Previously on One Tree Hill: Haley got all up in Lucas's grill about kissing Peyton. Lucas got all in a truck grill when Keith drove them into an accident; Karen got into Keith's grill over the brewskis he pounded prior to getting behind the wheel; Brooke dreamily/tearily declared her love for Lucas.
And now that we're all caught up, let me just share my excitement over recapping a show that doesn't have a dead body and a brain-dead one-liner kicking us to the credits. I am, however, a little thrown by the parents on this show looking the same age as their children.
Once the credits end, we see Lucas preparing to go home. Karen chides him to take it easy before he pops a stitch. Lucas grumbles that he feels helpless, and Karen shoots back, "You will be if you keep this up. What are you looking for?" Scruples? A quick and easy way to ditch his girlfriend for her best friend? His spleen? I'm only guessing. Actually, what he's looking for is Keith's make-nice gift to Karen; she finds it and tosses it on the bed. Lucas says, "I don't get it. Dan does one nice thing and you cut him some slack. Keith makes one mistake and you cut him out." Karen gapes at him instead of saying, "I don't get why you think that my personal decisions are somehow on the table for discussion, mister. You're grounded until you can collect Social Security."
A doctor comes in and makes some chit-chat, and after establishing that, indeed, he will never be able to vent his spleen again, Lucas asks, "What about basketball? Will I be able to get that back? The way it was?" Dr. Four-Lines says, "Your shoulder was pretty badly damaged. Recovery may not be possible." Wrong! It's entirely possible. It may not be probable. Anyway, Lucas pouts over it, and Karen checks his reaction, and then he looks at the floor because clearly he's all torn up inside. And I don't just mean from the accident.
Meanwhile, at stately Scott manor, Deb is puttering around the kitchen and ignoring Nathan until the phone rings. Nathan tells her, "It's him," clearly meaning that it's Dan, and Deb orders him, "Don't! Pick up." Nathan gives her a look. Deb twists a towel in her hands as she explains that "your father is refusing to cooperate with the attorneys, so this custody thing may end up in front of a judge. And when that happens, things could get ugly, sweetie." Dan not dealing with compromise and negotiation like a well-adjusted adult? Shocking plot development. Nathan looks mildly concerned. Deb finishes, "I want you to know, I'm only trying to protect you." The whole time she's explaining that Mommy and Daddy are about to gut each other like trout in a court of law, Dan's yelling, "Nathan? Deb? Pick up the phone! Pick it up, son! Come on, pick it up!" into the answering machine. Oh, Daddie Dearest, have a little dignity. Or hire flunkies to do that for you; this behavior's beneath your self-image as a master of the universe. Anyway, Nathan heads over to the machine and presses mute before turning to ask Deb, "How great is it that Dad has an off-button now?" Deb cracks up. Then Nathan tells Deb, "I think you're doing the right thing for yourself. And even for [Dan]." I take a moment to let this sink in: so the parents look as young as their children, and their children sound as old as their parents. No wonder I had a hard time figuring out who had purportedly parented whom on this show. Anyway, Nathan says that he thinks his parents splitting up is a good thing.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks --and if this house is anything like what the Other Side of the Tracks is like, I'm all for moving there -- Karen is busy stroking Lucas's ego by telling him he set a new record for the number of visitors who came by while he was unconscious. I can imagine the allure of face time with Lucas when he's passed out; he seems more upbeat then. Karen rattles off all the people -- Brooke and Haley and the guys from the river court -- but Lucas cares not for these folk. He asks if Peyton visited, and Karen says, "Once. I saw her holding your hand and talking to you." Rather than be content with a) the record-setting group of people who visited, and b) Peyton's little visit, Lucas mopes that she couldn't be bothered to come back a second time. Karen replies, "I don't think so. Why?" Before Lucas can non-answer her by sulking some more, they open the door to his room, and Brooke pops out singing, "Surprise!" "Aiiigh!" Lucas screams, popping his stitches. Oh, he does not. He just looks kind of skeptical. I don't blame him: with all the candles and the plants and the Brooke, there's kind of a Pier One Imports commercial vibe happening, and bracing for Kirstie Alley's impact is understandable. Karen is duly impressed with the Trading Spaces-style transformation. Brooke asks, "Bad idea?" Well, yes. I mean, it looks good and all, but rearranging and redecorating someone's room without bothering to run it by them first seems kind of hostile, actually. It's a passive-aggressive form of imposing your taste on them. Lucas stammers that he's just kind of surprised, and Brooke replies, "Then mission accomplished." She's either delusional, or she really did set up just to surprise him and figured that there was no difference between good surprise and bad surprise so long as surprise was the bottom line.
