Seriously, season two posed challenge after challenge, what with the boys constantly making eyes at the various girls. Serious denial is all I have to say on the subject.

This one, from Arrest Jesse Duke, was no exception. In fact, I just finally decided to embrace the silly boys and their insistance on lusting after the females. (It's not like I had a choice. Bo thought he was cute, staring at girls in some kind of a makeshift, outdoor shower-thing.)


Too dang many girls. It's a heartbreaking realization on Bo's part, that there can be too many when he's spent the last ten years or so wishing on every star in the sky for more of them, each of them with increasingly large hood ornaments over the last and still none as perfectly proportioned as the too many he dealt with today.

It started with the blonde and boring twins, one each for him and Luke. Moved on to Daisy asserting herself into the mess their uncle had stumbled onto and right between him and Luke in the front seat of the General. Then there were the girls with guns, each prettier than the last, and all utterly lacking in charisma. Close call there, prowling around their used car parts shop, except for Luke's quick thinking and deft hands.

Too dang many girls, ripping cars apart and disappearing overland into the dustiest stretch of Hazzard he'd ever seen. The terrain nearly killed them all, but Bo was undeterred. Girls over the horizon somewhere, and I'll meet you back at the farm, cuz. Luke let him go, undoubtedly deciding that Bo would be useless for anything else as long as he'd caught the scent of a female.

Which led to his third near-death experience at the hands of girls. A moment of heaven, first, watching two of them squirm around in cold water, and then hell: guns at his back, ropes at his wrists.

There came a point when he realized that there were simply too dang many of them. He could have worked them one at a time. That Carla, for all her tough talk, had her eye on him. The others would have been even easier, but four of them at once made him have to scatter his charm and good looks too many ways all at once. Spread all thin like that, he probably seemed about as average-looking as Luke.

Thinking of Luke, somewhere around the time that the girls tied him to Carla's jeep and settled in to drive him lord knew where, Bo remembered that Luke wouldn't let any harm come to him. He didn't relax, exactly, just let himself smile a time or two. Do what you want, girls. Luke'll come for me. Shoot, he's dragged me away from prettier girls than you.

Like he knew what Bo needed, Luke knocked the girls off, one by one, until Bo was alone with Carla. Just about the time he had gotten matters and the girl into his own hands, Luke's voice showed up in his ear, about as unwelcome as it always was at times like this. Something about a cliff and danger and—

Too many girls, tied to the back of the General. Looked pretty bouncing along back there, bodies shifting in all the right places, but it didn't matter. Bo had already discovered the depressing concept of too many girls.

Of course, could still be that the right amount of girls would turn out all right, so he, Luke and the twins went back out to explore that idea in the continuation of their abbreviated date. Tried some kissing (nope), some touching (nuh-uh), a journey up here and over there, even some sex (not really), but it was no use. Bo couldn't get over the notion of too many girls.

Didn't seem to bother Luke a lot when Bo signaled him with a let's-go-home tilt to his head. He just took his teeth off whatever part of the girl's face he'd been chewing on and announced something about chores and Uncle Jesse and hides so tanned they'd be just about black.

Could be that Luke already knows about too many girls; seems like, now that Bo thinks on it for a bit, his cousin's just been going through the motions for a while. It's almost annoying that Luke got there first, but he's always been four years ahead of Bo in everything.

Which is why, when the evening ages to night, Bo isn't surprised when Luke lets him sit next to him on his bed, half undressed and well past exhausted. Luke puts up with a blonde head on his shoulder, even winds up with an arm around Bo's waist.

"It was a nightmare, Luke," he mumbles into his cousin's hard shoulder. "Too many girls."

"I know," Luke says, and there's that smile in his voice that's been there since the first time Bo ever confessed his childhood fears and hopes to his cousin. Luke reaches out his free hand to snap off the light on the nightstand between their beds. "You can sleep with me tonight," he offers for the first time in fifteen years. "If you want."