After yet another awkward moment when Whitey calls out "Scott!" and then has to clarify that he means Lucas (are first names really that horrendous?), he gives Lucas his uniform and tells him he'll be fine. Mouth and Jimmy show up and decide that they're going to be sports announcers on a new website to broadcast during Ravens games. During warm-ups, there's a truly awful moment where Dan says, "Son!" and Lucas actually turns around.
And here, we meet Brooke, Peyton's sultry fellow cheerleader and best friend, who makes a comment about Lucas being hot. Whitey tells Lucas, "Destiny has a way of finding you," which is weird, because I thought that was pretty much the definition of destiny, but I don't mind, because Whitey's clearly on Lucas's side, so we like him. In the first play of the game, Lucas misses a pass, and it almost hits Peyton, so we're also treated to the great exchange of Peyton nastily saying, "Nice hands," to which Lucas responds, "Nice legs." More clever points for Broody Lucas. To make a long story short, Lucas continues to suck throughout the game, until Whitey pulls him.
*Gavin Degraw theme song plays, we sing along*
Nathan and Peyton are making out in Nathan's car really close to the river court. There are no people at the court, but we wonder if Nathan purposely parked there to get busy with his girlfriend in case Lucas showed up after the game. It seems like something he would do. But while they're making out, Nathan keeps laughing, because, while feeling up a girl, he is thinking about how badly Lucas played in the game (???). Peyton seems surprised at how happy Nathan is about Lucas sucking, and then Nathan gets all mad back, asking if she likes Lucas or something. She says no, but we're forced to raise our eyebrows there. So then Nathan says rude things, Peyton gets out of the car, and Nathan asks her to get back in. We immediately assume it's going to be one of those scenes that shows up in many TV shows and movies where the boy has to drive slowly down the street next to the girl while she's walking, begging her to get in the car, but then we remember it's Nathan, so he just throws her pom-poms and "lame" music out the window and peaces out. Class act.
Karen admits to Good Friend Keith that she wishes she had come to the game, but she couldn't go back to that gym. Lucas is playing at the river court now - yes, this is still the same night - and Peyton shows up and says some really Angsty shit. She tells him he's just a game, but still manages to be bitchy. He offers her a ride home.
Dan's reviewing the game tape, and when Nathan finally gets home after abandoning his girlfriend, it's to his father criticizing everything he did in the game. We find out Nathan's mother is away on business a lot.
Lucas pulls up to Peyton's house, and she turns and asks if she can ask him something, so we have to wonder why she just spent the whole ride in silence and NOW wants to talk, but we're more relieved that Lucas isn't the type to respond with, "You just did." After she asks why he left the river court, he says it's because he wants to know if he's good. Peyton says the whole thing is a waste of time, and goes on with Angsty stuff about how she kind of hates cheerleading but doesn't want to be a fraud. She asks, "Do you want to come in?" and when he comes up to her door, she clarifies that she wasn't inviting him in, she was just asking if he wanted to. Raise eyebrows, Peyton's super bitchy.
Nathan calls Peyton and gives a pretty decent apology for leaving her stranded. She forgives him reluctantly, but writes, "It's not ok" on her drawing.
The next day, the English teacher is trying to teach Hemingway's use of few words in his writing, so he asks Peyton to describe Lucas in one word. Nathan and the Popular kids are there, so she does her bitchy thing and says, "Choke." GIggles in the classroom. The English teacher decides that he doesn't give a shit that his lesson plan is poorly conceived and now hurting the feelings of his students, so he invites Lucas to respond. Lucas describes Peyton as, "Lonely," so the class has to go, "Oooh." Nathan, even though no one asked him, describes Lucas as, "Bastard," so Lucas has to dive on him and they get in a fistfight in the middle of English class.
Whitey is pissed, obviously. Lucas says he doesn't think he should be on the team anymore. In the locker room, Jake Jagielski is sticking up for Lucas to Nathan. We immediately love him. After practice, Lucas goes to see Quirky Best Friend Haley on this real quirky mini golf course they built together, and says he wishes things would go back how they were.
Brooke and Peyton are hanging out. The whole scene is just to characterize Brooke as silly and a bit conceited with a basic taste in music, because she likes Beyonce and thinks Gwen Stefani is a badass, which Peyton corrects, because Peyton is Angsty and therefore listens to REAL badass musicians. It's also meant to show that Peyton is deeper than thou, because she once again brings up that she's not sure how much the cheerleading-basketball-Popular bit matters to her.