Anyway, Brooke rocks back and forth because she's all pleased, and tells Lucas she feng shui'd his room because it "promotes healing." Well, it's supposed to also promote family harmony and prosperity, so if Brooke's really done her job right, she's ironed out a few problematic plotlines too. She kisses him and Lucas stammers, "Can we have a minute, Mom?" Karen closes the door on them and reminds them, "Keep it short. You need to be in bed." She does not add anything about keeping hands where she can see them or keeping one foot on the floor.
Brooke promptly leaps on this oversight with, "If she's not home, I might even give you a sponge bath." Lucas looks uncomfortable as he explains, "Actually, I can't do that for a while." "Bathe?" asks Brooke. Lucas clarifies: "You know. Sex." Brooke opines, "Sucks. A little cardio may be just what you need, though." Or more sexual pressure from the girlfriend; the fight-or-flight urge'll get Lucas's heart rate up too. Brooke finally realizes that Lucas is not swooning with desire, but rather with nausea. She asks him what's up, and Lucas non-breaks up with her with, "I'm just going to need some time to figure some stuff out." Brooke tells him she'll give him whatever he needs. Lucas gets a look like he's also got a fine case of the spins to go with that nausea, and says, "See, that's the thing…" Brooke finally realizes that she's on the receiving end of one of the most passive-aggressive breakups ever. As Brooke heads toward the door and the background music kicks up a notch so we can think, "Ah. This must be meant to be poignant," Lucas tells her he's sorry. Brooke replies, "Apparently not enough." Not enough to do what? Stay in a relationship so she can continue to worship him? Brooke heads outside via Lucas's door and cries.
And then we're in a corporate office downtown, with Debbie's attack lawyer telling Dan to get it through his thick head that Debbie wants a divorce. Dan counters that what Debbie would really like to do is stab him in his sleep. Rather than tell him she's not the only one he has to worry about on that front, Deb points out that it was merely a figure of speech. Dan blusters, "You're trying to shut me out of my son's life, but I won't let that happen. And you know you can't throw me out of the house without a court order!" Again, the ladies miss a prime opportunity to point out that Dan and Nathan aren't exactly re-enacting the heartbreaking conclusion of Kramer vs. Kramer, and instead counter that Dan moved out of his own free will. Dan unctuously counters that his literalist nature led him to flee for his life. In other words, he got all drama-queen on them because he's too stupid to parse a hyperbolic rhetorical device. He then threatens to move back in and Deb says, "I'll get a restraining order! I'll prove what an abusive son-of-a-bitch you really are." Dan blathers some more and muses, "All that stuff from your past may come out in the open." Deb replies, "You really want to do that to Nathan?" and Dan's all, "No. The question is, do you?" Ah, it's the legal version of Dan grabbing Deb by the forearm and shaking her hand in her face while chanting, "Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?"
Lucas broods in his feng shui'd room before checking his messages. Sure enough, Peyton called. Lucas grins. And then we go to the river court, where he's slipping out his sling and doing lay-ups until Peyton comes along to play guard. She bounces across the court to him with the ball, and then they mack for a while to the background music until he comes up for air and notices Brooke looking at them with a less-than-thrilled expression. Busted even in his dreams!
