Ahhh—young love.  Don’t you remember when you thought your high school relationship would last forever and ever?  TLA!  Well it was Paige’s turn in this episode to see if her fling with former teacher, Matt, would stand the test of time.  Eagerly anticipating the end of Matt’s Canadian summer tour, Paige gets all dolled-up for her first reunion with her older beau.  Armed with a present and freshly-washed hair, Paige is disappointed to see Matt all disheveled and stinky.  Nevertheless, she is excited to see him and babbles on about her grand plans for them.  Paige is applying to college and would like Matt to move with her once she is accepted.  Matt is clearly overwhelmed (and far too old for such juvenile dreams) and tells her that he is still re-evaluating his life.  But before leaving for good, he gives her a marijuana joint as a parting gift, leaving Paige to say “You’re dumping me and giving me drugs?”  C’mon Paige—it could have been worse.  You could have been given the pen that Lloyd Dobler received in “Say Anything.”

With or without Matt as a roomie, Paige continues to focus her attention on Banting College.  Although the elite school only accepts 30 students a year, Paige throws all her eggs into one basket and decides that Banting’s business school is the only place that she will apply.  Really—why should she apply anywhere else when her mother is good friends with someone in Admissions?  Meanwhile Paige’s friend, Alex, is is not keen on the whole college thing.  Alex is currently living with her mom and her mom’s abusive boyfriend.  How could she realistically expect to have any kind of future?

Hoping Alex will attend Degrassi’s college recruiting fair anyway, Paige tries to bribe her with the newly acquired joint.  Alex agrees to go with Paige on one condition—she smoke the joint with her.  Paige finally agrees and they both enter the school stoned.  As we could have easily predicted, Paige ends up jeopardizing her college career with this stupid stunt.  As it turns out, the Banting rep her mother knows just happens to be at that fair ands wants to interview Paige.  Needless to say, Paige flubs her interview and eventually gets into trouble with her mother.  No word yet as to what community college she will be graduating from now.

Elsewhere in Degrassi land—former basketball star Jimmy Brooks has to try and deal with an obnoxious player on the varsity team.  Having been sidelined after the school shooting, Jimmy is now delegated to being an assistant coach for his former team.  Despite Jimmy’s reputation as a great player,  newcomer Derek is overheard griping about having to work with a cripple.  Jimmy confronts Derek in the hallway, but their fight is broken up before it ever gets really good.  Later, Jimmy decides to shut Derek up by using a different approach—he decides to show him up in a game of ‘HORSE’ from his wheelchair.  (Okay - it wasn’t officially ‘horse’, but it might as well have been).  After Jimmy outshoots Derek from across the court, he finally earns the punk’s respect. 

Pretty impressive I must say.  I can’t even win a game of HORSE when I’m standing underneath the basket…