Moms Stef and Lena of Freeform’s The Fosters make their second guest appearance in spinoff show Good Trouble, in an episode that raises the question: What’s more awkward, bringing your lesbian moms to your conservative boss’ house for drinks or having dinner with your new girlfriend, your ex, and the ex’s new girlfriend? And what happened to Lena’s hair? It’s now rather … straight.
Here’s the setup: Lena (Sherri Saum) and Stef (Teri Polo) come to visit daughters Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) and Callie (Maia Mitchell) in Los Angeles, taking a break from Lena’s campaign for State Assembly. They all end up invited for drinks by Callie’s boss, a conservative judge. Meanwhile, lawyer Callie is working on a case involving the shooting of a Black man by a White cop and programmer Mariana is organizing resistance to unfair pay practices at her tech startup. Intersectionality is the overarching theme of the plotlines here, and while the denouement of Mariana’s part of the storyline feels a little too easy, we can only hope that more of real life could be that way.
There’s also a storyline about the strain that Lena’s campaign is putting on the moms’ relationship. Could it even drive them apart? Once again, I so appreciate having them as role models, showing us how to navigate both the ups and downs of parenting and relationships in a two-mom couple, even after the kids are grown. I suspect that having Actual Lesbian Mom Joanna Johnson as one of the show’s executive producers helps make that feel authentic (albeit time-shortened to fit into an hour-long episode). I still want another Fosters’ spinoff starring Stef and Lena after Lena wins her State Assembly seat and starts kicking some political butt. Meanwhile, former detective Stef could open her own private investigation business and solve crimes. Who do we call about making that happen?
The standouts in the episode aren’t just the actors we know from The Fosters, however. Sheri Cola as the daughters’ flatmate Alice brings her dry comic timing to a funny sub-plot involving ex-girlfriends, and Zuri Adele knocks it out of the park as flatmate Malika, who is also caught up in the shooting case as an advocate for the victim and grappling with her own challenges involving intersectionality and systemic racism.
Watch a clip below and catch the whole thing tonight at 8 p.m. ET.