Because you know that's what this is. Haley wakes him up -- fortunately, she had the good timing to do so before Brooke let bygones be bygones and took the dream in a damp direction -- and says, "So you broke up with Brooke to be with Peyton." News travels fast in a small town. You think it's traveled to Brooke yet? Lucas asks, "You think that's wrong?' Haley correctly intuits that he doesn't really care what she thinks, and replies, "I'm not in any position to judge. The heart wants what it wants, right?" Yeah, that was the rationale Woody Allen used too, and I'm still kind of creeped out by what his heart apparently wanted. Thanks for ruining Emily Dickinson for me, Woody. And then Haley twists the knife with, "At least Brooke knows the truth now." Lucas doesn't bother to correct her misperception. They make nice, and Haley takes off.
Just as Haley's leaving, Peyton comes in, There's some face-suckage, and after Peyton gets some air, she's all, "I was afraid you were never going to wake up." Lucas suaves it up with, "What? And miss being with you?" They resume making out to unremarkable pop music, and stop so Lucas can guilt-trip her because she didn't visit more. Well, I imagine it wouldn't have gone over well with his girlfriend. Or her best friend. Who just happen to be one and the same! Can betrayal get any more efficient than that? Anyway, Peyton explains that she used Lucas's accident as an excuse to duck the uncomfortable "by the way, it's time for you to begin playing the field, old friend" conversation with Brooke, and Lucas replies that he sulked at Brooke until she intuited that she was being dumped. Peyton asks, "Did you tell her why?" Lucas boasts, "I told her I needed to focus on getting well." Because he needs to bolster his immune system before Brooke lays a new world of hurt on him after she finds out that he stepped out with her best friend and lied to her about his reasons for breaking up. Peyton wants to tell Brooke the rest, and Lucas pleads for time to recover before "we tell her together. Like we said." Then they mack on each other some more before Peyton's cell goes off. She sees that it's her freshly dumped friend calling, but decides that she'd rather snuggle with the dumper than comfort the dumpee.
Lucas recovers enough over the commercials to go down to the river court, and that's where Karen finds him. She asks if she has to tie him to the bed to make him stay in, temporarily taking this show in a whole weird direction. Lucas apologizes, and Karen laughs, "The time you leave the house, I'll be cashing in your life insurance." Wow, she's calm about this. I guess she's saving all her repressed fury and panic for Keith, the lucky guy. Mother and son sit on a picnic table, and Karen prods, "You want to tell me what's going on? Brooke's waiting for you when you come home from the hospital; Peyton's there when I get home from work." Lucas does not crack and sob, "I'm a shameless man-whore, Mother!" He just sighs. Karen asks what happened when she went to Italy, since she was under the impression that he was interested in Peyton. Lucas mumbles that he was, and things are all complicated, and rather than resort to direct communication to work things out, he decided to make things more complicated by dating Brooke. Oh, for -- if anyone on this show had a straightforward conversation where information was correctly and efficiently transmitted from speaker to listener, this show would be ten minutes long and shown as bumper material before Smallville.
Karen admits, "When I first met Brooke, I thought she was a little nutty." Yeah, the perpetual little-girl voice doesn't exactly convey "sanity," does it? Anyway, Brooke looking after Lucas proved Karen wrong, and "she cares about you, and I think that's a good thing." Lucas admits, "Actually, I broke up with Brooke yesterday?" Karen looks as crushed as Brooke did. Lucas decides he'd rather not talk about it.
Meanwhile, over at the mall, Haley and Peyton are shopping, and Haley calls Peyton on walking around like a zombie. I feel her on that: shopping malls are overwhelming for me. I get overloaded from all the different displays, and the people, and the noise. And then -- whoopsie! -- they run into a sad-looking Brooke sitting alone on a bench. She says to Peyton, "I looked all over for you. You didn't get my messages?" Peyton badly lies, "Really? Oh. No. My phone's been whacked out all day." Haley looks askance at this. Peyton plays dumb (badly) and asks, "Are you okay?" Brooke bursts into tears and admits, "Not really. No." Peyton makes no move to comfort her friend, and Brooke continues, "I said I wasn't going to do it, I said it wasn't worth it, but here it is. Lucas broke up with me." Peyton tries to feign shock. Brooke weepily continues, "I was looking forward to getting a chance to show him how much he means to me, and…and he said he just wants to be friends. And every idiot knows that's just code for 'go away.' I don't know what I'm supposed to do." Neither do Haley (who's settled for looking disgusted) or Peyton, who's settled for, "If he said he wanted to be friends, I'm sure he means it. Why, he was telling me yesterday, during our hot and heavy make-out session, that he feels a lot of platonic affection for you. It doesn't compare to the agape he and Haley share, or the eros we have, but platonic is nothing to sneeze at." Or maybe she just stops with the lame "I'm sure he means it" business. Brooke sniffles, "How do you [stay friends] with Lucas?" Haley pipes up, "You just, um, do everything you've been doing. Without the sex part." Brooke tries to pull herself together and replies, "There's a first time for everything, right?" Haley goes back to looking mortified. Peyton goes back to doing a whole lot of nothing.
