"Are You True?" is the third episode of One Tree Hill and aired October 7th, 2003, and was written by Jennifer Cecil and directed by Michael Grossman.
Lucas quickly finds himself thrust into the spotlight after making the winning shot in his second game. Frustrated by Lucas' success - and goaded on by Dan - Nathan begins a hazing campaign against Lucas, but has to make efforts to secure his own spot on the team by improving his grades.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- All Women Are Lustful:
- Peyton is clearly more interested in making out after the game than Nathan, who just sulks about Lucas receiving praise for his performance.
- Brooke starts pursuing Lucas, freely admitting that she’s only interested in having sex with him.
- Auto Erotica: After Lucas makes the shot that wins the game for the Ravens, he finds a naked Brooke Davis waiting in the backseat of his car.
- Bait-and-Switch: As Lucas and Haley check out the Burning Boat, people keep coming up to Lucas to congratulate him on his game, until someone comes up to thank Haley for tutoring him.
- Call-Back: Peyton finds her "THEY ARE NOT YOU" poster wedged into her locker door - the same poster inspired Lucas to stay on the basketball team.
- Everyone Has Standards: Nathan approaches Haley about being his tutor, which she immediately refuses out of loyalty to Lucas; however, she has a change of heart when Nathan approaches her again after receiving an F, but tells Nathan to stop bullying Lucas if he wants her help.
- Fanservice: Lucas’ clothes are stolen by Nathan and the rest of the team, forcing Lucas to cover himself with a pair of basketballs. Thankfully, Whitey finds him before any of the students.
- Festival Episode: Tree Hill holds its annual "Burning Boat" festival, where residents of the town place things symbolic of something they want to forget on a wooden boat kept on the waterfront before the boat is set on fire at the end of the week.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Nathan sulks that people praised Lucas’ performance after the game, claiming that he’s out scored Lucas in all but two games.
- Hypocrite: Sherri, one of the moms of the other members of the Ravens, claims that "our" boys are the good ones, silently accusing Lucas of being a bad kid when the rest of team are actively trying to bully him off the team and half of the team were previously suspended for stealing a school bus. Later episodes also reveal that Sherri’s son (or rather, step-son) is Nathan’s sidekick Tim, which further reinforces her hypocrisy.
- Initiation Ceremony: Nathan claims that the Ravens kidnapping Lucas would normally be the point that he’d be considered a member of the team.
- It's All About Me: Dan claims that Whitey is using Nathan to get back at him for the Ravens championship loss 17 years earlier, and refuses to acknowledge that the Ravens - both past and present - are Whitey’s team.
- It's Personal: Nathan and the rest of the teams hazing of Lucas crosses the line from hazing into outright bullying, prompting Lucas to start fighting back.
- Never My Fault: When Tim and the other players start trying to cut Lucas out of the team in practice, Lucas is forced to steal the ball from his own team to make the shot. When Whitey gets involved to break up a potential fight between Lucas and Tim, Tim tries to blame Lucas only for Whitey to point out that Lucas only stole the ball from Tim because his team wouldn’t pass to him.
- Protection from Editors: Invoked by Peyton when she returns to THUD - she outright tells the editor of the magazine that she’ll only do the comic strip if she’s given creative freedom.
- Ship Tease:
- Brooke makes numerous advances towards Lucas throughout the episode; however he doesn’t respond to them.
- Whilst Peyton is initially pissed at Lucas for submitting her artwork to THUD Magazine, she is noticeably a lot kinder to him than in previous episodes and he continues to encourage her artwork.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Now that Lucas has proven he’s good enough to stay on the team, Nathan decides to rally the rest of the team (Bar Jake) into bullying Lucas off the team, even going so far as to trash the public River Court purely because Lucas practices there.
- What Does She See in Him?: After Nathan trashed the River Court, Lucas outright asks Peyton what she sees in him.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Peyton is pissed at Lucas for submitting her artwork to THUD Magazine without her consent, and confronts him about in the hallway at school.
