The Fosters season 5 episode 3 review: Dinner drama; Mariana mayhem

The Fosters season 5 episode 3 was in some ways its version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, given just how much of it was spent watching people sitting down and having awkward conversations with each other over a meal. Stef got to spend some time around her former high-school crush/new neighbor, only for Lena to realize that there were a few things about her wife that she didn’t know beforehand — including that she stole a car!

Meanwhile, Callie and Aaron went on their first proper dinner date, which mostly turned into a series of uncomfortable conversations after she revealed that she struggled with the idea of surprises and not having any control. He didn’t quite understand what it was that she wanted, and took her relinquishing control in planning the date to mean that he should surprise her with everything along the way. She clued him in on the truth at the end, but this was hardly a banner first date. (Great job by the writers of allowing Aaron to just be a great, complex character, and not making him being transgender the most interesting thing about him.)

The awkward conversations even continued over to Brandon, given that his relationship with Grace was extremely one-dimensional and tied only to sex. He couldn’t communicate to her why he didn’t want to play music with her, and it wasn’t until the end that he made it clear that it was all tied back to Juilliard — he associated music with his failure to fulfil his dream there, and was doing everything that he could in order to distract himself from it. Music was the ever-present reminder until he realized that he couldn’t stay clammed up and refuse any sort of creative outlet with her. That was one of her love languages, not that he’s old enough to know what love languages are.

As eventful as some of the stories were — which also included Jude and Noah agreeing to make sacrifices for each other (here’s to seeing if they last) and Jesus realizing that Lena is actually afraid of him — we do think that this episode is mostly a story about Mariana still needing to learn that acting like her sister is not a great way to guarantee her future. If you recall, Callie found herself in hot water because she didn’t listen to authority and went about trying to make change the wrong way. Mariana had already been told not to run a secret underground newspaper, and saw that there were security cameras put in the hallways of Anchor Beach that would catch her in the act. with that, she decided to drop her paper via drone, which led to the STEAM program getting canceled and having all of those students hate her.

Sooner or later, Mariana’s actions could also cause further problems for Lena, who is basically now on leave until the school can come up with some sort of compelling reason to fire her to make Anchor Beach into a private school. Meanwhile, Mariana, instead of learning her lesson from this, went off and signed up for roller derby while forging Lena’s signature in the process. We have a feeling that this will end up as the bigger issue that her determining that she wants to play a contact sport. Lena’s got a lot to be worried about, and Mariana’s recklessness is a part of it.

How was all of this to watch?

Very compelling, but we’d argue that The Fosters needs to be careful of giving us too much of a single idea. We’re sure it was intentional juxtaposition to see Callie and Aaron’s awkward dinner at the same time that Lena and Stef had the new neighbors over, but it felt over time like discomfort on top of discomfort and we didn’t learn all that much. Instead, we were just cringing over some of the obvious communication errors that were going on and wanted to move on to something else.

The end of Callie’s story proved to be interesting mostly because of the uniqueness of it. The idea of someone not wanting to be surprised because of trauma is a reasonably new story that has not been played out all that much on TV. There is some interesting, fertile territory that we had a chance to explore for these characters, provided how long they want to move in this direction. We do think Aaron is the best romantic partner that she’d had just in terms of someone who is mature, experienced, and understands a lot of what she’s gone through. It’s still a little bit weird that Mike and AJ have just completely fallen off the map, though. Where are these two?

“Contact” was, in the end, though, a Mariana episode, and we haven’t been more entertained and frustrated by her at the same time. She’s very relatable in the sense that many high schoolers likely have many of the same struggles. However, at the same time we are incredibly confused about why she hasn’t learned anything from some of what she’s seen Callie go through. Is she that misguided, blind by her ambition, or just hungry for the attention regardless of what it’s for? All are interesting mysteries. Episode Grade: B.

Now, your thoughts

Let us know what you thought about this episode of The Fosters, and some of the storylines that took place throughout, in the comments! You can also learn more in regards to what is coming up next by heading over to the link here. (Photo: Freeform.)