Hello and welcome to the seventh recap of the third season of Faking It, a show about partial highlights, updos, and blowouts. Today’s episode, as always, is brought to you by MTV, the same channel that brought you The Greatest Party Show Ever.
We do not open on the resplendent lawns of Hester Hippie High School, nor do we open on Karma’s bed, or in Amy’s room, under the boardwalk, out of the sea, or on a blanket with your baby. This opening contains none of those things. Instead, this opening consists of a grainy flashback, narrated by your favorite tomboy femme, Amy, not to be confused with Aimee, a friend of mine in middle school who’s room was so messy that you couldn’t see her floor, which stressed me out really bad. Anyhow! This show! This flashback! Ah yes, summer camp. Like many future lezzers, Amy LOVED hanging out in the woods, surrounded by women wearing practical shorts.
Okay sure we can play ping-pong all afternoon!
Camp Whateveriwawa is where Amy and Karma met Sabrina, who just moved to Austin, much to Amy’s delight and Karma’s apparent dislike. It’s unclear why Karma’s way less enthusiastic about Sabrina’s arrival than Amy is, maybe it’s ’cause Sabrina tells dumb jokes or because her and Amy can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.
This one time, at band camp, she stuck a flute in her pussy!
Excuse me?
What? You don’t think I know how to get myself off? Hell, that’s what half of band camp is. Sex Ed.
So, are we gonna screw soon? Cause I’m getting kinda antsy.
Lauren’s Bachelorette Pad In Purple: Liam wants to be very helpful! He loves being helpful. He loves getting mugs down off the shelf, and he loves rules, because there were no rules at Shane’s and there are lots of rules at Lauren’s. He loves the nice sheets, the potpourri in the bathroom, all of it, he just loves it! Also, he says something to suggest that Lauren isn’t “fun,” which she takes umbrage with.
Okay FINE, I’ll drink out of the WHITE MALE TEARS mug if you cannot handle feminism with your coffee.
In fact, if Lauren wanted Liam to move in, he’d be totally cool with it, even though that would mean I’d have to recap his scenes in entirety. Lauren, probably thinking mostly about what this means for me personally, will ponder the offer.
Hester Hooligan High School: Shane’s wondering why Karma’s being so picky and antsy during their casting session for a third band member, and she admits she’s nervous about Amy and Sabrina hanging out without her. Turns out Sabrina, Karma and Amy were not “the three amigas” back at summer camp like Amy says they were. Although Sabrina was charming in Amy’s presence, she was sabotauging Karma at every turn! Striking her with a jump rope, saying mean things, etc. I mean… I think we all know what happens to girls who are irrationally posessive and controlling of their female best friends while they are young… THEY BECOME LESBIANS.
Yeah, that’s right, I ate your last granola bar
You BITCH.
Karma insists she’s not just being possessive! Sabrina is a terrible person, really truly, and she’s just being real. Shane points out that Karma isn’t the same person she was at Camp, so maybe Sabrina has changed too, and Karma reluctantly agrees to give Sabrina a second chance. And look who shows up for an audition:
Did anybody here order a giant pizza in a briefcase?
Shane tells Noah that his band is looking for guitar players, not “manipulative back-stabbers,” which’s funny because Shane and Karma are in the band. Karma says if Shane wants her to give Sabrina another chance, he should give Noah another chance, but Shane is determined to Say No to Noah.
Elsewhere in this alleged academic institution, Amy and Sabrina remain inseparable, chatting about days gone by and joking around with Amy’s cool pal Felix, who Sabrina wants the FULL SCOOP on. Like are they dating? Amy says “long story short, nope.” Sabrina asks if there’s another dude-bro in the picture and I mean, thank lesbian Jesus, there is not. “A girl, actually,” says Amy, and Sabrina quickly apologizes, like, “you always talked about boys at camp! I just assumed. Man, that was Republican of me.”
are you…?
Sabrina, on the other hand, has a long-distance boyfriend. That’ll definitely last! Anyhow, then Karma shows up, doing her very best to be excited about Sabrina and all three of them hanging out together just like the best best friends they have always truly been right?