Later that evening, Nathan's commenting on Haley's striking new streamlined outfit. She preens because it's part of "the new me" and asks if he likes it, and he replies, "What's wrong with the old you?" Awww. Anyway, Haley's feeling the need to try new things, because "there's a lot of stuff I want to try that I never did." You have time, honey. It's not like you're Granny Weatherall. Nathan leaps all over Haley's urge for exploration and adds to the list "fooling around with me." No. Apparently, that's not high on the list. Snowboarding is. As is singing. Haley claims she sings when no one's around, and Nathan swoons, "I think you should sing for me sometime." Nathan is a man smitten. It's kind of sweet to see after the needy psychosis Luke "I want to BEwith you" Scott has. Nathan segues into telling Haley that he appreciates her because she's helping him deal with his parents' impending divorce: "It's like, the worse things get with my parents, the better things get with you." Haley finally realizes that perhaps Dan's dickhead qualities may have made things rough on the parental front. After Nathan sighs, "I'm stuck with whoever has the best lawyer," Haley decides now is when Nathan should get himself schooled on what his rights are. "Knowledge is power," she schoolhouse-rocks, and then calls up the most inadvertently hilarious search interface ever. It's the Google interface, except in a pleasing hue of don't-sue blue with a graphical banner reading "Internet Search." Would it have killed them to pay Google a licensing fee?
Back at the Roe/Scott house, Lucas is receiving a PlayStation 2, plus NBA Shootout and NCAA Final Four, from Jake on behalf of the Ravens. Jake explains, "It'll keep you in the game until you can comeback." Lucas mopes, "The doctor says I might not be back." Jake replies, "Don't listen to him. Ultimately, that's up to you, right?" Yes, because a trained medical professional isn't really talking about what she knows; she's just there to rain on Lucas's parade. Jake then clumsily segues into another reason he came over: he needs a part-time job, and wonders if Karen might be hiring down at the café. There's some awkward badinage, and then Keith comes shuffling in, clad in the latest Hollywood Redneck ensemble: immaculate flannel shirt and puffy down vest, beat-up jeans, and Uggs. Those boots must be stopped. Anyway, Jake disappears into thin air so Keith and Lucas can hug, and -- oh, wait. There's Jake. He's just standing around looking awkward. There's some hand-shaking, and Jake takes off.
Lucas asks where Keith has been, and Keith replies, "I was just waiting for a chance when your mom wouldn't be here. How you doing?" "Suddenly remembered I was sick, which is why I'm clutching my arm and panting now," Lucas replies. In body language, anyway. He notes that Keith looks pretty banged up, and Keith replies that he got off easy, then goes into apologizing and self-flagellation over the beers. He explains, "I was just freaked out about your mom coming home. I just kept wondering if Italy changed her or if, after that experience, she wouldn't want to settle for a guy with permanent grease stains." Lucas shrugs, because, really, what's more uncomfortable than having your erstwhile father figure discuss your mom in a romantic context? Anyway, Lucas feebly protests, "I know you weren't drunk, so --" "I wish your mom knew that!" Keith shoots back. Lucas is then put in the odd position of advising ol' Uncle Keith how to put the moves on Mom. This is one kid who's going to read Hamlet as a high school senior and not understand what the prince of Denmark's damage was.
