Summary
“No Excuses” deals with the ramifications of last week’s revelation, and Luke decides he’s no longer going to school.
This recap of Breeders season 2, episode 7, “No Excuses”, contains spoilers.
Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, Paul didn’t take Ally’s confession about kissing another man very well. In the first scene of “No Excuses,” he’s imagining her having sex with her new suitor while speeding along with a very nervous Luke in the passenger seat. Luke has, thanks to some confusion over a pillow, fled from the school trip, meaning Paul had to pick him up in the middle of the night. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, though, since he’s using the time to avoid Ally — and thus the issue — completely. Even after he drops Luke back at home he disappears into the night to decompress from driving by… driving some more.
Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Leah and Alex come around the next morning to reveal that they’re getting married, which seems a bit ill-advised, but then again what do I know? Either way, it’s another straw on the back of an already suffering camel, and when Ally decides enough is enough and they need to talk it out, Ava appears to snitch about something rather serious that Luke told her and then swore her to silence about.
The serious thing in Breeders season 2, episode 7 is that Luke has decided he isn’t going to school again so as not to be known as the kid who ran away from the school trip, which Paul’s ill-chosen words have convinced him he will be. That night, when Ally once again tries to talk to Paul about the issue, he goes for another drive. (Ally: “What are you, a cat burglar?”)
Things haven’t gotten much better the next morning, especially when Ally allows Luke to bunk off school. She later calls Keeley to tell her, “He’s driving around all f*cking night like Robert DeNiro.” She doesn’t know what to do about how Paul is acting any more than he knows what to do about his feelings, but either way, he starts taking his frustration out on Luke and his anxiety, which hardly seems fair. When he’s eventually ready to talk, though, there are so many attendant issues that come tumbling out it’s easy to think that maybe the whole kiss thing ended up for the best. Paul is disappointed that, since they’re not having another baby, he won’t get another shot at being a “good” dad, and Ally just feels like a husk, clinically and emotionally. Getting it all out on the table they’re able to reconcile, and thanks to Ava putting in a word with a friend of a friend, Luke is able to return to school. Until the next time he forgets his pillow, obviously.
