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“The Fosters” recap (2.6): “This is what it sounds like when unicorns cry”

Previously on The Fosters, Lena wanted to be pregnant so badly she turned into a pod person. Brandon got high, paranoid, and hilarious. He told Lena that Mike’s gross girlfriend had sex with him and Lena became the first adult in the history of ABC Family to identify statutory rape. Callie had a panic attack while attempting to have sex with Wyatt. Jude remained silent, Sophia remained just over the line of normal teenage behavior. Jesus juggled Hayley and Emma but Mariana got stuck with the mess. Stef followed Mike and found out that he didn’t murder Ana but parked her in a seedy hotel.

Tonight, we begin in the bedroom where Stef and Lena are discussing the possible overuse of pink in their nursery decor. All the talk about whether they should have been more gender neutral in their palette gives Stef an idea. She says she’d like to play around with some gender roles while the kids are all still sleeping. Before they can get started they are woken by some coos from a baby. Stef hands the baby to Lena but can’t get her mind off of Lena’s “long fingers.” She tries to cover by saying the baby also has Lena’s, um, toes! Yeah, toes.

It was all a dream, and Lena wakes up to the melodious sounds of Jesus and Mariana screaming and slamming doors. Poor Lena can’t even get laid in her dreams. Lena mediates the dispute and then gets woozy when she heads back to her room. Lena checks her reflection in the mirror (verdict: fairest of them all, per usual) and then leaves a message for her doctor. When Stef answers at the seedy hotel and promises she’s almost done breaking up this MENSA gathering.

Mike and Stef go a couple rounds about who feels more betrayed. How dare you investigate me! How dare you put the woman who tried to extort us in a hotel room! Ana chimes in that she’s clean now and isn’t that great? Stef and Mike head outside to scream some more because not everyone heard them before. He just squawks about how she can’t understand because she’s not an addict. Stef tells Mike she wants no part of his current experiment in witness tampering and they both storm off. Stef gets a call from Mariana saying that Brandon took Lena to the emergency room.

The next morning, Stef takes Lena’s blood pressure which is high. She hands Lena a glass of water, and orders her to stay hydrated, in bed, and offers to call Lena’s doctor, Lena’s mother, and perhaps the National Guard. Lena tells Stef that she’s driving her bananas but she could sure use a veggie burger.

Wyatt has asked for a meeting with Brandon to discuss Callie. Brandon says, “I feel for you, bro. No one gave me a manual about how to understand Callie, so I went looking for it in her pants.” Back home, Jesus is working on selling the Craftmatic: Lesbian Bed Death model to a guy who would like his parents never to have sex again. The parents, who do not speak English, want to know where Lena’s husband is. Jesus says “He went out for a ride and never came back.” Mariana yells that Lena is a lesbian because being loud makes it easier to understand and draws them a diagram of scissoring.

Outside, Callie is planting some flowers when Jude comes out. She does that thing where she tells Jude the thing she hopes comes true. This time it’s about the baby being okay. She also gives him permission to be silent for however long he wants. Pretty sure the last three episode show he doesn’t need your blessing, Callie. Stef comes running up the stairs with a veggie burger for her hot wife only to find the Kims still lying in her bed. Turns out Mama Kim would like the bed but Papa wouldn’t. Stef isn’t interesting in selling half of the bed so the Kims go home empty handed.

Mariana and Jesus bicker and she announces, like she’s the pharmacist in Rosewood, that she’s a virgin because she wants to be, dammit. Brandon and Matt are hanging out at the kitchen table. Mariana bolts and Matt giggles into his soda.

Upstairs, Stef and Lena are playing doctor, but not in the fun way. Stef tells Lena she has to stay in bed but Lena is desperate to sell the bed so they can co-sleep with the new baby. Stef has the wisdom of someone who has been there before and says co-sleeping is a terrible idea. Lena says, but baby can you imagine being ejected from my womb and having to be out in the cold, cruel world? Before they can explore the wonders of being inside Lena’s *ahem*, Mariana tells them that Mike and the rapist are downstairs.

Dani made a casserole but left the candy for dessert in her windowless van. Brandon walks in and suggests that maybe Dani shouldn’t go up to see Lena on account of how Lena might kill her. Surely, murder is no good for the old blood pressure. Upstairs, Mike walks right in and makes himself at home on the bed. He says he’s happy for them and that he and Dani might be having a baby, too. You see, she loves kids so so much that she might have made one with my son.

On the front porch, Mike is explaining what the hell he is doing with Ana. He is atoning for wanting to kill Ana. He nearly lost control that night and he wants to make up for that. Let’s see how he deals with the news about his rapist girlfriend.

Out back, Mariana is doing some geometry homework when Matt comes over to tease her a little. They banter about Mathletes and why she doesn’t wear the kick ass jacket Kevin Gnapoor got her. Then he asks her out. She says yes (in spite of her running feud with Jesus over him dating her friends she has no problem dating one of Brandon’s buddies).

Upstairs in the mattress showroom, some guy is using a blacklight to check for semen. If he finds any someone is going to have a lot of explaining to do. While Jesus and Mariana argue about their respective cuts of the sale, the guy crawls under the bed to check out the motor. Dude, that thing buzzing under there is not the bed. Downstairs, a couple asks Callie how much they want for the breakfast table. People, you can’t put a price on the pancakes.

