One of the things that I continue to love about Good Troubleis that the writers strike the perfect balance of screen time for each character, which allows us as viewers to spend time with each character rather than turning this into the Mariana and Callie plus friends show. This week’s episode is a great example of that. We see Davia gain unwanted notoriety at school when an attempt to reach her students goes awry while Callie helps Judge Wilson after he faces a devastating loss. We also see Malika try to make things right with Isaac while Mariana is still dealing with the aftermath of losing her app.
So without further ado, let’s dive in to this week’s episode!
Callie
Things pick up with the gathering of friends and family at the Wilson household after Tate’s funeral. Callie and Judge Wilson give each other a look across the room and the episode immediately cuts to a few flashbacks. But in the present, we see Judge Wilson excuse himself upstairs and Callie follows him. Wilson makes a comment about how Tate’s friend Graham had “a lot of nerve” to show up at both the funeral and his house. Callie tries to play devil’s advocate but Wilson is confident that Graham is the dealer.
But not only is she dealing with stuff outside of work, her lawsuit is also quickly turning into a disaster as Marcus tells her that tenants are dropping out of the lawsuit left and right because they’re receiving cash vouchers to voluntarily move out of their homes. He tells her that he needs her to call as many as possible and get them to a meeting ASAP. As she’s making calls to all of the tenants, we see her get a text from Graham saying that he can meet later that day around the same time as her meeting. And on top of all of that, Teresa stops by her desk and reminds her that she should be focusing on the job she was hired to do and not letting this side project get in her way.
Callie meets up Graham and asks him what he knew about the situation. He doesn’t seem to know a lot, especially concerning who gave Tate the drugs that killed him. After Callie mentions that she’s poking around on behalf of Judge Wilson, Graham says that he should stop looking into things because “nothing he finds out is going to bring Tate back.”
Callie ends up making it just in time for her meeting at work. The tenants seems split as some want to take the vouchers and the others don’t. She ends up giving a passionate speech about why it’s important for them not to give into the vouchers. “We can’t write you a check but we can fight for you,” she tells them. She receives nothing but compliments for her work but Marcus doesn’t like that she ran out to deal with a personal matter right before hand. He wants to know that she’s committed to the lawsuit and Callie reaffirms that she is. Teresa comes over after Marcus leaves and tries to intimidate Callie by asking her whether or not the files she asked for are ready. But Callie doesn’t say a word and just hands them over.
The episode then cuts back to the wake and we see Judge Wilson continuing to look through the security footage from Tate’s apartment building. We see Tate walk in with a different guy that’s NOT Graham. They bring him upstairs to identify the other guy. Apparently, his name is Chase and Tate met him in rehab.
While all of this is happening, Callie gets more bad news from Marcus about their case. The development company they’re trying to sue is owned by a Chinese company, Onway International which threatens their case. Total bummer.
But before she can leave for work, Callie sees Judge Wilson getting into his car and says he knows where the dealer who killed Tate lives. Knowing he’s probably going to do something stupid, Callie hops in his car and goes with him. They track down Chase and Judge Wilson pins him to the wall until he confesses what he knows, which is that Tate bought the pills online and had already taken them by the time Chase got there. Callie approaches Judge Wilson to try and calm him down, but he ends up pushing her. That moment is ultimately his breaking point as he finally breaks down, saying he failed his son and that it’s his fault over and over again.
The two of them return to the Wilson house and he apologizes for what he did. Callie says she understands cause it was all out of grief. She then tries to relate it back to Malika. She tells him that Malika had no clue they were protesting him and that she didn’t leave because “the people who are fighting for black lives, for her life, are counting on her. And I think that’s something you can respect.” Instead of giving any kind of direct answer about what happen with that whole situation, he simply tells her, “Your tenacity will take you far, Callie Adams Foster.”
Jamie drives Callie home from Judge Wilson’s and he comes clean: he apparently represents Onway International, you know the company that owns the development group she’s suing. YAY FOR CONFLICTS OF INTEREST! But this is seriously going to be an issue in Jamie and Callie’s relationship moving forward, especially since they’ve had a relatively easy-going relationship up until now. I can’t imagine Callie being okay with Jamie’s participation in all of this and I’ll be curious to see whether this is enough to break them up.
Mariana
Mariana is struggling with the fact that she no longer has control over her app, so she puts Raj in charge because let’s be real, he’s easy to manipulate. He’s leading his first team meeting and she keeps messaging him over and over and over again, telling him exactly what to say.
However, the other Byte Club girls are on to what she’s doing. This leads Casey calls her out later on for putting Raj in charge instead of Claire. “Do you really think Claire is ready to be a team leader?” Mariana asks her. “Were you?” Casey fires back. “But you won’t know until you give her a chance. Isn’t that what Byte Club is all about, lifting each other up?” Casey tells her that she’s not sure that alienating the only allies she has at Speckulate is a wise move. As Mariana is walking away from that conversation, she says hi to Kendra and Evan. Kendra responds but Evan completely ignores her. Ouch. What happened to them being friends?!?!?
Raj yells at Mariana in the janitor’s closet about her continuous micromanaging of him. “Look I want to support you but this is very unprofessional,” he says. “Fair or not, you got taken off your app and you just got to suck it up and let people do their jobs, including me.”
So she decides to do just that. Mariana invites the Byte Club girls to the Coterie and apologizes to them. She then apologizes to Raj and says that he was right. Now that she made Claire team leader (finally!), they can suffer on the blue team together, but he refuses. “You’re not firing me off your app for the second time,” he tells her. “I’m not having everybody thinking that once again that I couldn’t cut it.” But she just finds him standing up for himself sexy so the two of them start making out.