So, Amy tells me that you treat her like your boyfriend but trust her like your very best friend?
Who me what nooo hahahahah!
Just as the girls are pondering where to passive-aggressively hang that evening, the lord delivers a blessing to their cell-phones in the form of Lauren proving that yes, indeed, she is LOTS of fun:
Do you even need to ask
All the invited guests arrive at the fiesta, and are very shocked to see that Liam is now inhabiting Lauren’s apartment, wearing an apron, and is ready to take their coats.
Hey, we’re here for the Super Tuesday Costume Party?
We’re going as Bill and Hillary!
Whoa, sexist Hillary Clinton jokes are NOT cool, you guys.
Also, Karma invited Noah. Also, Karma and Amy both draw red balls from the magic sorting sock, thus putting them on the same team, a situation which draws ire from their potential opponents, as clearly having two soulmates on the same team gives them a very unfair advantage. Thus, Karma’s jetted off to the other team, inspiring Sabrina to joke that her evil plan is working.
Hell no we’re not sharing our tiny red balls
Game Night is underway, and it’s not going well for Team Blue. Karma’s too distracted thinking about Sabrina and Amy. Liam thinks drawing a circle on a piece of paper is a good way of making people guess “pizza.”
Karma thought she’d be the only one at the party with a Barack Obama hat, but boy was she wrong.
Everybody thinks Liam’s being Lauren’s bitch ’cause he wants them to recycle and was wearing an apron earlier and is being bossed around by Lauren. This offends Liam’s sense of himself as a powerful man, and probably also as a terrible artist. Shane twists the knife further, declaring that Liam is no houseguest — he’s obviously New Lisbeth. Felix, admittedly new to the scene, agrees. “Would New Lisbeth be helping Lauren hold auditions next week for a New Lisbeth?” asks Liam. “Yes, that’s exactly what New Lisbeth would do,” says everybody.
Oh yeah, would New Lisbeth be invited into Lauren’s bed every night for spooning and bedtime kisses?
Yes, that’s exactly what New Lisbeth does, did you JUST get here?
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This recap is even funnier than usual, maybe because the episode was more ridiculous than usual.
“Shane tells Noah that his band is looking for guitar players, not “manipulative back-stabbers,” which’s funny because Shane and Karma are in the band.” TOO REAL
“We’re going as Bill and Hillary!” …what I wouldn’t give to have them redo the Halloween episode with this GREAT LIAM BOOKER COSTUME IDEA IN MIND that Principal Penelope could have pre-approved!
And speaking of dreams, have you seen the promo for next week’s episode? It is infuriating!
I WANT TO STAB IT IN THE FACE WITH A FORK
Oh dear what’s the promo?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Rg5cmJ2Rw
Oh my god I agree with Riese so much.
Females are just dingbats, y’all! We never do anything in a direct and honest way, never ever ever!!
Meanwhile, the hetero white hunks are put upon, even victimized, by our ridiculous egomaniacal whimseys, and are forced to LET US WIN because WE HAVE ALL THE POWER and could never win on our own anyway. Poor Liam!
Gay guys are shallow, and easily manipulated by appeals to their vanity. Shane can see through Karma’s BS but is totally helpless with Noah’s.
But Nice Felix and Sad Liam are nothing but the heavy sighs of burdened maturity, swimming uphill against the crazy, unfair, and volatile behavior of Everyone Else.
The two males of color– Karma’s summer boyfriend and Lauren’s undercover cop– were both deceptive and disposable characters, but Liam, our Selfless Hero, is nothing but Generosity, Innocence, and Abs.
However will the Poor Deprived Menfolk Heroes deal with these women and their nonsense? Kudos to Faking It writers for showing the REAL story of how women can’t possibly communicate in a straightforward healthy way and everyone definitely wants to fake being a lesbian for all the cool lesbian benefits that society hands out.
Seriously though, I just cracked up at: “Shane tells Noah that his band is looking for guitar players, not “manipulative back-stabbers,” which’s funny because Shane and Karma are in the band.”
As per usual, fantastic recap.
Oop! Check your headline spelling?
