Good Trouble – Byte Club

By: Marnie Faith

Jesus (Noah Centineo) is in town, Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) is finally making waves in extinguishing Spekulate’s misogyny issue and Callie (Maia Mitchell) is once again trying her best to fix everyone else’s problems with the best intentions. This week’s Good Trouble episode reminded us why it is we fell in love with Jesus Adams-Foster all those years ago whilst exploring the often overlooked issue of toxic masculinity and sexual harassment in the workplace.

The episode opens with Judge Wilson (Roger Bart) and his son Tate (Zachary Gordon) openly arguing over who screwed who over worse in the Judge’s office. Unbeknownst to them, Callie’s also in the office so she unintentionally overhears every word of their heated exchanges. Unlike her usual fix it manner, she resists the urge to get involved. Instead, she lets them get it out at each other. She even goes unnoticed until Judge Wilson’s son barges out and apologies to her for having to work for someone like his father.

Away from Wilson’s office, Jesus is visiting! He fits seamlessly into the Coterie dynamic and even manages to find a girl to hook up with (like anyone’s surprised). Unfortunately for him, and Callie, this girl also happens to be Rebecca (Molly McCook). After freshening up, Jesus joins Mariana at Spekulate for a guided tour. He marvels over the fact they have baristas and virtual reality machines at work whilst Mariana tries to make him understand the discrimination she faces daily at the office. She notes him that Skepulate is “great, if you can ignore the racism, sexism and general oppression.” This weeks episode also invites viewers into the first official meeting of “The Byte Club” – a safe space created for the women of Spekulate, by Mariana, to allow them to vent about the daily injustices they face. After a generous amount of wine has flowed, the women all begin to share their experiences. There’s a moment of bonding over Josh (Charlie Bodin), a colleague that’s tried to kiss multiple members of the Byte Club. However, they decide that venting isn’t enough for them. They must do more so they devise ways to actually tackle the workplace misogyny they’ve long grown tired of.

Their first order of business is devising a plan to ensure Mariana is no longer overlooked in team meetings. Flashbacks help us see that Alex (Dustin Ingram) is often too quick to shut down her participation in meetings, thus making her appear as though she fails to contribute to the team. The Byte Club came prepared; however, as they provide Mariana a list of non-verbal cues to ensure she’s heard from standing up instead of sitting down when needing to get her point across to ensuring she is given appropriate credit for ideas – even when Sam (Max Cutler) attempts to repeat exactly what she’s previously said and take the credit. Finally, they utilize a technique called “amplification” in which the note taker, a fellow member of the club, asks Mariana to repeat her ideas so she can note them down and thus ensuring her voice is firmly received. 

Feeling victorious after the success of the meeting, Mariana relays it all back to Callie and Jesus with mixed reactions. Jesus believes that the Mariana he knows wouldn’t be satisfied with the “scraps” she was calling victories and instead pushes her to do more. Straight after this he tells her all about his success with Dennis’ (Josh Pence) old friend. He met with him following a conversation with Dennis about an idea to build tiny houses (apparently there’s a big market for them). The success of Jesus’ meeting is enough to make Mariana snap as she goes on a very detailed rant about the circumstances she experiences daily at Spekulate and is quick to remind Jesus that he will likely never experience half of what she does due to the fact he’s a male. However, Jesus is quick to remind her what a strong, willing woman his twin sister is. Not only that, but he is sure to remind her that his words aren’t coming from a place of hurt. He makes it clear that he only wants the best for her and can’t help but be slightly jealous of her with her college degree and good job whilst he has a contractors license.

Though not quite as misogynistic, things are no simpler for Callie this episode either. She learns that Gael (Tommy Martinez) and Bryan (Michael Galante) have gone exclusive, thanks to Davia’s (Emma Hunton) love for gossip. She also finds herself clerking a difficult case revolving around sexual assault. The case initially doesn’t appear to be more than a filler scene, until we reach Clerk Cocktails. It’s here that Ben (Ken Kirby) relays to Callie that the only reason Rebecca ended up clerking for Judge Wilson is because her established grandfather pulled a lot of strings to get her there, further feeding into her privileged white girl narrative. Later on Callie learns that her previous judge had a reputation for only hiring female clerks and becoming very hands-on with them. Knowing all of this, she decides to press Rebecca for why it was she really transferred.

In order to establish some sort of trust with Rebecca, Callie discloses the fact she was raped whilst in the foster system. Rebecca attempts to shrug her experiences off on the basis of it not being as bad as Callie’s. Thankfully, Callie is quick to remind her that “all abuse is bad.” It is after this that she reveals the full extent of the sexual harassment her previous Judge put her through. However, when encouraged to come forward about it, Rebecca refuses. She believes it’ll force her family to cut ties with her and if any other female clerks find themselves victim to such treatment, it’s up to them to come forward about it. Rebecca tells Callie how she knows that if she spoke out,her granddad’s reputation would suffer – all eventualities would lead to her being left estranged from her family. Ultimately, she’s stuck in the position of suffering in silence or speaking out and risking losing everything. 

Back at Spekulate it seems Raj (Dhruv Uday Singh) finds himself waiting in HR’s office. Initially, it appeared as though he was ready to snitch on Byte Club’s plan to anonymously compile a spreadsheet of employee earnings in an attempt to prove men earn more and, ultimately, close Spekulate’s gender pay gap. Of course, this would largely break the company’s non-disclosure agreement and result in employment termination just by knowing about it. Thankfully, Raj’s angelic personality would never do such a thing. Instead, Angela (Heather Mazur) greets the blue team in their work space to very loudly remind Alex that they were assigned the social media project as a team and Mariana is part of that team. He’s reminded to ensure Mariana is included in the work of formulating it. Left embarrassed and annoyed, Alex instead blames Mariana for snitching. When Raj admits it was him, they’re paired together to work on it whilst Alex and Sam get Kombucha.

After a night of make-out sessions in the restroom of Clerk Cocktails with Jamie (Beau Mirchoff), we’re taken back to Callie accidentally intruding on Judge Wilson and his son’s argument. Clearly needing someone to talk about it with, Wilson confides in Callie. He explains how he often blames himself for the way in which his son turned out and that he believes he lost his way due to being too privileged. He marvels at the way Callie has been able to make something out of her life despite the cards life has dealt her, before emotionally reminding her of what great character she has. Through teary eyes, he assures her to never lose said character as she progresses throughout her career. Wilson was teary, Callie was teary, I was teary. It was such a heartfelt scene.

The end of the episode sees Jesus going on a date on his final night in Los Angeles. The Adams-Foster sisters thought nothing of it, until Rebecca came through the Coterie doors to meet Jesus. Of course, the color naturally drained from Callie’s face before the credits rolled. Jesus really did make a good fit into the Coterie energy though, so here’s hoping that situation untangles itself rather quickly so he doesn’t have to be a stranger to our screens!