Recap: ‘Good Trouble’ 2×07 “In The Middle”

“In The Middle” is the last episode of Good Trouble before the season 2A finale next week and everyone finds themselves in the middle of dilemmas, both professionally and personally. Mariana’s app gets an accelerated launch timeline that puts stress on her and her team, Gael lands a potential new opportunity that conflicts with a big presentation at Speckulate, Callie finds herself in the middle of a power struggle at the Legal Aid offices and oh yeah, Alice tries to be Yenta for Davia and Dennis.

There is SO much to unpack so let’s dive right in, shall we?

Mariana

Evan delivers Mariana some news: the board thinks that launching an activist app before the end of quarter would be good PR for Speckulate, and lord knows they need it right now. The problem? The end of quarter is in 10 days. YIKES! Later on, as Mariana is trying to head out the door so that she can attend a women in tech mixer, Evan stops her and tells her that he wants her and the rest of her team to create a chat feature to keep users in the app longer and boost ad sales before the app is launched.

At the women in tech mixer, Amanda overhears Mariana complaining to the byte club ladies about what Evan has tasked her with. Yes, that Amanda. She ends up telling Mariana that she was actually fired from Speckulate and didn’t leave willingly. When Mariana mentions that it doesn’t sound like Evan to fire Amanda over a difference of opinion, Amanda sets her straight: “It’s his company. I wouldn’t have been fired if that’s not what he wanted.”

Everything that could possibly go wrong before Mariana’s presentation of the app for Evan does. So when Evan walks in ready to hear their presentation, Mariana finally snaps and tells him that she can’t do everything that he wants her to do in the timeframe that he wants it done in. She tells him to either learn to take ‘no’ for an answer or else he can fire her like he did Amanda.

Evan seems to solely be fixated on the Amanda part of it all and wants to know how Mariana knows about Amanda. She says that people in the office talk and all Evan says is that people don’t have all the facts before he excuses himself from the room.

Callie

It’s never fun to be caught between two people fighting, but especially not your bosses at work, which is exactly where Callie finds herself. Things kick off with Marcus and Teresa are fighting. In what could be taken as a move of retaliation against Marcus, Teresa invites Callie to do a client intake.

We see a flashback of how Callie’s client intake went, but unfortunately there’s not much Callie can do for this specific client. But since this is Callie we’re talking about, she wants to do more to help. Teresa tells Callie that she reminds her of a young version of herself. “People dismiss your enthusiasm, tell you your naive to think you can make a difference,” she says. “Don’t believe them. We make a difference hear every day. When you pass the bar next time, I hope you’ll let me hire you here, as a lawyer.”

Later on, Callie has the idea to approach that client’s case as a class action suit and takes it to Teresa, who tells her they don’t have the funding for that but again admires Callie’s passion.

Marcus, of course, overhears their conversation and asks to talk to Callie. He tells her that he’s interested in taking on the case she and Teresa were talking about, despite the fact that Teresa said they couldn’t fund it. He asks her to keep it between them until he gets their director to sign off on it, and she obliges. At the end of the episode, we see that Callie gets a text from Marcus saying he got the approval to pursue the class action suit and wants to know if she wants in.

Malika

Malika’s going out on a job interview for a job as a marketing analyst at a clothing company to help advise them on cultural awareness and how to avoid promoting harmful stereotypes in imagery. Not only does this sound right up Malika’s alley, but from her interview, it seems like she’s a shoo-in for the job.

Later that night, while Malika’s working at the restaurant, her friend Yari mentions that she noticed someone from the clothing brand is liking old tweets of Malika’s because she was tagged in some of them. Malika takes this as a good sign, but decides she needs to go back through her social media and delete some stuff as one can never be too cautious.

Malika ends up getting the job, but on one condition: they have a problem with her social media posts, specifically the Black Lives Matter ones. They don’t have a problem with her being in BLM; they just don’t want her retweeting or posting about it from her personal accounts. “As a brand that celebrates inclusivity, we don’t want to exclude any of our customers,” they tell her. Yeah, the look on Malika’s face in this scene says it all.

Later on, Malika is venting about her dilemma to Issac. “I don’t know how I could work for a company that sells itself on being socially conscious, but doesn’t want to be too political or polarizing, especially when it comes to black liberation,” she says. He understands where she’s coming from, but tells her that she has to play the long game. “You have a chance to make a real change with this job and to succeed, after everything you’ve been through, that’s an act of rebellion,” he says. “That’s protest, baby.”

