Make It Or Break It- Growing Pains

What Happened- The US Training center hosts a weekend exhibition open to parents of the athletes. Payson’s dad, Lauren’s dad, Kaylie’s parents, and Kelly Parker’s mom show up. No one shows up for Jordan, so Coach McIntire makes sure to give her extra support during Parents Weekend. Kelly Parker’s mom tries to brive Coach McIntire into not only putting KP on the Olympic Team, but making her team captain as well. The coach tells her where to stick it and KP’s mom leaves.

Payson takes Lauren to a doctor’s office to check out her fainting spells. Lauren comes out of the testing room telling Payson that it is nothing; she only has to eat more Potassium. Payson is smarter than the average bear and stealthily calls the doctor posing as Lauren. Payson discovers that Lauren has an irregular heartbeat and needs more tests.

Kaylie and Austin have dinner with Kaylie’s parents, and Alec starts planning to market the two as an Olympic “golden couple.” Kaylie is annoyed by this…and she is further inconvenienced when her parents sleep together but still decide to remain apart. Kaylie does not return Austin’s first “I love you” until her mother gives her a talk about how love is never perfect but it is worth it anyway. Payson hears that her family is moving and that she will have to live with Kaylie when she trains at the Rock after the training center stuff is over. Payson comes around to it and asks her dad if she can live with Lauren instead. She is still mad at Kaylie for not telling her about the doctored video.

Comments- We guess we just have to accept that Lauren is growing as a person and we are not allowed to hate her as much anymore. We have Kelly Parker’s mom to hate instead. She is absolutely hideous. She’s like one of those moms on Toddlers and Tiaras, only she’s playing with higher stakes. We’re glad Kelly told her to take a hike for her managerial, lame tactics. Then Coach McIntire told her off as well. Our lives are complete. Now we never need to see her again…right?

This week gave us a return of the rest of the parents from The Rock, yay! We’ve been missing the adult characters from the first two seasons. We guess Peri Gilpin is either too busy or too expensive to appear in this episode as Payson’s mom, but we missed her. This episode made us like Kaylie’s parents more. It takes a lot for a divorced couple to be friends, eat together, and treat each other with respect, rather than the normal sidelong glares and snide, passive aggressive comments. Most divorced couples shouldn’t have sex after the divorce, but the overall sentiments were nice.

We were really annoyed when Lauren lied to Payson about her prognosis and thought that it would be weeks before we would find out what is wrong with Lauren. But Payson proved awesome this week when she called the doctor, posing as Lauren/Rachel. Payson, it’s time to call Lauren’s dad. We loved the way the coach handled Jordan in this episode. The girls on Make It Or Break It sure get the best coaches. Payson needs to forgive Kaylie. This rift is new, but it’s already annoying. One thing we liked is the news that Payson will have to train at The Rock just before the Olympics. Does that mean we will get to see more of the parents AND Sasha and Summer? We can only hope. That would make the season perfect.

Episode grade: B