Recap: Good Trouble 1×12 “Broken Arted”

“Broken Arted” is a heartbreakingly beautiful hour of television; everything is starting to come to a head for our favorite Coterie residents in what is, without a doubt, Good Trouble’s best episode to date.

Callie + Gael

I’ve been saying this for weeks now — Gael is in love with Callie. As we learned this week, it’s glaringly obvious to everyone except for Gael and Callie (and arguably Jamie).

Let’s go back for a second. Gael’s big art show is finally here. But we see in a flashback that the gallery owner wasn’t over the moon about one of his wood pieces, especially considering cast iron seems to be Gael’s specialty. Even Bryan, using a poor choice of words, called it mediocre.

Gael asks Callie to come up to his loft the night before the show so that she can give her honest feedback on that piece. Callie agrees, saying it’s not his best work, but that she’ll help him make something new. Cue the sexual-tension-filled montage of them closely working together on his art.

In one of their many heart-to-heart talks, Gael admits to Callie, “I haven’t felt inspired about my art in months. It’s just felt like another thing on my to-do list… Maybe this whole time, all I needed was you.” Callie jokingly asks if she’s his muse, but Gael honestly answers, “If you’re up for it.”

Back at the art show, Jazmin and Gael have a conversation about Bryan. Jazmin keeps it real with Gael, saying, “I don’t have a problem [with him] but you do, always picking guys you can’t actually get serious about… You’re not in love with him and not in danger of falling. It’s what you do.” Gael says it’s not like what happened with Elijah (presumably an old boyfriend), but Jazmin asks him if he’s let himself feel that way since. Gael immediately glances across the room at Callie, which prompts Jazmin to share a little piece of advice with her brother: “You didn’t fight for Elijah. Don’t let that happen with this one.”

Throughout the night, Bryan notices that both Callie and Gael have stained hands, from where they were working on the piece the night before, and puts two and two together. He confronts Gael once they return to the Coterie about why he didn’t mention that Callie had helped him with the new piece, but Gael just says his relationship with Callie is none of Bryan’s business. Gael says he should have never agreed to being exclusive and Bryan, in his drunken state, gets so mad that he throws something across the room (I like to think he throws the molds of Callie and Gael’s hands that they used to create the piece since Bryan notices them sitting on the table. But I think that probably would have been a little too big for him to throw with ease).

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Bryan asks. Gael brushes that comment off, saying that they’re “not right for each other”; but Bryan keeps pushing him, saying that Gael was “shut off from the start” and until he figures that out, he “won’t be right for anyone”. And of course, he makes a bitchy comment to Callie on his way out about how she’s finally won.

Mariana

Mariana is helping Malika get ready for the Jamal protest and it sparks a new app idea (as it turns out the original app she was planning to pitch to Evan was already pitched a couple of years ago and Evan turned it down). She wants to design an app called Activism that connects activists who have important causes they are passionate about but need more people to support them with people who want to get involved but don’t know how. However, Casey tells her that Evan would never go for it because Speckulate is not a “civil-minded” place.

Mariana ends up talking to Evan — who for some unknown reason showed up to Gael’s art show — and ends up hearing her pitch about Activism. He loves it and wants to start working on it immediately. Ecstatic about her win, Mariana immediately shares the news with Raj, but he’s not nearly as enthused as she is. He warns her about Evan’s intentions; Raj says Evan is different around her and looks right through everyone else. Mariana ends up blowing up at Raj for projecting his feelings onto the situation and storms away.

Josh and Angela are at the art show, too; seriously, did everyone come just to support Gael? I have so many questions about this. Anyway, Josh tells Angela that it’s her job to stop Mariana from pitching her new app to Evan in order to avoid “another Amanda situation”. Josh mentions that it’s clear Evan’s interest in Mariana “isn’t just professional” and they don’t want Speckulate to get bad press when something ultimately goes wrong. Hell, she can even fire Mariana as far as Josh is concerned.

