“The Fosters” Season Premiere Tackles Gun Violence

• Entertainment, Health and Safety, Violence and Tragedy • television, the fosters

The Fosters, Freeform’s lesbian mom drama, has its summer premiere Monday, and tackles a presciently timely issue: gun violence.

The episode, written before the Orlando shooting but after far too many school shootings in recent years, deals with a student bringing a gun to school, apparently in a fit of jealousy:

Picking up where the season three cliffhanger left off, Callie admits her past relationship with Brandon to her moms. But before Stef and Lena can even process the information, the school goes into a “Code Blue” lockdown when it’s discovered Mariana’s boyfriend Nick showed up with his father’s gun after seeing her kiss her ex-boyfriend Mat.

The Fosters - Potential Energy

Co-creator and Executive Producer Bradley Bredeweg has been active on Twitter since the Orlando shooting, advocating for stricter gun control laws. Here’s one of his many tweets on the matter:

And about the episode, he tweeted:

He also tweeted that he was proud to work for the Walt Disney Company (which owns Freeform), pointing to the company’s donation of $1 million to the OneOrlando Fund for assisting those affected by the tragedy.

The Fosters has never shied away from tackling Big Issues, from foster-care reform to coming out, racism, youth suicide, cancer, and more, all mixed in with a heaping dose of angsty teen relationship drama (and occasional lesbian mom relationship drama). It’s hard to explore all parts of an issue within the length of a weekly show—but if The Fosters can expand the discussion and increase support for gun control even a little through this episode, then I applaud them.

And if you haven’t yet contacted your members of Congress about gun control, do so now.

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