hates monogamy and thinks it’s kind of dumb for people who know their expiration date, because the whole ’til death thing is a little too literal for her.

(When I was first re-reading my notes on this episode, I thought I wrote “she hates mahogany” and was wondering where I was going with the Effie Trinket joke. I’m very tired.)

Vanessa’s speech sends April into a panic so she says she wants to go to a strip club. Sara, Beth and Emma look dubious, but Natalie, Meg and Vanessa are SO down.

At the strip club, Beth is a little uncomfortable with Sara and Emma there, but April is worried about this being her last hoorah and wants to do it right. Anyway, this is totally Emma’s scene, and Natalie has made it her personal mission to make sure Sara has a good time.

Meanwhile, Frankie forces Leo to man up and accept Dom’s offer to book this band for him, and also to do it appreciatively, and he does. In the spirit of new friendship, Frankie decides to make this Leo’s bachelor party, since she was kind of cut out of his life for a minute there and doesn’t know who his friends are anyway.

At Casa de Carver, Ford and Finn are about to make out. Brenna tries to stop it, to no avail, but Finn decides at the last second that Brenna is right and it isn’t worth risking his life just to kiss a girl he met an hour ago. Finn is bummed about it, though. He says he doesn’t feel like a normal 17-year-old boy, since he can’t kiss a girl just because he wants to, and he’s supposed to be having fun but honestly kind of wants a nap right now. But his rant gives Brenna an idea; she knows just the thing that would make anyone feel like a 17-year-old boy.

Ford and Brenna stand face to face, and Ford says, literally, “I think it’s disgusting when women sexualize themselves for the male gaze.” And while Brenna and I are both apt to agree, Brenna says, “Think of it as a favor to me,” so Ford relents and they can’t help but smile at each other as they go in for a kiss.

Finn is delighted and suddenly not even a little bit tired, and they all giggle about it.

Normally, I’d totally be on Ford’s side of all this, but there are a few reasons I enjoyed this scene a lot. First of all, because it was 100% Brenna’s idea. It wasn’t a dude begging two girls to kiss and them giving in. Also, they didn’t do it just to get a guy riled up so one or both of them would sleep with them later and therefore giving men the wrong idea about what bisexual means (because the “bi” in bisexual doesn’t automatically mean “both at once.”) They were genuinely just trying to give Finn a normal teenage experience, especially because he can’t even kiss a girl himself right now. Plus, it didn’t feel like an overly sexual thing; it was just a fun friend make-out. And they’re teenagers. So, all in all, not as mad about it as I would have been if you had just told me that the Ford and Brenna kiss was going to be for a boy.

At the strip club, while Natalie is hooking Sara up with her Say Anything fantasy, April gets invited up on stage to dance with the strippers since she’s the bride to be, bitches, but that lands her in trouble with security. Grandma Emma tries to defend her granddaughter’s honor, and they both end up in the slammer.

After the kind of bonding you can only have in a holding cell, Grandma Emma decides to grab life by the horns and travel with her boyfriend, and April decides she knows exactly what she wants to write, publishers be damned.

Still out at the bar, Frankie and Leo are bonding with Dom; Frankie even gives the boys the nickname “Domino” and snaps a bromantic pic.

But Dom is drunk, and he quickly sides from too-friendly to too-talkative and starts rambling about April. Frankie tries to veer the conversation back to normal things, but drunk trains can’t be stopped, and Dom ends up admitting he still loves April and wants her back. This earns Dom a punch in his dimpled face, which gets Leo a punch to the stomach. Feels about right for a bachelor party.

The next morning, Leo brings the Carver girls coffee and hears about the craziness that was their night, but fails to mention all the punching. He changes the subject to what April is working on, and she says it’s her novel, because she knows now what she’s going to write. What she HAS to write.

April goes to the publisher and tells her that, just in case this is her One Story Glory-her one story before she goes-she wants it to be her own story. She’s writing a memoir about being in your 20s and having lasts instead of firsts, and learning how to think of it not as just living life, but chasing life. (See what I did there?) Unfortunately, the publisher doesn’t think she can do anything to help her, but April is fine with that, because she’s going to write it anyway.

At school, Finn is bragging to some of his bros about what went down at the New Girl’s house last night, and Brenna comes over to play it up for him. After his friends leave, Finn and Brenna giggle about how easy people are to manipulate and how it’s nice to feel famous and have fans. But Finn says it’s not just fans she has now, but at least one friend.

What did you think of “The Domino Effect”? Do you ship “Brenford” or do you think this was just a friendly game of kiss and tell?

Don’t forget to tweet along with me (@PunkyStarshine) using the hashtag #ChasingLesbians every week! Here are some of our favorite tweets from this week’s episode:

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