Jesus is upset that Mariana let it slip that he and Lexi had sex, so much so that he threatens to tell Lena and Stef that she had been giving Ana money. The two are broken up before anything can come out, but Mariana still goes to the beach to be with her birth mother, who sings a song from Mari’s childhood in order to butter her up. Ana claims to be clean for a week and in need of a treatment center that could help her sustain her sobriety; the only problem is that it costs more than what she has. Mariana quickly asserts that she doesn’t have any more money and Ana then suggests that her daughter steal something from her foster mothers to sell before reminding her that “family takes care of family.”
Callie hasn’t been sharing much of herself in her court-mandated group therapy and Lena reminds her that she needs to open herself up. However, instead of wanting to use therapy to help herself, Callie wants to find another group, considering what happened with Sarah and Liam; until that can happen, if it can even happen, she has to continue going to the same group on Saturdays and as such, it might be better to use the time to her advantage. When Callie goes to school, she’s forced to deal with questions from Wyatt about her newly private Instagram account: Why is it private? Did it have anything to do with the blond guy at the party? Was the comment on the picture of the tree flirting or threatening? Callie doesn’t tell him anything and opts to walk away rather than get personal.
While Jesus is lost trying to find Lexi, who hasn’t been to school since the incident at his house, Jude is dealing with the most horrifying part of the American educational system: the group project. Being that he’s very new and someone who has already been picked on, his prospects at finding a good partner look rather bleak until Connor offers to work with him. The two are supposed to meet that Saturday to start on their science project, which makes Jude inordinately happy. Not quite so happy is Lena, who finds out that not only are Ernie and Sonia pulling Lexi out of school after the morning-after incident, there’s a possibility they’ll be going to the parent board, which could potentially remove Lena from office or leave a very nasty mark on her professional reputation. Stef maintains that she did the right thing and that she would do it again if she could, also questioning how Lena could be in trouble for something that she didn’t do and that happened away from school grounds.
After talking to Lexi and finding out that her parents mean to send her to boarding school, Jesus viciously confronts Mariana in public over her “pathetic and jealous” decision to ruin his life, while Brandon tries to get Callie to come home with him. Not wanting to be around him following an incident that morning where he blamed her for what happened with Mari, in addition to their lingering physical tension, Callie opts to wait for Wyatt. However, Liam comes speeding up and jumps out of his jeep to yell at Callie, grabbing her arm and threatening her after Wyatt made a comment to him online. Wyatt then comes flying in and tackles Liam to the ground, the two only being able to be broken up by Brandon. Rather than being appreciative of what Wyatt did, Callie’s upset at him for getting involved and he insinuates that he’s done with their relationship.
Walking home with Brandon, she tells him about 20-year-old Liam, the former foster brother she used to have a thing with and who she thinks has something going on with his current foster sister Sarah, who is younger than she is. Following a sleepless night for Lena and Callie, both battling their current issues and unable to shake the personal and professional dramas they’re embroiled in, there’s a knock on the door – the Riveras. Lexi has gone missing and they know that she’s taken a bag.
She didn’t come over to the Foster’s, though, and neither Jesus nor Mariana claim to have seen her in the last couple of days. Since Ernie and Sonia confiscated their daughter’s computer and cell phone, there’s no way for them to get in touch with here, so Stef decides that she’ll go out searching with Ernie while Sonia and Lena stay in to call some of Lexi’s friends. While riding around and thinking of places where Lexi could have gone, Stef learns that Ernie isn’t the one calling the shots in the Rivera home, as he mentions that he’s not a fan of the idea of sending Lexi to a Honduran boarding school. He claims that the country is too violent for him to think about sending his daughter there, but that there’s no for him and Sonia to reach a compromise, considering her temper. At the Foster house, Sonia confronts Lena about letting Lexi have the morning-after pill, which causes the vice principal to apologize and bite her tongue on the morality of the issue.