Lucas asks, "So, Dan. Actually saved me, huh?" Keith replies, "I have to say, most of the time, he's an ass, but that night, he was definitely a hero." Lucas gets all troubled-looking -- which, frankly, only makes him resemble Clay Aiken, and gives me a headache from the cognitive dissonance -- and asks, "Where am I supposed to put that?" In a little box labeled "Dan will use you to hurt his own son sometime"? That's where I'd put it. But I'm something of an organization freak. Anyway, Karen comes in and the temperature drops ten degrees, so Keith takes off before he gets frostbite. Lucas goes to put in a good word for the guy, and Karen says, "Get back in bed." She's understated, that Karen.
The day, at the most attractively landscaped garage I've ever seen, the writers establish how Keith has no money and it's hurting his business. The background music is appropriately downbeat and broody. Naturally, right after Keith suffers an emasculating experience at the hands of a wholesale supplier, Karen comes along to finish the job. She returns the stuff he left at her house, and says she'll pay him back for Luke's medical bills, in a tone of voice that suggests she's bracing herself for Madame Loisel's life. Keith's all about how it wasn't a loan and he was merely paying for a mistake, and Karen's pulse actually rises above baseline as she points out that his mistake nearly lost her the sullen and duplicitous Lucas. Ah, the blinding force of motherly love.
Meanwhile, Dan tries to get into his old house and discovers that Deb was canny enough to change the locks. So he stands on the stoop and prepares to threaten his wife at the top of his lungs until he notices Nathan standing behind him. So he offers to take Nathan to breakfast, thus flushing Deb out and precipitating a verbal tug of war. Nathan screams, "You're tearing me apart!" and then mourns, "Nobody talks to children." Actually, he tells Deb and Dan to stop it, then breaks the news to them that he has legal rights, and plans to exercise those to decide with whom he will leave.
After the commercial break, Jake's showing up for work. Karen's regained her cool -- not terribly hard -- and she's all, "Please, call me Karen." Jake commences busing tables, but a mere thirty seconds later runs into childcare issues. So he has to take off; the news that he's got a daughter is surprising to Karen --her face actually registers a change of expression -- and he's all apologetic, but he's gotta go. Karen's surprisingly cool about him going, but looks troubled once Jake goes.
And now, the greatest limitation to hit modern television: how to make people typing at a computer look interesting. Believe you me, when Sars and Wing Chun figure it out, they'll be charging extra for it on the site. Anyway, Peyton's drawing her comic, and Lucas IMs her to whine about how bored he is. She dismisses it and goes back to strip-mining her friends' lives for inspiration with a big panel of Brooke weeping while the wording reads, "He said he just wants to be friends." Lucas wants Peyton to come over and draw it because "I love to watch you draw," and evidently, the webcam shot he's got of her isn't doing it for him. Peyton puts him off. Lucas whines some more and watches her on her webcam. Peyton signs off and then stares at the Brooke panel real hard.
Speaking of Brooke, there she is, making Karen uncomfortable by popping in and asking, "Did Lucas tell you we broke up?" Karen replies, "Did Lucas tell you I thought you were nutty?" Oh, she does not. She's cordial. Anyway, Brooke's moved on from feng shui to herbal tea --specifically, herbal teas that are supposed to help people who have had splenectomies. Karen deadpans, "That's very sweet of you." Lucas is ostensibly napping -- if, by napping, you mean "pestering Brooke's erstwhile best friend to come on over and create a really awkward situation" -- and Brooke almost leaves, but then she asks about Karen's scrapbook, and the scrapbooking trend reaches out its pinking-shear-edged tentacles to claim another victim.
Back at stately Scott manor, Deb is apologizing for not always being there for Nathan, conveniently overlooking the defense that she wasn't there a lot because the two of them appear to be roughly the same age. She invokes the "it was easier to let your big, stupid spoiled father get his way. Sorry!" argument instead. Anyway, Nathan reasonably points out that he's tired of the fighting and feeling caught in the middle of it, and Deb makes her plea for Nate to live with her. He indicates that he's down with that. They stand there and say how much they love each other, but don't hug or anything, because…I have no idea why. It just seems weird that they don't.
