Recap: ‘Good Trouble’ 2×02 “Torn”

Everyone is feeling torn over something in this week’s episode of Good Trouble. Davia has to decide what to do about Jeff, Malika has to decide how much she wants activism to be a part of her life moving forward and Callie’s being forced to make both personal and professional decisions. Let’s break it all down, shall we?

Callie

The first thing we see is Callie getting fit for a new suit and going on interviews. Wait, what? Is this because of what Malika did at the end of the season two premiere? 

Apparently, yes. As we see in a flashback, Callie is brought back to Judge Wilson’s office by the marshalls who confronted her last week about her missing ID card. Judge Wilson, of course, asks Callie more questions about her relationship with Malika, but Callie ends up bringing topic of conversation back to Judge Wilson’s son. 

When Judge Wilson, in the heat of the moment, asks Callie how he should hold her accountable, Callie responds by saying he should probably fire her. We later on see his response, and he surprisingly says he’s not going to. He believes in Callie’s character and it’s his job to prepare her for the real world. 

But Callie finally realizes that applying for any clerkship was out of character for her; what she really wants to be doing is working to change the law an make it better now. So she quit – just like that. 

Malika asks, over wine, whether or not this will follow Callie, who simply says she doesn’t think so, but she can’t really get another job until she passes the bar. 

We also must discuss Callie’s love life, which I’m thinking needs a whole section of its own. Leave any cleaver name suggestions in the comments below. Anyway, one of this week’s flashbacks picks up right after Jamie tells Callie he loves her, but we finally see where Callie’s head is at. She needs time and space to figure everything out, especially with everything that is going on in her life.. Jamie, at first, thinks this is Callie’s way of getting him to breakup with her so that she doesn’t have to do it. When she reassures him that its not, he agrees to give her the space she needs. 

But as we see in her conversation with Malika, it’s not so much about her needing space because of work; it’s more that she needs space from Jamie so that she can figure out whether she wants to be with him or Gael. Malika asks her a simple question: at your most vulnerable moments, who do you want to call?

We later see that when Callie finds out she didn’t pass the bar, the first person she calls is Jamie, who immediately takes her in his arms and pulls her close. So for now, Callie is doubling down on Jamie being her person. I’m still holding out hope for Gael and Callie later down the line, but for now, this makes sense.

Malika

It takes almost 10 minutes into the episode, but we finally see what happened when Malika entered Judge Wilson’s office. She starts confronting him about how it’s his job to make sure everyone gets a shot at a fair trial and he didn’t do that when they allowed only one black man to sit on the jury. 

“You are proof that the system is rigged against people who cannot pay for justice”, Malika yells at him as she’s being restrained and pulled away by security.  

Judge Wilson calls in his assistant, Naomi, and asks her to let the US Attorney know he wishes to press charges against Malika. But Naomi, for the first time in almost 10 years of working for him, shares her opinion with him. “She made a mistake and you know that the consequences of that are far greater for her,” she says. I guess Naomi did enough to convince Judge Wilson that Malika should be let off the hook because that’s the last we hear of it in this week’s episode. I can’t imagine, though, that this whole case won’t come back around at some point. As I said last week, the Jammal case was such an integral part of Good Trouble’s foundation. I can’t imagine it’s going away just like that.

Later, we see Callie and Malika having girl chat over wine, which is honestly LONG overdue. Callie asks the question we were all wondering: what’s going on with Issac? Cut to Malika and Issac in bed together. Issac casually mentions to her that he wants her to meet his family. Malika asks if they’re ready for this “hot mess”, but Issac reassures her that although she’s hot, she’s not a mess. 

In this conversation, he also says that he wouldn’t mind if she took a little break from all this activism stuff, at least on the front lines. “You don’t always have to live in the pain of struggle,” he says. “You know us thriving is a form of protest.” 

Dom comes over and brings some of their mom’s things for them to go through together. He notices that she took down her poster of Jammal and asks her about it. We flashback to a conversation between Malika and Sandra, where Sandra tells her to not live her life in rage. Hmmmm, I wonder where I’ve heard that before. Back in the present, Malika tells Dom that she’s taking a break from all of that.

In one of their mom’s old bibles, Malika finds a letter from their father when he was in jail. This sparks Malika’s curiosity of why their mom never told them he was actually in jail this whole time. Dom takes offense at Malika getting suspicious of their mom. “Bottom line is we don’t know him and he doesn’t want to know us,” he tells her. “We don’t need to go looking for more pain and disappointment.” 

But Malika can’t leave it alone. She goes to the apartment of this guy -who she assumes based on this letter is actually her dad – barges in and says just that. 

Mariana

Things start out with Mariana having a sexy dream… about Evan! Yes, you read that right! In her dream, Evan goes to visit Mariana and they flirt via code and then have a hot and steamy makeout. Now, of course, Mariana can’t stand to be in the same room as him because she’s pictured him kissing on her neck and it’s hella awkward.

But not even a little awkward tension can stop her from asking him for an update on how getting the women a pay raise is going. Evan says he’s working on it and on getting more women on his board of directors. Mariana gets all nerdy and starts spewing out statistics about women being left out of the boardroom. 

Evan: “I love that.” 

Mariana: “You love that women are left out of the board room?” 

Evan: “No, I love that you’re a statistics person.” 

Although I still really like “Maraj”, it’s moments like these that make me really ship Mariana and Evan. 

Evan asks her what he can do in the meantime and Mariana suggests forming an employee grievance committee, so that employees can make suggestions to management. So naturally, Evan puts her in charge of running said committee. 

Later on, Mariana and Raj start making out at work when they think everyone has left for the day. But Evan sees them and walks away, clearly upset.

When Mariana, Angela and the other byte club girls are talking about possible suggestions to take to management, someone brings up sexual harassment workshops. Angela also suggests implementing a rule that supervisors cannot date anyone that works under them or on their team. We see, however, that this probably wasn’t solely Angela’s suggestion, as Evan pulls her aside before this conversation and asks to speak with her.

All of the girls agree to this rule, and Mariana goes along with it of course. But now this means that her relationship with Raj is even more of a problem than it was before. 

Episode Notes:

• Callie and Gael fans were blessed this week. I mean that hookup in Wilson’s office was soooooo hot. Also, we were #blessed with more bathtub goodness.
• I was dying  of laughter when Gael steps out of the shower after having overheard Callie, Mariana and Davia talking about having sex at work. Of course, he was listening to them the whole time. 
• So does Callie no longer working for Judge Wilson mean no more Ben? Cause I’m kind of here for that. But at the same time, I don’t want this to be the end of Judge Wilson. I need him to stick around in some capacity.
• Evan wearing the pink jacket at Speckulate’s Woman Day was just the icing on the cake as to how terrible the whole thing was.
• Davia is still figuring out the best way to help Dennis through his grief. She asks him to go to a grief support group and he reluctantly agrees. However, he ends up skipping out on it. “It is so messed up to think that your life only matters to you,” she tells him.
• We finally meet the infamous Elijah and learn a little bit more about his history with Gael. Although I’m still very much on the Gael/Callie train, I have to admit: Elijah and Gael have much more chemistry than Gael and Bryan EVER had.
• That Callie and Davia scene was EVERYTHING. “Are you drunk?” “Yeah.” “I like you better this way.” “Thank you?”

What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments below!

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