The Fosters – Contact

By starrymag | July 31, 2017

By: Taylor Gates

 

Callie (Maia Mitchell), Aaron (Elliot Fletcher) and Mariana watch Ximena’s (Lisseth Chavez) roller derby team compete. Mariana asks Callie to help her with Anchor Beach’s new underground paper called Rise Up, but Callie refuses, not wanting to risk getting into more trouble. Aaron and Callie make plans to go on a real date the next night—one without Mariana.

 

After the meet, Callie introduces Aaron and Mariana to Ximena, who tells them about a junior Latina team she coaches. This piques Mariana’s interest, though she doubts Stef (Teri Polo) and Lena (Sherri Saum) would ever allow her to join. Callie reminds her that Jesus (Noah Centineo) wrestled which isn’t much different.

 

That night around the Adams Foster dinner table, Mariana informs everyone that Emma (Amanda Leighton) and the robotics team qualified for round one at the world championship. Callie updates them on her next assignment for art class: a self-portrait. She’s less-than-thrilled about it, and the family agrees to take candid, off-guard photos of her so she can pick the one she likes best to draw. The theme of her piece will be to find out how other people see her. Jesus voices his desire to go back to school, but the moms want to hold off until after they speak to his doctor.

 

Brandon (David Lambert) is late to dinner, having just got off work from his new fast food job. He responds to a text from Grace (Meg DeLacy) asking if he wants to come over to study, which gets Stef riled up about the kids being on their phones at the table. She quickly looks like a hypocrite as her phone goes off moments later. It’s the new neighbors confirming dinner plans the next day. Callie can’t make it, already having plans to see a movie with Aaron. Brandon will be at work. Stef tells Jude (Hayden Byerly) to invite Noah (Kalama Epstein) over to the supper.

 

Mariana is thrilled that Logan (Christopher Meyer) will be there, but Jesus doesn’t understand why they’re suddenly wanting to be chummy with the new neighbors. Much to Stef’s horror, Lena drops the bomb that Tess (Kristen Ariza) was Stef’s first girlfriend.

 

After dinner, Brandon goes over to Grace’s to do pretty much everything but study. Lena and Stef agree on the fact that they won’t send Jesus back to school until they’re sure he can handle it. Lena teases Stef about Tess again, but Stef reminds her the crush she had was never reciprocated. Tess has always been straight and Stef never was—she was just confused and repressed in high school. The two start kissing and Lena spies two silhouettes in the garage. They feel weird about Gabe (Brandon Quinn) entertaining lady friends on their property.

 

It turns out that Gabe doesn’t have company over after all. Instead, Mariana has borrowed the garage for the first Rise Up meeting. Taylor (Izabela Vidovic) has written a great lead story on why Monte (Annika Marks) is Anchor Beach’s rightful principal. Mariana instructs the staff to fold the papers and get to school an hour early to slip them into lockers. Jude notices that Noah is high while working on the papers. He refuses his invitation to do pot with him, though, clearly a little annoyed at Noah’s behavior.

 

Grace asks Brandon if she’s good in bed, admitting that she doesn’t have a lot of experience in that department. In fact, she’s never even had an official relationship, having been homeschooled most of her life. She tells Brandon she only has one little sister ten years younger than her and that he’s lucky to have siblings so close in age. She offers to play music with him but he refuses and the two go back to having sex.

 

Drew (Jared Ward) tells Monte and Lena that he’s planning on installing security cameras so students feel safer, but it’s really just so he can prevent the distribution of Rise Up. The education department then comes in and announces that Monte was still the principal at the time of the vote, therefore Drew’s was not valid. Board member Lauren (Judy Kain) announces though that if Monte doesn’t resign, she’ll be fired because of the LGBT sex ed class.

 

Mariana crashes the boy’s STEAM club meeting. They make fun of her for not going to worlds with the rest of the team, but she quickly shuts them up by reminding them that there are bigger things to worry about like privatization. If it happens, they’ll all have to go to Union High which doesn’t have any robotics club. She proposes a way for them to help her fight back.

 

Callie gets ready for her date with Aaron. She’s already feeling insecure and awkward and to make matters worse, everyone keeps jumping out to take off-guard pictures of her for her project. Lena tells Mariana to start getting ready for dinner with the neighbors and she stars Googling football facts so she can impress Logan. Jesus texts Emma, congratulating her and the team for making it to the second round. Emma sends polite but short texts back, telling him she’s too busy to video chat with him.