Back at Karen's House of Scraps, she and Brooke are bonding while they cut up little strips of paper. Karen's happily recalling how "[Italy] was culinary boot camp" and she used her Sundays to tour the country. Karen says dreamily, "I don't even know how to describe it, Brooke. Like being an entirely different person for a little while." As the two women are gabbing, Lucas decides to sidle on by them, rather than do the brainy thing and leave via the separate door in his room. Love has made him stupid. Karen admits, "I almost didn't want to come back," and Brooke pulls the conversation down It's All About Me Lane with, "Yeah. When things are really special, it's kind of hard to let go." Karen gabs some about Lucas, and Brooke reveals that she's holding out for him to come back to her. Instead, Lucas elects to go back to his room and finally leave out his own special door, wincing in embarrassment at how his mom and his ex are bonding. Or maybe he's wincing in pain.
In any event, he ends up crashing Peyton's place. She's wondering why he's there, what with the doctor saying he shouldn't be out and about. Eh, we've already established that doctors aren't there to be listened to. Jake said so, remember? Anyway, Lucas bleats that he wanted to see Peyton, and she grins, "What are you, crazy?" Quite possibly, yes. Plus it was weird having his mom and his ex bonding in the kitchen. Anyway, Lucas assumes the huddling-sickie pose on the edge of Peyton's bed and admits he can't stop thinking about her, and then, as the closed captioning says, "Speaking indistinctly." Given that the closed-captioner has been so brave as to previously render entire chunks of intelligible dialogue as "whatwho@r dawfrangi st%612relkie,lucas," for these Dadaist professionals to not even attempt to make out what Lucas was saying, it had to be indistinct indeed. But you know, why stop at "speaking indistinctly"? Why not just save some time and skip the typos by writing "Whining incessantly" or "Putting on the smooth talk"? It would be a lot more useful to whatever hardy viewership is actually trying to use the closed-captioning to figure out what the hell is going on.
Lucas is all about how he just wants them to be together, and then whines about how she signed off IM to work, and what was up with that, and before he can really get his guilt-trip on, he almost passes out. Peyton notices he's running a huge fever, and goes to call his mom. Lucas, displaying an uncanny survival instinct, gasps, "She's with Mom." Peyton looks panicky.
Back at Karen's Kozy Korner, Karen says she should go check on Lucas, and Brooke twinkles, "Will you let me?" Karen replies, "No, Creepy! He dumped you! Let. It. Go. Start a scrapbook about how he dumped you, if you must, but don't continue deluding yourself that Lucas is going to think of you as his own personal Agnes Von Kurowsky. There is no Farewell to Arms in your future -- it's more like This Boot Means Goodbye."
Oh, she does not. She releases Brooke into the wilds of Lucas's bedroom, but the habitat is empty. Just then, the phone rings, and Karen gets the news from Peyton that Lucas is in a world of hurt. "Can you get him to the emergency room?" she asks. Why couldn't Peyton have thought of that one on her own? Anyway, Karen announces that she's gotta go, and Brooke invites herself along. Oh, Brooke. So sad.
Once we return from commercials -- and let me just say, the WB commercials are much more entertaining than the CBS ones -- Lucas is lying on a hospital bed, Peyton at his side, when Karen and Brooke come in. Karen demands to know where Lucas was, and Brooke says in a near-whisper, "Peyton." Lucas lies that he was down near the river court, and lucky for him, just as he began feeling rotten, Peyton just happened to swing on by. Peyton's all, "Gotta go! See ya!" Karen instantly twigs to what just happened, and thanks Peyton icily before rolling her eyes and indicating that Lucas will get what for as soon as she gets him home. Lucas says, "I'm sorry," and Karen shoots back, "You should be." She gears up for a lecture, and Lucas is all, "Mom! Just wait. Not now." I think he's under the impression that the parent-child relationship is some negotiation of equals here. Maybe it's because his mom looks like she's only five years older. Brooke takes off too.
