When Does Callie Get Pregnant? The Fosters “Going South” Review

When does Callie get pregnant? What “Going South” actually shows

The question of when Callie gets pregnant on The Fosters usually traces back to one episode. “Going South” is the fifth episode of season 3, written by Michael MacLennan and directed by Elodie Keene, and it first aired on July 6, 2015, when the network was still called ABC Family. Its hook is a pregnancy scare that sends Stef and Lena into a full panic about their daughter Callie.

The answer in the episode is no. The test box belongs to Mariana, who slept with Wyatt, and nobody is pregnant. Wikipedia’s summary of the season confirms the order of events: the moms find the test in the trash and jump to a wrong conclusion, and Mariana then admits the test is hers. In the broader coverage consulted for this page, Wikipedia’s character guide and its season pages record no pregnancy for Callie. Anyone looking for the date she gets pregnant is looking for something those sources do not contain.

Stef and Lena’s very bad Saturday

The day starts before sunrise with a contractor at the door. Stef has hired him to fix the bathroom without telling Lena, who wanted at least 15 more quotes. Lena storms upstairs, Stef is sent to clean the backyard after a raccoon has torn it up, and in the trash she finds the empty box. She rushes up to show Lena, but before she finishes a sentence, Lena announces that they need therapy.

The original review agreed. The two are not even sure what they are arguing about. Stef acts first and processes later, Lena needs the conversation before the action, and so each reads the other’s words as an accusation. They shelve the fight to deal with the more urgent issue of a possibly pregnant daughter.

Lena goes first and questions Mariana, who says she broke up with Mat so he could live the rocker life, and leaves out the part about Wyatt. The moms move on to Callie. Mariana told them Callie was at the library, but Callie’s phone is off. Eventually Mariana admits that Callie is in Mexico with Brandon, which convinces Stef that Callie is pregnant by Brandon and went for an abortion. Before the spiral gets worse, Mariana confesses that the test was hers, that she did not sleep with Mat, that she did sleep with Wyatt, and that the box is hers.

The Mariana confrontation

Mariana is questioned about losing her virginity to her sister’s ex-boyfriend on a public beach, and she storms off, shouting that nobody is pregnant and the moms should be happy about that. Lena thinks Stef was too hard on her. When they go to console Mariana, Lena says what the review called possibly its favorite line a TV mom has ever said to a daughter: they just want her to love herself as much as they love her.

Before leaving, the contractor pulls Stef aside to renegotiate the payment schedule. In his experience, couples who split up tend not to pay him. The remark shakes Stef more than the argument did, and she agrees to therapy, deciding that being stubborn is not worth losing her wife.

Callie and Brandon in Mexico

Callie wakes Brandon at dawn for a road trip to Mexico to go hang gliding. The facility is sketchy, the training takes a few seconds on a picnic table, and then Mexican police raid the operation. Callie and Brandon jump off the cliff to get away and are met by the police when they land. With no cash on hand, Brandon gives up his keyboard to avoid a Mexican jail.

Approaching the border, they realize they need passports to get back in. Brandon blames Callie and says life was easier before she showed up. Callie has had enough and tells him the world does not revolve around him, and that everything from the restraining order against him to being caught selling fake IDs came from his own decisions. They cross anyway by playing dumb, in the Mini Cooper. The review took this plot as the episode’s least credible and most irritating, and noted that Callie says what many viewers had wanted to tell Brandon since the pilot.

Mike, AJ and the ending

Mike takes AJ to a nursing home to visit AJ’s ailing grandmother, who is his only real family besides his brother. Afterward a radio call sends Mike to a crime scene, and he tells AJ to stay in the car. AJ does not, and a police officer tackles him, convinced he is an accomplice, until Mike steps outside and makes his colleague apologize. At dinner at Mike’s apartment, Mike tells AJ he is in this for the long haul, in a scene the review likened to Good Will Hunting’s “It’s not your fault” moment.

The episode ends on a scene between AJ and Callie. The review said the writers had humanized AJ, whom it had disliked at the start of the season, and that Callie has ten times more chemistry with him than with Wyatt or Brandon.

The Fosters “Going South” at a glance

Sources: Wikipedia’s articles on The Fosters, its episode list and season 3.

The Fosters Going South review: the verdict

The review treated “Going South” as a mixed Saturday. The married-couple storyline was the strongest, because Stef and Lena are shown to communicate badly in ways that feel real, and a plumber noticing trouble in their marriage is the sort of detail that stings. The Mariana scenes work because the episode lets her be scared and defensive at once.

Where the episode sits in the season matters. According to Wikipedia, season 3 follows the family after a car accident, sends Jesus to boarding school, brings AJ into the house and finds Callie feeling secure for the first time in a long while, while Brandon prepares for a competitive music program. “Going South” is the first real test of that calm. It shows Callie acting impulsively because she finally has a license and a bit of freedom, and shows Mariana paying for a choice made during a rough stretch after her breakup.

The Callie and Brandon road trip drew the review’s impatience. The hang-gliding facility, the police raid and the missing passports play as farce in an episode that otherwise stays with the family’s anxieties. Callie’s speech to Brandon is the payoff, and the AJ scenes give the episode its warmest ending.

As for the title question, the show moved on from the scare quickly. Season 3 ran for 20 episodes in two blocks, one that ended in August 2015 and one that ran from January to March 2016, and the pregnancy question from this episode was closed within the hour. Callie and Mariana later moved to Los Angeles in the spin-off Good Trouble, a Freeform series that ran for five seasons and 88 episodes. This page did not review that series for pregnancy storylines, so treat any claim about it as unverified until you check an episode guide.

If you are watching The Fosters in order, this is a good episode to see how the show handles panic, secrets and repair inside one family. If you are here only for the pregnancy answer, you have it. Fans of the series will also notice how much of the cast’s later arc, from Callie’s growing independence to Mariana’s hard-won self-respect, is seeded in a single Saturday.

Sources

• The Fosters (American TV series), Wikipedia — run, creators, cast and spin-off
• The Fosters season 3, Wikipedia — episode 5 summary and season dates
• List of The Fosters episodes, Wikipedia — air date, director and writer