Although this week's episode of everyone's favorite gymnastics soap drama is wistfully titled "If only..." "Everything that can possibly go wrong, does," is a more fitting name. Here's a character-by-character breakdown of the implosion:
Kaylie: Still not eating, despite Austin Tucker's admonitions, heartfelt monologues and farmer's market chicken salads. Like many anorexics, Kaylie has taken to hiding the food she isn't consuming, although she's none too creative about it: her cereal goes into the garbage, and lunches get left untouched in her gym bag.
Sasha notices her thinness and, with her parents, tries to intervene, showing up after practice and forcing Kaylie to weigh herself. Kaylie snaps that according to Ellen Beals, her weight and training are perfect (just one more reinforcement that Beals is evil) but agrees to get on the scale. She comes in at 106, a healthy weight for someone her size, but after they all leave she takes off the 10 pound weights she was wearing under her shorts.
Once Kaylie's asleep, her mother Ronnie covers her up and moves her gym bag off her bed...and inside notices all the food that Kaylie hasn't been eating.
Payson: Still reeling from kissing Sasha, Payson confesses all to her mom Kim, who urges her to move on.
Sasha has a conflict: address the issue or pretend it never happened? Better: Have a mother/coach/athlete chat between himself, Payson and Kim where they can all express their feelings! Payson will love that. Never mind that Sasha is now a bit skittish about touching her when telling her to extend her arms, which freaks Payson out.
What it leads to is a big talk between her and Sasha about the coach-athlete relationship being a kind of love. Sasha also talks about his father (later to be introduced as Bela Karolyi) as his coach and why he eventually chose to train with someone else. "He was, in some ways, the best," Sasha says with a sigh of his father/Karolyi, and here my admiration grows for the writers of this show, who have obviously done their research on Karolyi himself, who will have a cameo as Sasha's father later this season.
They smooth things over, but Payson remains mortified and fearful that someone will find out about the kiss. (See below.)
Emily: Was arrested at the end of last week's episode for stealing anti-seizure medications for her brother Brian when Brian began having seizure symptoms and Emily didn't have the money to pay the $220 copay on the medicine.
This week's show begins with Emily behind bars, flashing back to being patted down for weapons, fingerprinted and photographed with her case number around her neck. She calls her Chloe, who is working her new night job and doesn't answer her phone, so in desperation she calls Razr, who comes and bails her out.
Emily explodes at Chloe for not being there for her, not knowing that Chloe's new "office job" is waitressing at an undoubtedly sleazy joint where she's required to wear a sequined bustier and a nametag that identifies her as "Bambi". (Fashion note: The waitressing getup is hideous, but you have to love the blue trench coat she covers it up in.)
Anyway, Emily's mood is not improved when Damon comes back into town high on his success and sweeps her off her feet with his flashy new car, recording contract news and "what-a-dump-we-used-to-work-in" attitude about Pizza Shack.
"We're on top of the world," he tells her, not knowing that she's lost her scholarship and is back working at Pizza Shack and getting friendly with Razr, who seems more sympathetic to her situation. When she lets him know over a fancy dinner, he asks her why she didn't just keep Steve Tanner's money. "Razr understands," she snaps. Ouch.
Doesn't help that Damon later walks in on a flirty food fight between her and Razr. He and Razr sit down and Razr explains that Emily's under pressure, Damon has girls throwing themselves at him and Emily deserves to have a little fun too. So Damon decides to leave to go focus on his music, and tells Emily that he'll stop being a distraction to her and he'll see her after the Olympic Games. Or whatever. Cut to Emily just as devastated as she was at the beginning of the episode, only no longer behind bars.
Lauren: Sometimes, in order to move a plot forward, a main character has to be fixiated on something...rather out of character. For Lauren, that thing is convincing Summer van Horne to be her stepmother. Never mind that her own mother Leslie, a recovering addict, shows up in Boulder with a card "For Lauren, with all my love" and asks Steve if she can see her daughter. Steve, distraught by the fact that she left her family for her drugs -- twice -- says no and points to the restraining order against her. She tells him that regret is a horrible thing to have and leaves.
Meanwhile, Lauren finds the tape of Payson performing her floor routine, then kissing Sasha on the mouth, which was conveniently recorded and then abandoned by Sasha in the middle of the gym. Lauren tries once more to convince Summer to go out with Steve, saying that she needs a mother in order to achieve her Olympic dream or something like that. Summer confesses that she's seeing Sasha. (Lauren: "How could you date my coach? That's so wrong. You were almost my mother.")
So Lauren finds a way to accomplish several of her goals at once: She sends the tape (editing out the part where Sasha pushes Payson away and looks freaked out) to evil Ellen Beals, knowing Beals will use it to take action against Sasha, and also discredit him in Summer's eyes, freeing her up to become her stepmother.
Ellen Beals shows up just as The Rock's Parents Board is about to elect its new President. Despite that Steve has made a mess of his speech bashing "coach Belov" (Summer: "Did he just compare Sasha to Hitler?") and Kim seems to be the obvious choice, she displays a blown up photo of Sasha locking lips with Payson.
When Kim defends Sasha and tries to explain that "it was only a crush" on Payson's part and she knew about it all along, she leaves herself open to being painted as once of those parents who's so invested in her child's success that she's lost touch with reality. And Steve wins the election. Things do not look good for Sasha.
As Lauren and Steve get ready for a celebratory dinner, Steve gets a phone call that the sober Leslie has been in a car accident -- not her fault -- and died. Lauren reacts with no emotion at all -- "I understand, and honestly I feel nothing," she says. "She didn't love me. She didn't even want to see me. She was already dead to me. Now, can we please go to dinner?"
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