We transition to Dan's dockside abode. Nathan comes up. Dan does the hospitable thing and offers him a drink. Why not? Nathan looks thirty. Dan more or less acknowledges this with, "You're old enough [to drink]." Before Nathan can tell Dan he's planning on living with Deb, Dan steamrollers him with a passive-aggressive spiel about how being a controlling and intrusive dillweed is Dan-speak for "I love you," and then caps it by threatening to air all Deb's dirty laundry. So if Nathan loves his mommy, he'll move in with his dad. A little manipulation with that nightcap, son? Freshen up that drink? Twist the knife a little more?
Back at Karen's Karping Korner, she sits Lucas down and commands, "Now, tell me why you and Peyton were really together." Luke tries to bluff his way out of it, and Karen says, "Lucas, you're lying to me. And you wouldn't be unless you were doing something you weren't proud of." Lucas admits he went to see Peyton, and gives Karen this weird half-grin as he says, "We want to be together." Oh, please. There's the phone, the IM client, the webcam -- how much more together can they be? Does he want them to splice their genes? Karen breathes, "Behind Brooke's back?" Lucas points out that he broke up with Brooke, and Karen counters, "But apparently, you didn't tell her about Peyton, and that's a shabby way to treat someone who's really been there for you." Lucas tries the pot-kettle-black counterargument, and amazingly enough, Karen sits there and takes it instead of telling Lucas to shut his piehole and go to his room because he is so grounded, he can double as a lightning rod.
Meanwhile, things get worse for Keith as a pinch-faced loan officer tells him he's a poor credit risk, and cleaning out his account to fund his nephew's medical bills may have improved his karma, but it's done nothing for his credit rating.
Jake comes back in to Karen's café with baby in tow, asking to talk to her. Karen makes cooing noises at Jenny, and then Jake launches into another hard-luck story about how much it sucks to find child-care on his allowance (his mom can't watch Jenny right now) and so he can't really get a job. Karen takes this calmly -- she takes everything calmly; she's like the anti-Lorelei with her serene delivery -- and tells Jake she's got something she wants to show him. "This was Lucas's [crib], and I can't throw anything away, so when you need to bring Jenny, it's fine." Jake is stunned that a single teenaged parent all growed up might empathize with him, an actual teenaged parent. Then Karen goes on about she realizes it's hard to ask for help, but "sometimes, it's okay for someone to give you a hand." Keith and Lucas pop out of the woodwork to scream, "Hypocrite! Hypocrite! Have you listened to yourself?" Oh, they do not. Jake deposits Jenny and begins busing tables.
Back at stately Scott manor, Nathan commences a heart-to-heart with Deb: "Look, Mom, you and I both know that no matter what we do, no matter what happens, Dad's not going to let up until he wins. It's just the way he's wired. So I'm going to save us all one huge headache." Then he climbs off his cross and resumes packing. Deb's all, "What did he say to you? What did he do?" Nathan turns the tables and tells Deb if she hadn't been a bad mommy and done some unspecified thing in the past, it wouldn't be all her fault that he has to protect her by living with Dan. And you can tell I've been watching CSI for way too long when I find myself thinking, "The logical solution to Nathan and Deb's problem would just be to kill Dan." I mean, that's the number-one answer to every little dilemma on that show. Anyway, Deb refuses to come clean with her son although she stresses how much she loves him, and Nathan snaps, "You want to keep your secrets, Mom, fine. I'm going to help you do that." Exactly how bad can these secrets be? Did she stomp on kittens for fun in her youth? Engineer a coup in some third-world country? Dan smirks at her as Nathan gets in the car and they drive off.
Keith's horrible, no good, very bad episode continues as he pushes a toolbox across the shop floor, the weight of the world hunching his shoulders and slowing his progress. As is her wont, Karen's dropped by to wreck his day further: "Hey. It's been a while since I laid a completely disproportionate guilt trip on you, but this episode's on the wind-down so I'll keep it short: you nearly killed my son, you horrible drunkard, and any hope you have of seeing me naked is a futile one." Or something to that effect: "I left you with the most important thing in my life, and you let me down at a time when I really thought we had something." Keith argues, "We do. Those six weeks were amazing to me. For once, I felt like I was in Luke's life in a real way. You can't know how much that meant to me." Yeah, well, that and $4.25 will get him a venti mocha at Starbucks. Keith points out that he wasn't drunk. Karen replies, "I know that, but that isn't what this is about." Then what is it about? He took care of the kid, he got in an accident, end of story. It's not like he tied Lucas to some train tracks. Keith replies, "I want you to know, one of these days, you're going to look at me and you're going to see the person you used to see." In the meantime, however, the two of them will have to settle for an entirely unnecessary non-consummation of their not-quite-a-romance.
