An Attempt to Tip the Scales Episode Recap

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Synopsis

It's Halloween in Tree Hill and everybody is celebrating at Tric, with special guest band Fall Out Boy. The masquerade ball gives the opportunity to Haley to win back Nathan, while Brooke is trying to seduce Lucas. Also, Peyton decides to face her new mother and get to know her. Meanwhile, Dan uses blackmail to become mayor but things don't turn out as easy as he thought they would when Deb gets in his way.

Full Recap

We open with Lucas and Haley at a store checking out how they look in different costumes. Lucas looks killer in a Johnny Depp Pirates of the Carribean impression. When Haley points that out, he's like "Excuse me?" then she has to go all "Not that I'd notice or anything... or I could possibly think of you that way... " to save the moment. Lucas wants to go all out to convince Brooke to can their non-exclusive arrangement, so he asks Haley to do a little recon to find out what would get under her skin.

Later, Dan catches Mayor Mullins in a compromising sexual encounter involving drugs and prostitutes. Being the diabolical anti-hero that he is, he manages to capture the entire sordid affair on video, and then blackmails him into not only resigning as mayor but also endorsing Dan's candidacy. Afterwards, he signs Deb's divorce papers but post-dates them for two months from that day, telling Deb that all she has to do is to play wifey for 60 days to show Tree Hill what a good family man Dan Scott is. After that, he promises to lay off her and Nathan for good. Deb sees no choice but to agree.

Brooke is making herself a costume for the party and it turns out that even though she's unconventional, she is pretty good at it. She offers to make Haley one, too. Then Brooke goes over to talk Nathan into attending the masquerade party. At Karen's Cafe, Haley tells Lucas to go as Tommy Lee, but when she arrives she's shocked to see him lifting cash out of the register. She pretends she didn't, but does say "...even after all this time people can still surprise you." She's seemingly talking about Brooke's taste, but it's clear there's some hidden innuendo there.

Larry goes to confront Ellie about the cancer, and it turns out Peyton has a ten percent chance of coming down with the same illness later in life. Deb goes on an expensive shopping trip and gets a whole new wardrobe. As she says, "...new campaign, new look!"

After seeing Ellie, Larry tells Peyton that unlike her mother's sudden death, with Ellie there's a warning and there is time to say everything she wants to. And maybe Peyton should go see her and talk to her. While looking at High Flyers photos, Nathan makes a mysterious phone call to someone to set up a meeting and says, "There's just one thing: Haley can't find out."

At the costume party Haley goes as Sandy from Grease, Brooke as a sequined, feathered red devil, Mouth as James Brown, Peyton as the Angel of Death, and Lucas as Tommy Lee. Meanwhile, Dan comes back home to find his room cleared out, and Deb with a physical therapist. She says she gave all of his belongings away since it was all wet and smelly, which happened when the sprinkler came on "accidentally" after she threw everything out. It turns out that Brooke doesn't actually like Tommy Lee, but some chick dressed as Pamela Anderson comes and whisks Lucas away, and Brooke goes all jealous.

Deb and Dan's rivalry reaches a whole another level when Deb goes to her bed and finds Dan in it. She has no choice but to join him, but in her fury she electrocutes him in his sleep. Dan smartly decides to sleep on the couch.

At the party, Karen confronts Haley about cash missing from the register even though it always finds its way back later. Haley faces up, knowing it was Lucas. Haley then trips and falls and just when everyone is laughing, some dude in a Batman suit whisks her away. It turns out to be Nathan when he takes off his mask. Mouth and Peyton dance to some soul song with everyone watching. Karen, dressed as a cop, introduces Fallout Boy but accidentally calls them Falldown Boy to the horror (and delight) of the audience. They sing Dance, Dance. Brooke finds Haley in the bathroom taking apart her costume, and she says she looked like an idiot and she's just gonna be herself. "I'm just Haley. That really should be enough." On her way home the dude dressed as Batman comes, kisses her, and walks away. She is, of course, dumbstruck and just stands there. When Lucas finds her later at home she's on cloud nine, believing it was Nathan who kissed her. She confronts him about the "borrowed" Cafe cash, and Lucas tells her he needed to buy meds for his heart condition now that Dan isn't paying for it.

Peyton goes to see Ellie and tells her she's afraid they have too much in common, so Ellie lies about being unable to draw. Turns out the meeting Nathan was setting up was with Chris: he wants him to help Haley with her music. But if he touches her this time "I'll crush you." Chris agrees, but he's gotta be paid.

Deb's phone rings. She answers and it's Dan calling from downstairs, saying all these mushy things. Then after a while, he says, "I just had to talk to you because... I'm waiting for the glue to dry." Upstairs, the phone is glued [literally] to Deb's ear... super-glued. "You wanna play with me, game on bitch!" And with that he blows a siren into the phone.

We hear Lucas speaking in a voiceover. Peyton makes up with her dad. Ellie is shown drawing a really realistic impression of Peyton as an angel. Nathan goes to his room to sleep. Chris is also shown walking in to his room, and it ends with him looking at a Batman costume exactly like Nathan's and smiling to himself. And the audience is forced to wonder who it really was that kissed Haley.