The moms are doing some college vintage snuggling in a single bed. Sure, it’s cozy but you can’t sleep without your arm going numb. Lena suggests they name the baby Francesca after Stef’s dad. They will call her Frankie and ensure that she is always picked first for softball. Well, that was heartwarming for a minute so Lena switches to telling Stef some stuff about Brandon.

Stef wastes no time finding Brandon in the garage where she tells him, “For pete’s sake, get a new song, would you? Everyone knows you’re an outlaw blah blah blah.” They sit on the couch to chat. Brandon asks what exactly Lena told Stef. That whole outlaw thing is just a song, OK? She laughs when she says that should have warned him that they aren’t people who do well with pot. She lays down the law and then tells him it’s no fun being a hard ass, but someone has to be one. He’s just relieved they were only talking about pot this time.

Jesus and Mariana are trying to sell the bed but the lady wants to know why sell it if the bed is so great. Stef tells her she hasn’t gotten laid on that bed since it arrived. After some haggling the lady agrees to buy it and the bed that killed sex is gone!

That night the family plays a game of Monopoly on the bed. Stef is wearing a T-shirt that reads “Substitute Teacher” and the mind boggles at the number of teacher/principal shenanigans she and Lena must get up to. Brandon is quiet, but Jesus points out that no one is as quiet as Jude. Jude laughs.

Mariana is nervous when she hasn’t heard about Lena’s doctor’s appointment almost three hours after it started. It doesn’t assuage her panic when she is pulled from class to join her siblings in the hall.

At the hospital, Stef and Lena are listening to the doctor tell them that Lena’s condition has gotten worse and they need to deliver the baby to save Lena. Lena doesn’t want to believe this is the end. She wants to hang on for a few more week until the baby is viable. Stef rushes out with the doctor but they can’t force Lena to deliver, even if she is risking her own life.

Have you ever seen a pair of trees grow together? There are places where you can see that they are separate, distinct plants, but their trunks and branches wind around each other and their roots are so tangled up you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Neither started out needing the other; they were growing just fine on their own. But they’ve knit themselves together, and changed their shapes so that you can’t take one away without losing a piece of the other. Lena wants to cling to this baby, this tiny sapling she’s been growing for twenty weeks. But Stef, as much as she loves the promise of little Frankie, she can only see the ripping, the tearing, and the pain of losing the woman around whom she has grown her entire life.

When Stef walks in, Lena tells her that she saw the baby in a dream and that she has faith it will be all right. Stef can’t muster that faith. Instead, she has five kids who need both of their moms. Five kids who are sitting in the waiting room and who are happy to know Lena will be okay and sad to know the baby won’t. Lena’s mom storms through the doors. Stef grabs her in a hug like she’s the only thing keeping her from drowning. Dana goes to Lena’s room and it sort of hangs in the air for a second that one of them, and maybe both, is going to lose her daughter. This scene is so good, and Sherri Saum and Lorraine Toussaint are lovely.

But before we get to that we have Callie and Brandon to deal with. His advice is that she should call Wyatt because that’s what you do, you call your boyfriend. He empathizes with Wyatt. It sure is hard to love her and to get so little information. So she should just tell him she was raped (because that’s a thing Brandon should get to decide). He’s not done doling out advice, he tells her that keeping stuff inside doesn’t make it hurt less, it only hurts the people around you.

Back inside, Lena starts telling Dana about how she worries that because she’s not connected to the kids by blood there are going to tell her she’s not their real mom and walk away from her. This is a nice nod to the scene when Stef was shot and Mariana worried that maybe the moms wouldn’t want the twins anymore. Lena worries that they won’t love her the way she loves them. Dana nods and tells her that she’s right. Kids don’t love their parents the way parents love their kids. It has to be unbalanced otherwise who would put up with the sleep deprivation, the endless diapers, the smart ass remarks, and the tantrums? Nature sorted that out for us. It tipped the scales so that parents would step in front of a car or take a bullet or go hungry to protect their children. Dana reminds Lena that there are five kids who need her, who count on her, who have to have her in their lives. Those kids win. What they need will always come first. It’s what parents do. You break your own heart a little if it means protecting your kids.

Callie tells Jude she understands he’s pissed at her. She promises that she will never see Sophia again if that’s what he wants. She says there’s nothing he could say that would make her run away again but he can’t shut her out. It’s selfish, and he’s not selfish. Little Jude says, okay and the spell is broken! Dana walks out and nods to Stef. They will lose the dream of Frankie but Stef will keep her wife, the kids will keep their mother, and Dana won’t be the one losing her daughter.

That night, Wyatt and Callie are talking on the front steps. She says she’s sorry for not explaining. She was raped and she isn’t over it and she needs space to work through it all. He tells her all he needs is for her to talk to him.

Back in the hospital, Lena thinks she might be having a fever dream because there’s an adorable girl standing in her room clutching a pink unicorn. The girl asks of Lena is sick and she says she will be fine. The girl’s mom comes in and starts to lead Layla away. But she tells her mom that her pink unicorn wants to stay with Lena. The unicorn’s name is Frankie.

Back at home, they are planting a cherry tree for Frankie and Jude is giving a speech. Apparently, he’s gone from zero talk to heartfelt tree dedications overnight.

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