Speaking of awkward conversations, Peyton's just headed on over to give Lucas the heave-ho. They sit on his porch, and she tells him, "When I saw you lying there in the hospital, after the accident, all I could think about was how my mom wasn't as lucky as you. And then I remembered, after she died, it was Brooke who was there for me. And we were just little kids, and she would come over every single day to make sure I was okay. She's been my best friend ever since." Aww. Sniff! Lucas, however, is unmoved by this tale of generous loyalty, and slings some emotional baggage Peyton's way by telling her, "Life's short." It backfires: Peyton replies, "Too short to live it as a bad person." Ha! Peyton continues, "I can't betray her, Lucas." Lucas points out that the horse is already out of that particular barn, so they might as well live in the now. Peyton's not buying that. She gets up, and Lucas apologizes. She replies, "But it's better this way, right?" The broody complaint ballad kicks in as she walks off.
Jake's leaving Karen's café as Nate comes in and hugs Haley hello. She asks if he's okay. Well, not so much, no. Haley offers him the chance to chat over coffee, and Nate's all, "Actually, I'm kind of tired of talking about it." Haley says, "If there's anything I can do to help, let me know." Nathan reminds her that music soothes the savage beast, so if she could trot on over to the conveniently located piano and sing for him, that would be peachy. Haley protests, and he reminds her, "You said you'd do anything to help me, and this would really help me take my mind off things." After a self-deprecating warning, Haley begins playing and singing. I have to admit, this whole "What this show needs is a musical number!" conceit is pretty sweet: why should Oz and Buffy have all the fun?
As Haley sings, we transition from one candle-filled setting to another: the café, Karen's house, Dan's house of blackmail (where, incidentally, Nathan's doppelganger appears to be moving), Keith's body shop and its for-sale sign -- cheer up, Keith! The way people on this show use candles, you can always open up a Yankee Candle Company outlet and rebuild your bank account. Anyway, Haley continues singing her Sarah McLachlan song ("Elsewhere," off the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy album. I know this because I wrote a research paper while listening to this album on repeat back in 1994, when all we had were CD drives in our computers. And we were grateful for them! And oddly enough, I burned a lot of candles while writing the paper. Must be the music that does it) and Nathan feigns interest.
We transition to Peyton studying on her bed when Brooke materializes out of nowhere. Rather than scream in surprise, Peyton calmly remarks, "You're out late." Brooke suspiciously says, "Lucky thing, you finding Lucas like that. If you hadn't come along, who knows what might have happened." Peyton misses this passive-aggressive cue to come clean and says instead, "Everything turned out okay." Au contraire, dear. Brooke replies, "No. Not really. I don't know what hurts worse -- you and Lucas sneaking around behind my back, or you lying about it to my face." Peyton gapes for a response, and Brooke continues, "No! The time you want to steal my boyfriend, you might want to turn [the webcam] off. I went into his room to check on him, and his computer was still on." D'oh! Brooke continues to hammer home how stupid her erstwhile boyfriend and best friend were: "I know you two were together. He meant everything to me, Peyton, and I was ready to [unintelligible] for him if that's what he needed." Brooke, I love that you're smacking down Peyton, but you need to do it at the top of your lungs so I can hear what the deuce you're saying. She finishes, "Now I don't really care if I see either one of you again." Ooh. I heard that. We get a webcam shot of Brooke walking off, and Peyton looking horrified into the camera, and then the camera pulls back to Lucas watching the whole scene. He looks troubled too. Good!
(FYI: tonight's episode featured music by Ben Jelen and Butterfly Boucher. Support your local Big Five record company today, or else all this corporate synergy will have been for nothing.)