Angela confronts Mariana about her spreadsheet. But instead of firing her over it, like Josh wants, Angela ends up giving Mariana a jump drive with all of the males employees’ salary information.

Davia + Dennis

Last week’s episode didn’t give us any kind of follow up to the bomb Jeff dropped at the end of 1×10 that he was leaving his wife for Davia. Although she had said moments before that bomb dropped that she was done with him, as it turns out she’s not. In fact, she’s decided that she’s going to move back to Fitchburg to be with him — as soon as he leaves his wife of course. She’s tired of being his mistress. Oh Davia, you can do so much better than him. LET HIM GO ALREADY.

Dennis, however, is struggling mightily. His friend Nathan — remember the guy who’s dating Jennifer? —  tells Dennis that he’s not actually backing Jesus’ tiny house project. He was initially doing it as a favor to help Dennis out financially, but since Dennis no longer needs the money, Nathan sees no reason to invest in it.

Jennifer crashes their lunch and confronts Dennis. She’s confused as to why he now wants half the money from the sale of their house, especially after he said that it was the least he could do for her after he cheated on her and not being there when she needed him. She tells him that he spent their entire marriage taking care of himself, putting her and Jacob last. “Jacob had to get cancer for you to pay any attention to him,” she yells at him. “You were a shitty husband and a shitty father.” Ouch — talk about a dagger through the heart. I truly felt for Dennis in this moment.

Later on, Dennis leaves an apologetic yet super concerning voicemail on Jennifer’s phone that prompts her to come check on him at the Coterie. Davia tells her that he’s not there, but viewers see him sitting in his car somewhere, crying by his lonesome. We see him recording his voicemail to Jennifer, saying that he wished he had died that day, not Jacob. We also see a montage of Dennis showing love to every single member of The Coterie at Gael’s art show, which absolutely broke me. If they harm Dennis in any way — or worse, kill him off — I will riot.

Episode Notes:

• Here for Malika spilling all the tea with this line: “This is the problem with recruiting white college grads to teach at diverse urban schools. Y’all can’t relate to your students and you have no clue what their real home lives are like.”
• Callie and Jamie are still investigating how Judge Wilson was able to get the charges dropped against Tate. As it turns out, they hear from one of their sources that Chief Kelly, the police chief when Jamal was shot, was forced to retire shortly after. There was an investigation being done on some comments he had made about how it was “cheaper and easier” for the department to let victims of the police department die.
• There was a lot of speculation within the fandom about whether Evan was just extremely awkward or actually had been diagnosed with something. As it turns out, Evan has social anxiety and I’m glad the writers finally clarified this.
• Jamie finally hears back from a lawyer about Jazmin’s case. She can settle for $10,000 or she can take the case to trial. At first, she decides to go to trial because she wants employers to stop discriminating against trans people. But she ultimately decides to settle because the money could really help her get back on her feet.
• The clips of planes dropping bombs was the perfect background for the Alice-Joey-Meera-Sumi conversation. It clearly foreshadows that shit is about to hit the fan next week and I AM HERE FOR IT.
• Off of that, are we supposed to be excited about the fact that Alice is probably going to admit that she still has feelings for Sumi and stop Sumi’s wedding from happening? Does anyone actually ship Sumi and Alice? All Sumi does it take advantage of Alice and use her when it’s convenient for her. I ain’t here for this shit.
• Malika gets a call from Dom, who she had been worried about all episode, and ends up not showing up to Jamal’s rally — you know the one that she organized. I hope nothing is seriously wrong with Malika and that it ends with her having a relationship with Dom, just like she’s wanted.
• I really hope they don’t try and make Evan the “bad guy” who was just being nice to Mariana this whole time because he thought she was hot. Despite not knowing if I “ship” them, I really like their chemistry and the fact that Evan has always given her the time of day when Alex and the rest of the team don’t.

Good Trouble airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on Freeform.