 

At dinner, Tess asks about Stef’s parents, putting Stef in the awkward position of telling her they got divorced and that her father passed away the previous year. Tess apologizes, saying she always really liked Stef’s dad. Tess shares stories of adventures she and Stef had as a teenager, including a time they stole/borrowed a car to go see an Indigo Girls concert. Tess then reveals that Stef dumped her for the cool kids and Stef shoots back that she got a boyfriend and stopped hanging around with her. Tess tries to cut the tension by asking Lena what she does for a living, but when she tells them she’s the Vice Principal at Anchor Beach things only get more awkward.

 

Mariana starts spewing football facts, which charms Logan and confuses Jesus. Logan tells her he’s a quarterback and asks Jesus if he ever played. Jesus admits he used to wrestle and Stef and Lena share that they didn’t exactly encourage football. Tess and Dean (Reggie Austin) are sympathetic to this, struggling with whether they would let Logan play. Dean says ultimately boys get their aggression out through contact sports and Mariana is quick to add that girls like contact sports, too. This triggers something in Jesus and he flips out, saying you don’t have to have gotten hurt playing a sport to get hit in the head and mess up your life.

 

Brandon arrives at Grace’s house without his guitar—he figured him coming over to “jam” was code for having sex again. Grace is offended that he doesn’t want to play music with her, but he promises he just doesn’t feel like doing it that night. Grace is obviously put out, telling him he should go home.

 

After dinner, Stef and Lena talk to Tess and Dean. As a doctor, Tess gives her expert opinion and says that Jesus should go back to school, as some of his anger may be coming from not being challenged academically. She mentions a friend who had a child deal with a similar issue and get a free in-class aid. Stef jumps on this, promising to check it out and her eagerness annoys Lena. Noah gets annoyed at Jude being on his phone all the time and teasingly takes it away. The two kiss and make a deal—Jude will give up video games for a week if Noah gives up pot in return.

 

Trying to be sweet, Aaron orders food for both of them at the restaurant and takes pictures of Callie to help with her portrait. They have a mostly silent drive home and Callie admits she found the movie he picked to be a bit lackluster, making the excuse that she’s exceptionally tired. She goes inside and has a heart-to-heart with Brandon. She looks at all the photos people took of her—one where she’s smiling and holding a coffee mug that Brandon took; another where she looks serious and angry that Aaron did. Brandon says she’s complicated in a good way, having many layers and sides to her. Callie calls him an old soul, telling him he needs to stop beating himself up about Juilliard and start playing music again. He can’t give up on it just because he’s mad at himself.

 

The education department comes to the conclusion that there is no reason to fire Monte based on the LGBT sex ed class. Lauren; however, wants to put Monte on paid leave until they do find reason to fire her. She explains there are other issues under her tenure that are being investigated. Afterwards, Karen threatens both Monte and Lena. She vows that Monte will never work in education against after she ruins her reputation and, if Lena makes one false move, she’ll be next.

 

The next morning, Aiden and Mariana fly a drone that drops Rise Up papers in the Anchor Beach courtyard. Drew is furious and it’s all going as planned until Aiden loses control and flies the drone into a tree where it gets stuck. Drew interrogates the whole robotics team, demanding that whoever is responsible for the newspaper drops to come forward, but nobody squeals. He cancels STEAM club and threatens to cancel prom if another paper makes it onto campus. Aiden is angry that Mariana ever roped him into helping her, telling her nobody wants her on their team. Mariana informs Jude the paper is cancelled, much to Jude’s disappointment.

 

Brandon goes to Grace’s house with his guitar, playing her an original song. Through it, he apologizes and explains he’s just upset about Juilliard. Grace responds with her own song about feeling insecure and thinking Brandon only wanted her for sex. Brandon tells her he wants to be able to talk and hang out with her as well.

 

The next day Callie apologizes to Aaron for being weird on their date. She opens up, saying she hates surprises and likes having a say in what they do when they go out. Aaron apologizes, thinking she would’ve liked his individual planning. He’s also surprised she didn’t like Fast and the Furious because that’s how she lives her life. He promises to share the plans with her from now on.

 

That night, Jude and Mariana both give into temptation—Jude plays his video game and Mariana forges Lena’s signature on a roller derby permission slip. Jesus though manages to resist it, not sending Emma a thirsty text.

 

Stef asks Lena if she’s given any more thought to Jesus getting an in-class aid, causing tensions to flare again. Lena seems a bit jealous at the impact Tess is having and how much Stef seems to value her opinion. Lena admits that she doesn’t know what to do about Jesus. He’s unpredictable, dangerous, and sometimes even scares her. Jesus hears their whole conversation from the staircase.