However, we know that she isn’t going to take the job because we see her decide to retweet a picture of Jammal from a BLM account. We also see her go back to another BLM meeting, more committed to the cause than ever.

Davia

We start the episode with Davia and Jeff just having had sex. As Jeff rolls off her, he tells her that he “can’t wait until [they] can be together like this every night.” From the look on her face, you can tell she feels incredibly guilty about it all.

So, as we see in a flashback later on, Davia FINALLY comes clean to Jeff and he is understandably pissed at her. She repeatedly apologizes but tells him she wasn’t responsible for ruining his marriage and that he deserves someone who loves him and makes him happy. Jeff doesn’t want to hear any of it and ultimately sends her away.

But there’s also the more pressing issue of what’s happening between Davia and Dennis. There’s all this awkward sexual tension between them and Alice is starting to notice. Between that and their INCREDIBLE (I cannot emphasize that enough) performance of “Falling Slowly” at Malika’s birthday party in last week’s episode, Alice says, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you two were in love.” Cue Davia’s hysterical sobs.

Davia admits to Alice that not only is she’s in love with Dennis, she also hesitated to break up with Jeff because she was afraid no one else would ever love her. Davia also says that she knows she’s not Dennis’ type. “Just because I’ve learned to love my body doesn’t mean Dennis ever could”, she tells Alice. Alice asks her what she has to lose by telling Dennis the truth and Davia simply says: “His friendship.

Alice decides to seize this opportunity and be Davia and Dennis’ Yenta. She approaches Dennis in the bathroom and repeats her comment about how she would believe the two of them were in love solely based on their “Falling Slowly” performance. Dennis doesn’t respond and just continues to brush his teeth. However, Alice tells Davia that she’s pretty sure Dennis loves her based on that interaction.

So, after making herself “casually sexy”, Davia knocks on Dennis’ door. It’s a little awkward but there is so much sexual tension in this scene. However, we’re left on a cliffhanger as the episode fades to black after Davia says, “So, I have something I need to tell you.”

Gael

Big things are happening for Gael, y’all! Due to his recent magazine feature, he has the chance to do a large-scale piece for a client!

But the thing is that he’s still an adult with a full time job at Speckulate, which comes with responsibilities, like designing graphics for Mariana when she needs them. Elijah tells advises telling Mariana ’no’, but Gael re-assures him that he can finish both the preliminary sketches for the potential client and the chat feature designs.

And he does, even though it takes him all night. However, he mentions to Elijah that he’s just going to have to email the sketches to the potential client as that meeting is the same time as the presentation for Evan. Elijah isn’t happy hearing this and really pushes him to go to the client meeting. “Sometimes to take care of yourself, you have to let people down,” he tells Gael.

So he does exactly that: he goes to the client meeting and ultimately emails her the files. But of course, they won’t open when she needs them. She tries to call him, but he doesn’t pick up. She finally gets in touch with him and you can tell he feels bad about letting her down. He tells her he will re-send his files that minute and also agrees to stop by Jamie’s apartment and pick up the thumb drive that Mariana left when she was over there for dinner.

Gael successfully gets into Jamie’s apartment and gets the thumb drive Mariana needs. However, he also sees his piece sitting on the floor of the closet. The look on his face says it all, y’all. This is what Callie was afraid of! In the last 5 minutes of the episode, we see Gael come into Callie and Mariana’s loft and tell Callie that he wants to talk to her.

Episode Notes

Issac and Malika continue to be the FREAKIN’ CUTEST. That is all.
So Elijah continues to be “inspired” by Gael and takes his work and uses it for his own design. I have a feeling this will come back up again and that Gael will not be happy with him.
The montage of Evan asking Mariana for advice about his dating app adventures had me DYING laughing. TJ Linnard continues to kill it each and every week.
Callie is venting to Jamie about how much she hates communal living and Jamie casually brings up the idea of them moving in together. She says she would “love” to move in with Jamie but it’s too soon. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: the reason she thinks it’s too soon to move in with Jamie is because Callie HAS FEELINGS FOR GAEL.
Also, Jamie said the reason he loves “the way the male and female arms hold each other, like a lifeline in a crumbling world” in the piece he bought from Gael’s show last season. Knowing that those are Callie and Gael’s hands is reason #324739024 I think Callie and Gael are meant to be.
Predictions for next week’s 2A finale: something finally goes down between Dennis and Davia. I also think something goes down between Callie and Gael. I don’t think Callie necessarily cheats on Jamie, but I also wouldn’t put it pass her as that used to be common practice for her. Also, maybe we’ll finally get the truth about Amanda from Evan himself.

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

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