‘Ooooooooh, I think that was not a straight-person dream’ realisation over here. Just gonna wait here for the other 55 queers..
I JUST FOUND OUT THAT FAKING IT IS ON HULU AND IVE WATCHED 13 EPISODES IN TWO DAYS AND I LOVE LAUREN AND THESE RECAPS EVEN MORE!!!!
Also, i’m currently in season 2, and I HATE theo so much! Lauren deserves to date someone cool! where’s that cool person from a couple episodes ago??
Glad I stopped watching this show ages ago. Amy literally never gets to have any relationships and all of the drama is so utterly contrived I can’t even enjoy watching it for the trash factor of lesbian drama because THERE ISN’T ANY.
Dreams helped me realize I was trans! Because little boys typically don’t dream of the Cone of Silence from Get Smart turning them into girls night after night after night…
And the gay thing just came naturally. :P
I think can see where this is goingggggg! Amy-Sabrina –> Jealous Karma –> WhyAmIJealousOMGMaybeILike Her –> “I was Faking It!” –> Burned Amy –> ♡OLIVE GARDEN♡ –> Err, ♡KARMY♡
*sigh* At least, one can dream… They have me until the end of the season. If there’s still no real movement on, at the very least, Amy dating a girl who isn’t Faking It, I’m out.
Pictpurring this happening then you holding up a little “yay!” sign, because it’s still the Cone of Silence… Apologies, I do not know you, I’ve just been forced to watch that show so much by my Dad.
Seriously, the marketed girl love interest for Amy is a bully who’s faking being queer just to steal her from Karma? Carter must really hate lesbians after initial callout for exploitative premise of the show (2 girls faking being lesbians for popularity and to get a guy in case of one of them). The only lesbian character we ever got was guickly turned into a bad guy and then removed for good.
It’s honestly impressive how this show has come up with so many creative ways to be offensive to lesbians
Tbh I’m not even sure Regan was even intended to be made a bad guy, just incompatible, which is kinda worse? Because Faking It does an incredible line in making people do unforgivably awful things only for them to be treated as nbd, minor missteps, ten minutes later. On the scale of terrible-things-treated-as-trivial people on this show have done, I’m not sure almost cartoonish levels of biphobia even make the top 10.
I just read this comment totally out of context on the main page and was like “no, pretty sure Reagan was a bad guy, as presidents go,” lol
I want to like this comment more than once, not just fur the furase “cartoonish levels of biphobia”!
But I feel like specifically making Reagan biphobic was a calculated decision based on stereotypes of lesbians, which fits in with the overall pattern of this show never really quite redeeming itself from their original offensive-to-lesbians premise?
Idk, I get where yr coming from – yes, Faking It has pulled huge lesbophobic crap, and yes, making Regan suddenly ridiculously bad and stupid is one of those lesbophobic things. But as far as raising biphobia goes, that form of biphobia (however absurdly portrayed here) *is* an issue that is specifically endemic within queer community (partly because of how misogyny functions here: bi men are assumed to be “really” gay and bi women to be “really” straight, because ultimately it’s assumed that if people could have men why wouldn’t they?). That said, it’s not only worthless but actively damaging to raise that issue and then brush it aside as merely a difference of character and needs, let alone to then make it a turning point in the lead character’s sexuality and introduce precisely zero other significant queer female characters since.
And in case someone didn’t see it yet, Amy was straight up said to be lesbian in 3 separated interviews, but then in later interview for AE it has been all taken back (and if Amy “reacting to men against her brain and turning into Sexual Hulk” wasn’t clear enough, Covington himself confirmed she’s somewhere in the middle of sexuality scale):
“I don’t know about Karma’s path, but for Amy, she is a lesbian, and Carter and I talked about that. We don’t want it to be a tease, we don’t want people to feel like they can relate to this vulnerable process that she’s going through, and they can relate to this girl because she’s a lesbian and then have that taken away, like, “Oh, never mind, you know, I’m into guys now.”
http://community.ew.com/2014/06/09/faking-it-stars-talk-real-life-faking-it/
“Her sleeping with Liam is just a way to bury that because he’s a guy. It doesn’t even matter that it’s Liam to her, it’s just that she wanted a guy. It’s her effort to not be a lesbian. She’s trying to deny her feelings which won’t work, because that’s not who she is.”
