‘Faking It’ season 3, episode 2 review: A white party and some colorful conflicts

Through the first episode of MTV’s “Faking It,” the new central conflict was fairly clear: Amy and Karma wanted to be friends again, but neither one of them wanted to go through the process of apologizing and looking like they were caving in. Tuesday night’s new episode was a real testament of just how long they were willing to keep that up.

The majority of the important scenes took place at a “white party” thrown by Liam’s girlfriend Zita, where it turned out that this was actually a secret bar mitzvah party for his as he continued to explore the Jewish religion. He wanted to feel connected to his biological relatives he was just starting to get to know, which is why he was looking forward to something traditional. Then, she ended up throwing something for him that included bacon-wrapped scallops and no actual reading at all. It was a non-kosher even for a non-kosher crowd.

To make matters worse for Zita and Liam, they were already on poor footing going into the party thanks to her hearing a conversation that he had with Karma, one where he certainly made it seem like he doesn’t connect to anyone else quite like he does to her. To be fair, we totally get Zita’s anger. Given how much she did to help Liam explore his heritage over the summer, we don’t think she’s a bad person by any means. A little vapid? Sure, and she seems to think that her way of doing things is the only way of doing things.

While most of this storyline was funny and made sense, her kissing Karma at a moment in the party, simply to anger Liam and make him jealous, really didn’t. It mostly was there to forcibly tie together this story with Amy’s decision to, after many conversations with Shane and Lauren, try to patch things up with Karma. She had also had similar conversations, and it was her who actually made the first big move to Amy by getting the DJ to play their signature song “Straight Up.”

However, when Amy finally approached Karma, she saw Zita kissing her, which she took as a purposeful move on Karma’s part to mess with her head, something that Lauren had already warned her about. With that, the friendship is probably more decimated than ever before.

Most of this half-hour was fun and entertaining, but when the entire turning point of your story feels out-of-character for someone like Zita to do, it does take things down a notch. Sure, we understand making Amy and Karma work for this, but there had to be a better way. (Also, wouldn’t Karma have been even quicker to refuse that kiss?) Episode Grade: B-.