Callie fills Brandon in even more on the life of being a foster kid when he suggests that she call Bill and tell him what happened between her and Liam. No matter how much she might want to do that, she can’t risk the damage that would do to her permanent record; she would be flagged as “high risk” and if they were to determine that she was “sexually volatile,” there’s a chance she could be sent to a group home and thus, not fostered out again. Meanwhile, Mariana leaves the house and goes over to Wyatt’s, where Lexi’s currently hiding out until her flight leaves the following morning. It was a last-minute decision to stay in the abandoned house, still trashed from the party Wyatt threw, and the two seem to have gotten past some of the major hurdles they’ve come across recently, as they talk about what happened with Ana and have a photo shoot on the staircase. The topic of Lexi’s first time with Jesus comes up and Mariana handles talk of the “sorta great, sorta awful, kinda weird” encounter fairly well, considering her initial reaction to the idea of Lexi and Jesus dating.
Amid all the madness, Connor has come over to work on the project with Jude and immediately takes to the football jersey and skateboard in his room – both Jesus’s. Jude is then forced to acknowledge that because he moves around a lot, he doesn’t have a whole lot of stuff and Connor does his best to assure his friend that that’s okay, that it’s obnoxious when people only talk about the stuff they have anyway before complimenting him on never saying a mean thing to anyone. Later, Jude shows Connor his father’s key ring and lies when the latter asks where Jude’s dad is; instead of being honest and leaving it at “in jail”, Jude makes up a story about how his incredibly rich father was in jail but left and went to live on an island. He says that his father is coming to get him and Callie soon and taking them back to his house, where all their stuff is. Connor calls him on the lie and then the two play video games.
Ernie and Stef arrive back at the Foster’s without any more information on Lexi and she suggests once again that they file a police report. Ernie then confesses that the reason that that’s not an option is because he, Sonia, and Lexi are all undocumented immigrants, which Jesus overhears and takes to Mariana. She then takes him to where Lexi’s staying and the two convince her to come home and see her parents. Once there, Lexi uses the knowledge of her immigration status as leverage, threatening to call immigration if they follow through with sending her to boarding school. Later, Jesus and Mariana make up and she ignores yet another text from Ana, who won’t stop asking about the money.
Callie arrives at her group session and decides to participate, telling everyone (including Sarah, who turned her away earlier in the episode) about Liam’s attempts to make her feel special – hiding chocolate for her, paying her a lot of attention, tickling her, sitting beside her. This makes Sarah leave the session and when Callie catches up, the younger girl says that she’ll deny any allegation against Liam that Callie makes in order to make it seem like she’s obsessed and in love with him. She leaves and Brandon, who was waiting nearby, comes over, where he hears about Liam raping Callie one night. Only now she knows it wasn’t her choice or her fault for what happened to have happened. She does, however, decide to tell Lena and Stef about Liam.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Connor gave Jude the handheld video game they were playing and nothing hurt. Seriously, how impossibly sweet was their storyline tonight? Even if it doesn’t go the way I think it’s going to go (Jude having a crush on him and Connor maybe feeling the same way), just seeing lonely little Jude have someone in his life that seems to care about him is really nice to see.
-Not to be all soapbox-y, but I will never understand people like Sonia, who would rather her daughter become a teenage mother and ruin any chance she has of fulfilling her potential than to offer a simple talk about contraception. News flash: teenagers will have sex regardless of how much protection they may have. If they’re going to do it, shouldn’t a good mother want them to be as protected as they can be, to avoid diseases and pregnancy?
-Since we never received verbal confirmation that Ana was a drug addict, the shift her storyline with Mariana took felt a little sudden. I figured it was heading that way, considering that she’s been using information about Mariana’s past as bread crumbs to keep her around, but this was a bit of a jump. I will say that I’m glad Mariana didn’t fall for it and that the writers are confident enough to make a smart-but-not-infallible, immature-but-not-irredeemable teenage character.
-ABC Family shows seem keyed in on the idea of statutory rape and inappropriate romances between an older male and a younger female (Pretty Little Liars, Jane by Design, Switched at Birth), but this is the first to “go there” as far as consequences and the “darker” side of this type of relationship. Granted it’s the first one they’ve shown to not be consensual, but still.
-I liked all the insight into the foster system through Callie’s explanations as to why she couldn’t just tell Bill what happened. It gives you more understanding of her perspective and the mindset she’s had to live her life by over the past few years.
-Next week on The Fosters: Lena receives a visit from her ex-girlfriend, while Brandon struggles under his new piano teacher, Stef becomes concerned about Mike’s drinking, and Callie comes to Talya’s defense.
