The Fosters

OMG!  What else can happen on this show?

Sherri Saum and Teri Polo

     I started watching The Fosters because Teri Polo (Meet The Parents/Fockers, etc.) plays one half of a lesbian couple raising one biological child; two adopted twins, and then they add two foster children in the pilot.  It’s an ABC Family show so it’s very inclusive in terms of ethnicity, sexual orientation, and adolescents looking for love.  Actually, by the fourth episode two teenagers had had sex and then ‘the moms’
had given them the morning after pill.  Since I work with adolescents, I was more than a little horrified.  

Young Love

     Couldn’t they have developed the relationship over a longer, more complex story arc?  Did they have to have sexual relations?  Couldn’t both sets of parents have discussed where the relationship was going?  Could I make my narrative choices sound any more tedious?  Maybe not, but I think they jumped the story gun, so to speak, on this one until . . . it’s revealed that the parents of the other family are undocumented immigrants and the daughter didn’t know.  I didn’t see that one coming.

Dexter and Executive Producer Jennifer Lopez
with the Entire Cast of The Fosters

     It’s a soap opera with hot button political issues and it’s covered quite a few:  divorced parents, blended families, gay parents, multiethnic families, levels of color and identity within a specific ethnicity, Christian values in tandem with or versus progressive values, foster care regulations, teen rape, younger children wrestling with gender identity, and parents worn out by all the issues.  I know how they feel because I’m pretty much exhausted reviewing the season so far.  It helps that they’re all pretty gorgeous with Pacific Butterscotch lighting and a set and props budget that would cost at least twice as much as ‘the moms’ probably make.  Jennifer Lopez executive produces it so maybe she lent them some of her hand-me-downs.

     It’s a short summer season replacement and there are about two episodes left.  Where it goes next, I cannot hazard a guess.

The Fosters can be seen Mondays at 9PM on ABC Family.

http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/the-fosters/cast/stef-foster