On tonight's episode of Life Unexpected, there were lying, deception, and a boyfriend calling his girlfriend damaged goods. If that is not breakup fodder, I don't know what is.
First of all, notice how good Life Unexpected gets when Lux's (Britt Robertson) contact with Cate (Shiri Appleby) is reduced to a bare minimum? It bears mentioning, though, that their little mother-daughter talks in Lux's bed always, always brings out something brilliant, a realization at times, or the glaring irony of things (like Lux telling her mom, "What should I have done? Lied so he would stay?").
Cate-Ryan-BazeThe love triangles are heating up, and Cate had been extra-horrible in dealing with hers. Self-righteous, lying Cate, insisting that she had no feelings for Baze (Kristoffer Polaha) when it's so obvious to everyone else, especially poor Ryan (Kerr Smith), that she does. Lying to him just takes the cake. And taking inspiration, no less, from her daughter's (truthful) confession ("I pushed him away.").
Because everyone's so frigging confused about the men in Cate's life and she'd been yapping about Blaze all the time, her likeability line graph is going south. So corporate flew in and had a brilliant suggestion: have Baze guest star on their morning show.
It is all symbolic, simply, and when everyone and their mom started gushing about the chemistry between Cate and Baze, Ryan was left to nurse his little wounded ego. The one thing that he'd been noticing had been validated: Baze is here, and he's not going to go away that easy, if at all.
At this point,
Life Unexpected unfortunately fell into the most formulaic, overused love triangle template in the world: seemingly perfect guy vs. guy who needs fixing, heart choice vs. brain choice, etc. While Ryan is all nice and perfect and sweet, placed vis-Ã -vis Baze, he turned out boring and bland. And with Lux being the daughter of Cate and Baze, all logic has fled Team Ryan. The impending marriage will just pour in more sympathies for Baze, who, by next episode or so, will probably realize he has feelings for Cate as well, if he hasn't already.
Lux-Bug-JonesBecause of the little stunt he pulled (stealing someone's car), Bug was in major trouble. So dutiful girlfriend Lux came to the rescue and tried to convince Abercrombie Boy to drop the charges. Jones said yes, with one little condition: that Bug surrender his bike. Bug said yes, even if it held memories.
Jones, however, couldn't get the bike started so enter Lux to help him. To convince Jones that what he was doing was awful, Lux played the Foster Care / Horrible Childhood Card by bringing Jones to the house where Bug grew up. That always works. Everything was fine and dandy until Jones ruined everything by deciding to kiss Lux, who did the right thing and pulled away. Bug is a troubled guy, however, and when he saw the two of them pulling up on his bike, he freaked out, called his girlfriend Lux "damaged goods" and punched Jones in the face, in that order.
Mother and daughter talked about the men in their lives and arrived at the conclusion that truth shall set them free. So Lux went over to Bug's to tell him he's horrible, and Cate went to Ryan's to, well, lie to his face again. And she had the nerve to lecture her daughter on what true love constitutes.
(Image courtesy of the CW)