http://www.zap2it.com/blogs/faking_it_season_1_finale_katie_stevens_rita_volk_burnt_toast_post_mortem-2014-06
“Amy isn’t going to wake up wondering if she likes boys. Boy or girl, it makes sense to me why Amy slept with Liam (Greg Sulkin). They connect through their mutual love, and then hate, for Karma. /…/ It makes sense to me. It wasn’t the right decision, but it is understandable. It doesn’t mean that Amy likes boys.”
http://starrymag.com/?p=3327
The whole situation is so incredibly stupid to me. What was Carter thinking when he gave interviews about how Amy was gonna figure out that she’s a lesbian, and not into guys, and then he just suddenly decided that it’d be better to keep her fluid/questioning…
It’s not like gained that many viewers by baiting and promising that Amy’s a lesbian… I’m sure that some people would’ve skipped the show if they knew that Amy was gonna be fluid rather than lesbian, but I can’t imagine that the general ratings would’ve suffered if he had been honest. Most queer viewers would’ve been fine with Amy being fluid/questioning if he had just been upfront about it.
I’m always torn on this topic. Personally I am one of the lesbians in the world who thought I was bi for the longest time, and when I look at Amy, I really believe the actress is playing her as a lesbian. I guess there’s nothing technically wrong, story-wise, with playing up the many curves and turns and mysteries that come with coming out as not-straight, so that we, the audience, feel as lost sometimes as Amy does (and Karma does???). But then again, as you say, this is a show that has dropped the L-word ten times per episode from the get-go and it seems unfair to not see that element of the show’s premise and marketing reflected in, you know, any characters.
No dreams about being gay but pretty sure I’m going to dream about Olive Garden Create A Sampler Italiano Appetizer b/c of this article.
Stuffed mushrooms, mozzarella sticks, and baked ravioli.
“Karma goes bonkers and condones everybody for not understanding that Sabrina is out to get her”
Was that a thinly veiled reference to Sarah Palin “condoning” racism on Facebook? ;-)
“Noah just really needed the money! I feel like I know exactly where this is going, and I hate it!”
My partner also knew where this is going and hated it!
UGH it’s not the same situation but the promo for the next episode reminded me of when, after coming out as not straight, a friend of mine said to me that ‘I dunno what I am, but you can do stuff *to me* if you want! I’m not going to do anything back though.’ As if that was the most tempting offer ever. She said it on multiple different occasions when drunk. My queer college experience was extremely lacking in many ways.
FFS with this show.
These recaps totally restore my sanity after every episode, though!
While I despise almost every plot device on this show…
… Damn, my high school could’ve used some more fake lesbians. At least two of them. All of those years spent trying to explain Teen Titans to my friends or reimagining what Wicked would’ve looked like starting me could’ve been spent figuring out unnecessarily convoluted girl drama and flirting with every single girl who ever made an appearance in my past ever?!
The 00’s were a tough decade for high school lesbians. Plz validate my struggles so I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on 2+ occurrences of ill-fated teenage make out sessions.
*starring.
I couldn’t figure out if I’d make a better Galinda or Elphaba. Sheer foolishness, of course. From this vantage point in the future, I can tell I was quite mistaken. I’m an obvious choice for Galinda.
Class of ’01 here. I was ridiculously lucky to have in my grade two lesbians AND two bisexual girls, myself not included! Naturally one was my best friend, another was my bff/soul mate, a third was a girl I eventually made out with while in community college, and the fourth was that one blonde jock type who pretends to like dating the gay class president but comes out as queer a few years later, to the surprise of no one.
I totally agree, though, that the late 90s/early 00s were a comparatively suuuuuper shitty time to be a gay girl. We had But I’m a Cheerleader…and that’s about it.
Yup, it was ultimately my subconscious that brought me to this recap.
Just saw that on Twitter, thought it could interest girls in Los Angeles : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cg57ZptUgAEAH9V.jpg:large Advance screening of 308 and 309, q&a with cast and Carter Covington, with pizza, at a LGBT center.
