Episode Report Card Lady Lola: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Let There Be Lux
By Lady Lola | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 01.18.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.There once was a girl named Lux who lived in a faraway land called Portland (a land that looked suspiciously like Vancouver). Lux had a hole in her heart in more ways than one. An intangible hole from being given up for adoption by her teen parents as well as a genetic one she developed at birth. This physical hole was so deep that it took three years for young Lux to become fully formed. By then nobody wanted her. And it wasn't the only way in which Lux wasn't like other girls. (Well… unless by "other girls" you mean Rory Gilmore and Juno. She's fairly similar to them in that precocious, snarky mold.) Hardened by a life that led her to a bumbling, apathetic foster parent with a pointedly ironic name and a leering ginger-haired son, Lux wanted more than anything to become emancipated.
To capture her freedom, Lux had to go on a mighty quest and retrieve the waxen seals of her birth parents. In the ancient days they called this a plot device. So Lux traveled all over the land or, you know, across town. There she met her biological father, a gallant Knight named Baze who had taken the glory he found from slaying the fiercest dragons the high school football field could offer to open his very own mead hall. After father and daughter forged their sacred bond over YouTube, Baze joined Lux on her quest. He took her to the highest point in the land, where signals transmitted the voice of an Ice Princess named Cate Cassidy. It turns out that Baze was the only knight who'd ever succeeded in melting Cate's cold heart, using a potion of Zima and hypnotic pop music a coven of aging witches had brewed for him. But those were days long ago. In the present, Cate is betrothed to a Prince Charming named Ryan, who transmits his voice along with hers from the land's peak. And Lux was astonished to learn that it was her mother's voice she had listened to and kept as a guiding compass all those years.
Having secured both her birth parents' seals, Lux took her request before the kingdom's judge. But, because of Lux's meager means and uncertain destiny, the judge denied the girl. Lux returned to her humble home to find her evil foster mother had disowned her. Overnight, Lux became a ragged peasant -- a peasant with stunningly silken hair, but a peasant nonetheless. All the while, the Ice Princess and the Knight were anxious about their child's fate, so they met and reminisced about ye olden days. One mead led to another, and they found themselves in a passionate embrace. The next day, they parted ways again, never to see each other again. As Cate secreted away from Baze's abode, she found little rag girl Lux and took a solemn oath to welcome the girl into her castle. Everyone from the jesters to Prince Charming joined in the merriment, wearing motley attire and consuming flaming baked goods. Suddenly Lux was a girl that somebody wanted -- two somebodies, in fact! And they all lived happily ever after. At least until the Prince finds out his princess has been humpin' around…
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks of Life Unexpected when he has No Prior Knowledge!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We open on shots of Portland, Oregon, as a morning radio host, Cate, and her partner in crime, Ryan, play Sex-Marry-Kill. They've chosen the name Jessica, and predictable Jessica Simpson jokes ensue. While they talk about Cate's distaste for marriage, a teenage girl listens in her bathroom and smiles along. Cate moans about her cloyingly romantic boyfriend, and Ryan gives her the full snark about how she should have gone hurled a remote at him for being such a sap. As they banter, the youngster takes off her towel to check out her tittays. As you do. And then AAAAH! It's the ghost of Ron Weasley! No, just the girl's perv of a younger brother. The girl hurls her shampoo bottle at him (see what they're doing there with the parallel actions?) and stomps into the kitchen to complain to her mother. Make that foster mother, pointedly named Foster, who essentially says she's not getting paid enough to care about whiny little bitches. The precocious girl, Lux, takes her to task for being a lame parent and tells her that after her sixteenth birthday in two days, none of them will have this problem. Lux is going to get emancipated and blow this banana stand. Tough talk for a girl in a borrowed towel. The mum doesn't seem to down about it. She practically tells Lux not to let the door hit her on the way out.
As Lux wanders around town, we join a sleeping guy and his high-strung girlfriend. She searches for her running shoes and dresses him down a bit for being layabout bar owner. He says he's just following his dream to drink for free. Now that's a career path I can get behind. He finds her running shoe -- which he was sleeping on? -- and pulls her back into the bed for some more hanky panky. Ahhhh, morning breath make outs.
Lux continues her mysterious journey on the bus as Cate and Ryan take a call from a fan. The caller wants to find the right guy, settle down, and have a million babies. Obviously this is a fictive world in which no Duggars exist because Cate zeroes in on the fact that having a million babies is physically impossible. Ryan reads between the lines, calling Cate out for being such a baby hater at 32 years old. Crosscut between Cate explaining that the only person one can depend on is herself and Lux walking the streets alone like a spunky little ragamuffin. The show ends as Lux finds her destination -- a bar. Could it be? Yeah, it totally is. Cate and Ryan continue their quick-witted banter off air, revealing that the lobbed remote in question was aimed at Ryan's head. They're not just co-hosts. They're lovers! And she hates children, the enterprise of love, and any sort of commitment. Get it?