Episode Report Card Ragdoll: C | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Anchors Away!
By Ragdoll | Season 1 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.10.2004
Luke arrives in Woda's room. He looks like an old man lying there on the white sheets and wearing a hospital gown. He's looking at a picture of his wife -- or rather, he's trying to look at a picture of his wife, because his eyes are bad, remember. Luke says cheerfully, "Hey Coach!" Whitey drops the photo and says, "Don't tell me, you lost at the buzzer; they doubled Nathan, and you missed a wide-open loader." Luke looks confused for a minute, but then Whitey tells him that he watched the web cast on Mouth's site. Luke smiles. Woda says, "It was a good loss. Let it go." Pause. "Doc says this eye thing's a little more complicated than they thought it was." Luke wants to know if he's going to be okay. Woda says that they'll see. Luke continues on his path of goodbyes: "Coach, I just wanted you to know that I appreciate everything you've done for me. You believed in me and for that I'll always owe you." Whitey says, "You want to do me a favour? Take care of Keith. He's a good man." Luke says, "So are you, Coach." Whitey holds out his hand to shake on it, but Luke, that old softy, leans in and gives him a Woda-licious hug. Aw.
So, Dan's looking for a little home-cooked comfort, but when he gets home to see Deb, he finds her and Keith wrapped in a cosy post-coital blanket on the floor. Does no one lock the damn door in Tree Hill? He stares at the scene in disbelief and then walks out without saying anything. Keith says, "Dammit!" under his breath and looks down in the direction of, you guessed it, his feet, only they're covered by a blanket, so he can't examine whether or not he needs to clip his toenails.
Are we flashing back, or is this after the game? Because we're in real time now, so I guess Brooke and Nikki are playing pool at the bar. Brooke says coyly, "Question? Who is sexy, talented and knows where Jake is? Oh, I know it's me." Psycho Nikki wants to know, and know now. Brooke offers to play her for it. Nikki doesn't want to play any games, so Brooke saunters over, writes something on a napkin, and passes it to Nikki, who reads it quickly. Brooke burns the napkin for some strange reason; I guess she wants to get rid of the evidence. Nikki says, "Betrayal of Peyton complete. How does it feel?" Brooke bitches, "Feels like you should be gone already, you've got the information you need." Psycho Nikki gives these parting words as "advice": "You know, Brooke, you should really try to be a better person, nobody likes a bitch." Brooke snits a reply and picks up the pool cue. Peyton comes up and says, "Was that Nikki you were talking to?" Brooke turns back and says coldly, "Yeah, I told her where Jake was." But she can't hold it in any longer: "And she bought it just like we planned. It's going to be a long trip to Seattle." Heh. They smile at each other, and Brooke says, "I told you, Peyton, I'm here for you." Peyton says she knows that, and then embraces her friend. Are they back -- I mean, completely back? Because I'm sick to death of the injured Brooke/Peyton crawling back storyline and would be happy never, ever to revisit it again. And if the end result remains Nikki on a cross-country manhunt for Jake that ends up with her never finding him, well, all the better. We've seen enough of her crazy-ass lopsided face carting way too much black eyeliner. Good riddance to her silly stalking ways and ridiculous pretence of being a good mother.
Keith races to the beach house and arrives just as Dan does. Now, that's something, considering he would have had to get up, get dressed, and race out of the house, jump into his car, and then drive all the way across town. Keith stops Dan before he goes inside, telling him that "it" wasn't what it looked like. Dan shouts, "No? 'Cause it looked like you were having sex with my wife. Unless of course you both tripped and fell, your clothes fell off, and somehow you ended up on top of her." Heh. For once Dan's sarcasm seems to be working for him. Keith looks contritely down at his shoes, which I'm hoping he remembered to put on in the midst of his hurried attempt to get out of there: "What I mean is this hasn't been going on, it just happened." Dan shouts, "You listen to me, you son-of-a-bitch, those are the last words you're ever going to speak to me. You are no longer my brother!" And it seems like the two sibling rivalries have completely reversed themselves; at the beginning of this year, Dan and Keith were at least civil to one another and Nate was out to get Luke. Now, it seems that Dan and Keith are pretty much permanently on the outs. Dan continues, "You understand that? You do not exist to me!" And with that fit of rage, Dan turns away from hitting his brother and smashes his car window instead. Now, does insurance cover something like that?