Lucas tells Good Guy Keith that he's not into playing on the varsity team anymore, because he doesn't fit in. They're working on Peyton's busted car. Lucas finds Peyton's sketches with a query letter she wrote to a magazine called Thud. She finds him looking at them, and goes into full Bitchy Peyton Mode, but he's just impressed by how deep she really is, since he's Broody himself.
Dan yells at Nathan for getting in a fight, tells him that his girlfriend is unimportant, and only really cares that he isn't hurt. Nathan tells Dan that Lucas was really swinging at Dan, not him. Karen gets upset with Lucas too, but only because she raised Lucas to be a Good Guy, not someone who fights, and he retaliates with the fact that she didn't even show up to his game. Out the window, he sees Peyton throw her sketches in the trash. He apologizes to his mom, being a Good Guy, and they have a nice talk about how she was scared to go back to that gym, which is where Dan had told her he was leaving for college even though she was pregnant with Lucas.
Dan tells Nathan that when he played for Whitey and he didn't agree with one of Whitey's decisions, he just sat out of the state championship and let his team lose instead. So we're reminded that Dan is a jerk. We think about how we probably would have killed Dan if we had been his teammates, but then we figure that his teammates probably went on to live full, happy lives that are not centered around their past basketball careers or their sons' scoring averages. The point of this is that Dan tells Nathan not to listen to Whitey either.
Perfect Jake Jagielski befriends Lucas, because he is perfect. He tells Lucas not to let Nathan push him around, because he has Nathan scared. Back in English class, the teacher is still going on about this Hemingway thing, despite the complete failure of his last lesson, so he tells them all to write one word on a paper to describe what they want most in their life right now.
Nathan goes to antagonize Lucas for a little while on the river court. He tells Lucas not to bother showing up anymore so he doesn't humiliate himself further. To our disappointment, Lucas indeed does not show to the next practice. Peyton is picking up her car from Lucas at Good Friend Keith's auto shop. He returns to her the sketches that he pulled out of the trash can. She gives this really awesome speech about all the emotions she wants to draw - "I wanna draw something that means something to someone" - and says that she doesn't want to submit her sketches to Thud because if she can't be great at it, she doesn't want to ruin it, since it means too much to her to lose it that way. Lucas is, of course, touched.
Dan goes to bug Whitey once again. He thinks that Whitey is punishing Nathan for Dan sitting out in the state championship. The shitty English teacher is looking at all of the responses for what the students want most in their life right now. Peyton wrote "Truth" and we see her ripping down a bunch of art from her walls. Nathan wrote "Revenge" and we see him lifting weights, because he doesn't do much else in his spare time. Lucas wrote "Answers" and we see him at the river court, where Whitey visits him. He talks to him about missed opportunities, and figuring out what he is afraid of so he can beat it, or use it to his advantage.
Nathan is painting Peyton's toenails, which is something that boyfriends do for their girlfriends in TV shows, but I'm pretty sure would never happen in real life. He tells her he's going to quit the basketball team, and she gets really excited and tells him that's perfect, because then she can quit the cheerleading team and they'll be together and Unpopular. He laughs because he was completely kidding, and we feel really bad for Peyton because Nathan sucks.
Lucas and Quirky Haley have a really quirky conversation where she tells him to figure out his porn star name using the name of his first pet and his mother's maiden name. After this, he says he's not playing anymore, because he doesn't want to be "that person" whatever that means. Later, he's looking at Peyton's sketches, and Karen comes in to tell him that she's going to come to the game, and that he should play. He says he quit because he didn't want Dan to have any part of him. He starts crying, and looks back at Peyton's sketches. On his way to the game, he stops by Thud Magazine and asks the editor to look at her sketches. What a Good Guy.
Dan is on Nathan's case as he leaves for the game. Terribly awkward moment as Dan calls out to Lucas's back, "Son!" because he thinks it's just another player, and when Lucas turns around, he just asks Lucas to give Nathan's bag to him. After he walks away, Perfect Jake comes and reminds Lucas not to let him "take it," meaning his talent, but making a reference to an Ayn Rand novel he recommended earlier. Jake is still perfect, but we question who would recommend an Ayn Rand novel.
Lucas gives a great voiceover about not letting the hero inside of you disappear, etc. Karen enters the gym bravely. Peyton clearly does not want to be there cheering. The editor at Thud is looking at her sketches. As Lucas walks out, he tells Peyton, "Your art matters. It's what got me here." This marks the first time we are really hit in the feels since we started watching. When Lucas turns around, we see that he has ripped the name "Scott" from the back of his jersey. You go, Lucas.
Times I Cried: 0.
Feelings Level: 7.
Plotline Believability: 9. Nothing too far-fetched here.
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