The burning question on the second episode of Life Unexpected: who is your real family? The family who brought you to this world? Or the family that was there for you, despite not having any biological links? For someone like Lux (Brittany Robertson), who was raised in the world of less than agreeable foster homes then suddenly flung into her birth parents, it proved to be a tricky affair.
On tonight's "Home Inspected" Lux is torn between staying with her newfound parents or fulfilling a promise to her foster care system buddies, that is, gain emancipation and live together in a communal sort of New Age household with her boyfriend Bug, best friend Tash, and her boyfriend Gavin. Not that they get along fine all the time ("If your fancy new parents send you to college, you should major in bitch."), but the tension of the choice was really evident.
Just to give you an idea of how messed up it got, in wonderfully perfect timing, just when Lux makes her big for-the-first-time-in-my-life-I-feel-wanted speech, she hears Cate (Shiri Appleby) deny on her radio show that she has a kid out there.
As a plot device/means of shedding more life into the parenting skills of both Cate and Baze (Kristoffer Polaha), a social worker is constantly in the case of the two, finding bongs and inflatable sheep and conveniently arriving just when Lux slams into a humongous flower pot outside Cate's house.
The social worker has very little opinion of Baze's suitability, and for good reason, since the overgrown fratboy can't even wake up/stay up to drive Lux to school, so he gets a cab to do the job for him (not a bad idea, though, on hindsight). But lo and behold, Lux doesn't go to school and instead we find out that her world is not as solitary as we previously thought: she used to live in some sort of communal apartment (which, thanks to a brief shot of some Chinese-looking arc, is probably somewhere in China Town).
Of course, down the line Baze and Cate bicker again, and Cate accuses Baze of sabotaging things because he's not really up for it. Lux jumps in to remind Cate that she can't take the moral high ground in this story because she just went on air and practically announced that Lux didn't exist.
So even when the two accost the social worker while she was getting Chinese takeout, she reveals to them that Lux herself requested that she be returned to the foster care system. This, after Baze's nerdy best friend Math (Austin Basis) gives him a much-deserved and long-overdue flash of the obvious - Baze needs to grow frigging up.
On the other end, it was Ryan (Kerr Smith) who sways Lux by showing her the room that her mom was planning to give her as soon as the custody becomes official. He probably knows Cate more than anyone. Later, Cate joins them and much later, comes clean on her radio show. For his part, Baze is able to drive Lux to school! So just like the pilot, all is nice and awesome once again in the world of
Life Unexpected.
On the episode next week, we get to meet Cate's family, but the circumstances are less than ideal. Lux also transfers schools, and ends up at the one where her parents graduated from.
(Image courtesy of the CW)