Yawn. Does Luke have to ruin everything by his mere existence? TPTB forget that a love triangle only works well if the three characters involve actually care about one another. That's where the good dramatic tension comes in -- but whatever. They don't care. They just want sweaty boys to toss around some masculine auras for a while and create highly one-dimensional women for them all to be in love with. Smarten the hell up, Peyton, you're an embarrassment to us all -- get a backbone already.

Back to our regularly scheduled recap, in which Luke gets up early and goes jogging. Then he practices down at the Riverside Courts. The entire day goes by and he sinks nary a single basket.

It's Monday morning, and English class is in progress at Tree Hill High. Peyton, Luke, and Nathan are all in the same class. I'm sick of waiting for the show to explain how the two boys can be the same age, so I'm just going to do it myself. Consider this my one foray into fan fiction. Karen and Dan spend a glorious summer together before he leaves for college. She gets pregnant. A couple weeks before he's actually going to leave, she asks him to stay behind, to help her with the baby. He refuses. He goes off to college. She stays behind and has Lucas, still holding out hope that Dan will actually come home and they'll be a family. But wait! Cocky, arrogant Dan's having the time of his life playing college basketball. He picks up a girl at a frat party -- she's the daughter of one of the town's richest men, and she'd always tried to get Dan, and now she gets him. They get drunk and get it on. She too gets pregnant. Only that prospect seems far more advantageous to Dan than marrying poor Karen. They get married, have Nathan, and all move back to Tree Hill, where Lola (that's what I'm calling Nathan's mom until she actually shows up) and her father set Dan up with the dealership. The boys are only a month apart in age, and that's how they've ended up in the same grade. Whew -- now maybe I can get some sleep tonight and can actually stop thinking about it.

The Writer of the Week is Hemingway. Let the comparisons begin -- this week's paralleled author has Lucas as an alcoholic, impotent American writer who spent far too much time watching bullfights. Bah. And the lecture goes, "Early in his career Hemingway was frustrated, he was a good writer who wanted to be great, but eventually he discovered that less was more." Yeah, okay -- Hemingway sat around his writing room with pipe in hand, raging about the fact that he just wasn't great yet, until one day he made the miraculous discovery that fiction works best when you strip away everything except the bare necessities. Shut up, pretentious English teacher, with this week's moral/philosophical parallel to Luke's life. Wait, it gets worse. Pretentia-Teacher says, "Peyton, describe Lucas using just one word." Luke looks back at her -- she's sitting right behind him. Peyton says, "Choke." Now, that was mean. Nathan's so proud. The teacher asks Luke to respond. He won't sink to her level. He says, "Lonely." The whole class erupts into a collective "oo-oo-ooh." Nathan looks back, and then raises his hand. He's ready to defend his woman: "I can describe Lucas in one word. Bastard." The "oo-oo-ooohs" continue. In a split second, Lucas is out of his chair, dragging Nathan to the front of the classroom. Suddenly, Luke's on top of his half-brother with his fist cocked and a swing so straight that it resembles a cricket bat, and he punches him. A well-deserved smackdown, if you ask my opinion.