Back at Speckulate, Mariana gets a text from a unknown number that just simply says ‘roof’. Thinking that it’s from Raj, she quickly heads up there but she soon finds out it wasn’t from him. It was from Evan. She apologizes, saying that she knows he’s mad at her, but he tells her that he’s not. He admits that he was just pretending to be as a part of a plan he has to take back control of the company. He needs to get them to lose faith in Kendra.
And the way to do that? Have Mariana’s app fail. Kendra’s convinced the board that her app will solve the PR problems that Speckulate has. She asks him if she can think about it, and he says of course. As much as I love the Evan-Mariana relationship, I really hope Mariana chooses to stick up for herself and that app she’s worked so hard on.
Davia
We pick up right where we left off with Davia too. She knocks on Dennis’ door only to have a sleepy Malika answer it and a shirtless Dennis still asleep in bed. Davia obviously jumps to the worst conclusion possible and backs away from the door slowly.
Davia’s back at school and none of her students are paying attention at all. Once she finally gets them to be quiet, it stays quiet because none of them have done the assigned reading. I have to believe this is every teacher’s nightmare, or at least one of them.
Later on, Davia is venting to another teacher about her struggles to keep her class engaged or to at least have them respect her. That teacher’s advice is to get creative.
When Davia returns home to the Coterie, she and Dennis have an awkward moment in the kitchen, especially when Malika returns home at that exact moment. She can’t stand the tension anymore so she goes and knocks on Malika’s door. Davia tells her that she can’t be drinking with Dennis anymore and when she asks why, Davia comes clean and tells her the truth: that Dennis was just released from the psychiatric ward and is dealing with shit beyond anyone’s comprehension. Davia also mentions that she assumed the two of them had sex the night before, but Malika shuts that down immediately. Davia looks relieved but doesn’t come clean about her feelings, instead asking Malika to keep everything they discussed between them.
Davia shows up to her class the next day dressed like a mine worker from the book they’re reading and starts doing a dance that the miners created as a way to communicate with each other. “I thought that by learning this dance, we could learn what was going on during the time of Kaffir Boy,” she tells her class. Since the dance was a form of protest, she tries to relate it back to hip hop and other forms of artistic expression. “AND THIS IS WHERE STEPPING CAME FROM”, she excitedly says, hoping that they would finally start taking an interest in what they’re learning. And they do, so Davia seems pleased.
But her happiness doesn’t last for long. The next day, Davia is walking down the hallway at school and everyone is laughing and pointing at her, calling her ‘Gumboot Becky’. She’s clearly mortified and starts to cry.
Back at the Coterie, Dennis knocks on Malika’s door and asks her if she wants to get drunk. She tells him she can’t cause she has plans, which he understands. As he walks away, she simply tells him he shouldn’t drink alone. And from this sentence alone, he knows that she knows more about him than he wanted her too.
After school, Davia knocks on Dennis’ door and he yells at her for telling Malika about Jacob. “I don’t know why I believed you,” he says. “You lie about everything. I shouldn’t have trusted you.” But she doesn’t “Your whole life is a lie. You lie to everyone who cares about you by hiding in your pain, making everyone think you’re just some loser who dropped out of life for no reason.”
Dennis says he wants to be alone and Davia refuses to leave. “Bullshit. If you wanted to be alone, you wouldn’t have moved into the Coterie. You need people… I can’t keep enabling you by keeping your secret.” She then proceeds to ask him what he’s hiding behind the sheet taped up on his wall. He doesn’t want her to see, but she pulls it down anyways and finds a picture of Jacob that Dennis made solely out of paint chips. “How can you keep all of this pain inside?” she asks him. “You need help. If you want to honor Jacob’s memory, honor your own life.” He nods at her, knowing that she’s right.
And for now, he does choose to do something about his pain. Davia takes Dennis to group therapy and although it’s a baby step, he tells her that he wants her to go in with him.
Malika
This week, we see Malika focused on trying to make things right with Isaac. She meets with her father and is honest about how she’s feeling, that it’s tough to be sidelined when she felt like the work gave her life purpose.
But he reminds her that life can’t just be about the fight. He tells her that he was lying to himself when he says he didn’t regret the sacrifices he made for the movement. As a result, he missed out on many years with Malika and Dom and ended up destroying his own family.
He then switches the topic of conversation over to Isaac. Malika admits that she messed up and he tells her to fix it. “Just show up for him the way he shows up for you,” he tells her.
Isaac comes over and Malika surprises him with dinner with his family and Dom on the roof of the Coterie. It seems to be going great, but then Dom pulls her aside and asks about her arrest. Isaac overhears him asking her whether or not it’s true she might have to do jail time, but she doesn’t want to talk about it in this moment. Dom mentions to Isaac that he hopes their dad is filling her head with non-sense but Isaac simply says that he doesn’t think their dad is about that.
Isaac tells Malika he appreciates what she did for him. “I wanted you to know that the movement is not my primary partner,” she says. “You are. And I want you to know that I love you.” These two just make me so damn happy. That is all.
Episode Notes
- I loved Callie’s response to Ben when he tried to make a dig at Malika and BLM. “You mean the protest they did pull off? That got national news coverage?” *drop the mic*
- “Why are balls always the measure of a man’s strength when we know it’s the weakest part of your body? And the ugliest. No offense. ” Mariana always keeps it real.
- Judge Wilson telling Callie that her tenacity will take her far seemed to be delivered with such finality that it makes me question whether or not we’ll see Judge Wilson again on this show. Now that we know Good Trouble is coming back for a season 3, I assume we will but probably not for awhile.
- No Gael or Alice this week. Alice’s storyline is kind of exhausting right now so I’m okay with their absence for now.
What did you think of the episodes? Let me know in the comments below!
Good Trouble airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on Freeform.