Police officer Stef Foster and her life partner Lena Adams have a blended family with three children. The eldest of the kids is Brandon, Stef’s biological son from her previous marriage, before she came to understand her own sexuality. The others are twins Jesus and Mariana, who they adopted as young children.
When the couple agree to foster two further kids, Callie and Jude, they do so on the basis that this is a purely temporary arrangement. Five kids is too many, right?
Well as it turns out of course, for all that Callie and Jude's arrival brings a whole host of new challenges and problems for the family, they're likeable kids who just need a supportive environment to really grow into their potential. They quickly win the affection of their foster parents and siblings, leading to the arrangement becoming more permanent.
In fact, the affection that Callie in particular wins among the family soon proves to be one of the challenges and problems the family must face: she and Brandon are soon sharing all kinds of yearning glances, and the state of California has very firm views about the suitability of romantic relationships between foster siblings. To sum those views up: "Nope".
The will-they-won't-they-should-they-shouldn't-they dance between Callie and Brandon is of course only one of the dramas the family will face. This is angsty family DRAMA in the style of Party of Five and other such "nothing can ever be simple" TV shows. People get shot, sent to juvie, have pregnancy scares, are accused of drug-dealing, actually are dealing drugs, steal money, lie to their bosses, and all sorts of other often deeply foolish shenanigans. For supposedly smart people, the characters do a lot of really dumb stuff.
The will-they-won't-they-should-they-shouldn't-they dance between Callie and Brandon is of course only one of the dramas the family will face. This is angsty family DRAMA in the style of Party of Five and other such "nothing can ever be simple" TV shows. People get shot, sent to juvie, have pregnancy scares, are accused of drug-dealing, actually are dealing drugs, steal money, lie to their bosses, and all sorts of other often deeply foolish shenanigans. For supposedly smart people, the characters do a lot of really dumb stuff.
Some people love this 'crisis of the week' style TV, but over a season of 22 episodes I found it got rather heavy-going. Which is a shame, because I think the cast are all very likeable and I really appreciate the show's overt and deliberate policy of diversity: Stef and Lena are a mixed race lesbian couple, they have two Hispanic kids, and one of their children appears to be gay or not gender-conforming (it's not made explicit which, in this season). The show seems earnest in its engagement with these characters and their lives, spending time on the various issues of sexuality and race that they face. It's nice to see diversity that is more than just a couple of minority characters popping up just score 'representation points'.
If this kind of show is your thing, you'll probably enjoy The Fosters; it's not really to my tastes, but I don't think that's because it is a bad show. It's just not the kind of thing I like.
No comments:
Post a Comment