‘The Fosters’ season 4, episode 12 review: Ghosts and nightmares
The fourth season of “The Fosters” brought you another new episode last week that reminded us of one thing above all else: Nothing ever seems to go well for the Adams Foster clan. Even when you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel for someone, something comes along that flickers out the light.
For Callie, it was the determination that she apparently is too big of a risk to be sent away from juvenile hall. She broke the law by fleeing the scene of an accident, and despite her testimony, there wasn’t enough to back up her argument. Add to this the fact that she already had a record. This isn’t just a past mistake catching up to her; this is EVERY past mistake catching up to her at the same time. Now she’s stuck, despondent, and having to deal with terrible people who work at this place and are almost certainly up to no good.
While Stef and Lena struggle to figure out the right solution for her, they’ve got plenty of other drama on their plate. For one, Jesus is still in recovery, though he spent most of the episode wandering around in a dream state exploring fears and insecurities. Meanwhile, Lena apparently became so distressed that she started talking to a ghost — at least it wasn’t Denny’s ghost from “Grey’s Anatomy,” right? These stories were the two kookiest ones of the episode, given that they didn’t really need to be there, and seemed more to serve as a way for the characters to channel feelings without talking to other people, largely because this is a world where you don’t see the prerequisite amount of necessarily communication take place. People make mistakes, hide mistakes, and don’t often talking about them.
The “who needs a win more” sweepstakes – In one corner, we’ve got Mariana recovering from a recent ADHD drug addiction, desperate to find someone to relate to in the wake of everything that is going on with her. In the other corner, we’ve got Brandon, who is reeling from the fact that his relationship with Cortney seems over and he doesn’t have Julliard to fall back on anymore. Not only that, but it’s still lingering that he hasn’t told everyone.
Hey Jude, please cut it out – Jude is the most frustrating character on the show right now, mostly because we don’t really care this much about him and his sudden “I love pot” story. We suppose in a way, though, that this is precisely the point. The audience doesn’t want you to root for Jude doing something that is destructive to his development and causing him to distance himself from his fellow characters.
As a whole, we’d say that the second episode of the winter season was absolutely compelling, though admittedly we did find some of the “supernatural” stuff a little unneeded in such a grounded show. Grade: B.
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