I feel like this TV show should be called “how straight women are going to emotionally manipulate you”
Because none of us have lived expurrience to tell us about all the ways – so helpful, MTV!
oh my goodness please somebody go to this for me
I don’t want to get ahead of myself because who knows where this Sabrina thing is going, but for now it feels lesbophobic AND biphobic. I mean: “the straight girl who wants to be your platonic best friend so bad that she pretends to be queer and into you so she can get closer to you than your current best friend” is a new trope we didn’t need.
Love these recaps, they are about the only thing good about the show right now.
These recaps!!! I am so glad you are still doing them. The “are you…?” caption had me in stitches.
I’m so happy you’ve read Harry Potter Riese and that we now get Harry Potter jokes in your recaps <3.
This is Autostraddle at its best.
The fact that Sabrina was marketed as a love interest is bad enough, but they don’t even seem to care beyond the first reaction the supposed story line got, since the mid-season promo is a fake-out with editing shenanigans that are already obvious after this episode.
Efurry week I hope this show won’t be a unique mash-up of boring and infuriating, pointless and offensive, and I don’t know why I keep expecting more, except I do because LAUREN. And obvipussly efurry Wednesday, I get to have the show rewritten and or ripped to shreds :D
This show is slowly losing my interest. I literally only watch so I can enjoy the recaps later.
just gonna note: you can totally enjoy the recaps without ever watching the show
Why is the figure of Finn Hudson so prominent in literally every motherfucking show ever. :(
Also :( at this episode and the promo for the next.
The sneak peek is even more irritating than the promo. I’m so over the dream fakeout thing.
Also, Sabrina’s line about the boyfriend at the end of the episode was actually, “Made him up. Typical questioning girl cliche, right?” Of course he’s probably going to end up being real.
He’s definitely real, though I hope he won’t actually make an appearance (I doubt the promo monkeys would have passed on the drama of it). And speaking of, wow, after the sneak peak that mid-season trailer proves to be even worse: if it’s already so obviously misleading, I wonder how much of the lesbian story line actually IS on the show.
Part of me is genuinely curious, because Faking It’s queerbaiting is different from other shows. Despite its abysmal treatment of lesbians, it was always a queer show, so it’s not an issue of mainstream vs LGBT/LGBT-friendly audience. If Amy/Sabrina is what they advertise, why not have it play out that way? Oh wait. We really can’t win, can we?
That’s why “queerbaiting” is not the good word in this case since they can always say “We have gay male, bisexual female and intersex female leads!!!”. But the issue is that they exploited lesbians while pretending they’ll treat us with respect, and they promised lesbian lead, which was a lie. This show turned out to be really lesbophobic.
So, “lesbian-baiting”? “Lesbaiting”?
MADE HIM UP!?? I listened to that scene like three times and couldn’t figure out what she was saying. Jesus Christ on a cracker! Now the mid season trailer is even more troubling.
This episode hurt my brain so much, made me question everything I believe in, all for one reason: I was sympathetic towards Karma. Team Karma all the way for this storyline. I swear ABC family did this exact same storyline with Judes new friend (my brain is thinking Jack was his name but I could be wrong), the pretending to be gay as well to get closer to them. Really, really pisses me off.
The difference is that Jack (yeah, you got his name right) kissed Jude because he didn’t want Jude to feel so sad about Connor being gone. Not really to make Jude (or the rest of the Fosters) like him more. While Sabrina is only pretending to be queer in order to get closer to Amy and drive her away from Karma.
Ughghhhhhh this show pisses me off so much. Your commentary at the end was perfect. This show is so contrived and nobody takes Amy being an *actual* lesbian seriously. WHY CAN’T SHE BE HAPPY??? WHY?
Sidenote: I hope the people responsible for making this garbage show also look on the internet to see what kind of comments people are making about it so that MAYBE THEY’LL THINK ABOUT GIVING AMY A REAL GAY RELATIONSHIP. UGH!
This is like a month late, but I just needed to say that Lauren’s modded game night shirt brought me GREAT JOY.