Rose Colored Glasses (2×2)

The restructuring of Jane’s article on Emma Cox looms as the girls attempt to coordinate a get together at Squeeze Press. It seems Jane, Sutton and Kat all arrived at different locations.

Jane and Sutton race to the Midtown location to discover Kat’s reactions to her sleeping with Adena, as the three crash together, squeezed juice flying everywhere. Kat’s talking about having oral sex with her girlfriend makes Sutton a bit envious.

As the three women break off for pitch meetings and Jane’s rehashing about her Emma Cox’s OTR company, Jane seems thrown. Apparently, if your article topic isn’t controversial enough, it’s not an “Incite” piece.

Back at Scarlett, Jacqueline presents a piece on supportive men in blue-collar positions. Men are to be dressed, ranging in positions from doctor to fire fighter and more. Oliver’s frustrations on dressing the every day man is hysterical.

Jacqueline implores Kat to create a professional biography. I completely understand the trepidation Kat feels about gathering together information on yourself outside of your social media sentences. It’s intimidating.

Richard encourages Jacqueline to take the empty board seat, but she turns down the opportunity, since her being the editor of Scarlet presents a conflict. She reads people so well, watching how Richard seems dejected following his breakup with Sutton.

Oliver recruits Sutton to measure, hand hold and run the photo shoot, as the other interns/workers look on enviously. Apparently, these people can’t accept a woman is simply great at her job.

Jane is still feeling guilty about the fact that Emma Cox is being dragged through the press following the article her boss threw up under Jane’s byline. The guilt is a bit too much to handle, as she sneaks away to call and leave an apology to Ms. Cox via voicemail, making the situation later much more arduous.

As Sutton and Jane admire the binder full of supportive, single hot men in light of recent sexual harassment claims, Jane discovers her apology message became an internet meme, retweeting the message across the internet in droves. Kat comes by to remind Jane to leave the situation for Victoria to handle.

Jane, please leave this to those paid more than you. Just this one, leave your heart in your pocket and not on your sleeve.

Sage is seen flustered in the lobby, as Sutton tells her to send the attractive men through to the fashion department for Sutton to measure.

Kat has Alex peruse her biography. He encourages her to add more detail, even suggesting that Kat lead with the fact that she’s Scarlet’s first female black department head. But Kat worries that her race would be taking center stage, even though her mother is white and her father is black. She hopes to lead with her talents, and the two end the conversation feeling rather heated.

As Sutton closely measure a man’s inseams while he’s clad in only briefs, Sage and another woman glance on. Sutton remains focused intently on her task. “Men like her” and it seems to add another reason for people to envy her talents.

Jane meets with Victoria, who presents an opportunity to put the young writer in front of a camera to rectify the situation. Let the media training begin!

Adena and Kat welcome Kat’s parents into their apartment, and Kat’s parents seem enamored by their daughter’s girlfriend.

Oliver gives Sutton a pair of pants, imploring her to redo her work. It seems she’s unfocused, and her boss tells her to work things out. Sutton leaves with the trousers as she runs into Richard entering the elevator at the same time. She awkwardly gets off the elevator, claiming she forgot something.

Kat talks about how she can’t seem to understand why she needs to lead with the “black” label in her bio, as Alex had suggested. Her parents agree with the premise, seeing as her father doesn’t detail his race since it doesn’t affect how he treats his patients. Adena counters, saying she has “proud Muslim lesbian” in her biography. Kat receieves a call from Jacquline during the meal and steps away.

Jane receives media training from Victoria, responding in kind to possible questions from a reporter, all the while being encouraged to stick to the script Incite provides her with. “Incite” implies Jane needs to keep her personal feelings out of things, and Victoria tells her to lose her style.

Kat speaks with her parents, as Marcus tries to pry into Adena’s actions, implying her disconnect to her family and unabashed need to explain to people who she is can be construed as being rebellious. Kat reminds her father to simply compliment the meal and her parents leave.

Jacqueline is walking on her treadmill desk as Richard enters, telling her they got Cleo Williams, a digital fitness mogul, to fill in the empty board seat.

Adena and Kat are washing dishes, as Kat mopes about her psychiatrist parents. Adena, ever the support girlfriend, tells Kat it’s up to her to explain things in her biography.

Cleo comes by to meet Jacqueline, quoting mutual admiration before dismissing how much caffeine in coffee will kill people. Cleo tells the editor that digital media is the future, and that print copy won’t always be around. They share a selfie as the scene ends.

The photoshoot is in full swing. Sutton hesitates to assist one of the men into his jacket, knowing full well her peers are watching from afar. Kat notices that Sutton is only eating the green Skittles before sucking her into the “boomarang” posts for Snapchat. Sutton is tasked almost immediately to get one of the men to loosen up for photos.

Jacqueline checks in on Kat’s progress writing her bio. Kat promises to have the writeup on the editor on her desk the next day. Alex comes by to understand what Kat’s feelings are, preventing her from owning her blackness. Kat simply doesn’t want to deny the whiteness or the blackness of herself, but Alex reminds her she’s grown and it’s okay to pick a side in this case, and provide an example for young black women to look up to.

Jane sticks to the script in her television interview, despite her nerves. But you could tell as a viewer that she was itching to contribute more of her own voice, and less of the company line. She dips in at the last second, trying to remind the reporter that Emma simply made a mistake.

Sutton struggles to make the doctor loosen up in photos. Oliver berates her to do her job better, and her coworkers smirk in delight. Sutton speaks with Jacqueline, as she wonders what’s wrong. Sutton explains how the gossip in the office is bothering her, and that she and Alex aren’t together, despite the rumors. Jacqueline simply says Sutton is a people person, and Sutton does make people feel better easily.

Her gusto is back, and Sutton and Ben talk, as the doctor slowly begins to relax in front of the cameras, explaining he has a list of things that make him uncomfortable. Oliver is so happy to see the results at last.

Kat meets with her parents a few days later, trying to discern why her family is so against labeling themselves. Her mother reveals she may as well be the one to blame, since she didn’t enjoy having people in the neighborhood assuming she wasn’t Kat’s biological mom. She didn’t want to be Kat’s “white mom”. But at the end of their discussion, Kat’s parents reminded her that the decision to assume labels for herself is up to their daughter, not for the people who brought her up.

Sutton and Jane talk about Jane’s television interview. And Sutton fearlessly faces Mitsy about the slut shaming, encouraging competition instead of petty gossip. Sutton then invites all the men out for drinks, and introduces Ben the doctor to Jane. The girls dance to “All My People” after taking shots and loosening up. It seems Ben and Jane get along well.

Kat is dressed out of bed at dawn the next day, discussing her “rose colored glasses” with a sleepy-eyed Adena. Kat feels guilty for refusing to see both sides of her mixed race heritage, and Adena offers a comforting hug. At the office, Kat decides to add in her blackness to raise awarness to that side of herself, passing her sheet to Jacqueline. Cleo seems like another formidable woman that Jacqueline can work with.

Jane meets with Victoria, as the editor fires her from her writing position. Because she made the interview about herself, her talents were better suited elsewhere. Ouch.