Off Campus Recap Season 1 Episode 8 ‘The Line Change’

There was never really any doubt that Hannah and Garrett would get back together, but their scenes together were sweet reminders of the timelessness of school romances. What sets Off Campus apart is that this is as non-toxic a main relationship as we could possibly get on TV. It was lovely to watch, and we will discuss it more later, but I wanted to start with the scene that moved me the most in this finale – Hannah finally telling Allie about the rape.

Why did Hannah keep her pain a secret from Allie for as long as she did? Well, as Hannah herself mentioned, she worked really hard to put it all behind her. She was in college, she had a new life, a new beginning, she had distance from the people who put her through the worst because she dared complain about a criminal act perpetrated by the mayor’s son. But, the trauma was still within her, and she did share the story with Allie, only, she said it happened to a friend. 

MIka Abdalla’s delivery, when Allie told Hannah that she always knew, she just thought Hannah would tell her when she was ready, was exquisite. Off Campus created this soft cocoon of support for its characters, so that there was no shying away from the bad, but help was always there. It’s a safe space series, and not just in the romance, but in the friendship as well, in this silent understanding of your friend’s pain, in the clear communication of your love. 

Garrett, too, had Logan, even when he did not think he did. After a conversation with Hannah – a quick reminder that these two were friends before they became lovers – Garrett watched some clips from the game against St. Anthony’s. His attack on Delaney was violent. He yanked off Delaney’s helmet and continued punching him. He was in a rage. It was Logan who pulled him off, Logan who held him back, Logan who took off his helmet and repeatedly reassured him, ‘I got you’. 

Garrett came home and found Logan cleaning his tools, and finally said what he should have said long before this – thank you. There was this unspoken understanding of what would have happened had Logan not managed to stop Garrett from seriously injuring Delaney. Garrett told Logan that he blacked out. He said he did not want to be like his Dad, and finally shared what before this he had only shared with Hannah.

That Garrett took responsibility for his actions, and that his coach immediately suspended him, went down well with the NCAA Committee on Infractions. However, student athletes were required to maintain their amateur status, and they took issue of a video Garrett posted on social media, of him skating with the Bruins. Garrett explained that happened after practice, but it did not matter. Briar was judged to have fielded an ineligible player, and all the games they had played so far were forfeit. 

Garrett’s coach asked him again why he attacked Delaney, and he said it was not his story to tell. Even with his future and all he worked for on the line, he still refused to tell Hannah’s story. Coach asked him what kind of hockey player he wanted to be, if he loved it. Garrett needed time to figure out the answer to that question, and so after every practice, he would skate alone. The day that Hannah went to the rink to work on a song with Jules, Garrett told her he was thinking about quitting hockey. Hannah reminded him of what he said on Thanksgiving, about how he would feel relieved should he wake up one day and could no longer play. He could not play now, he could be anywhere else, doing anything else, yet there he was, skating. She pointed out that he did have good reason to play, the guys on the team who always had his back. So will the school appeal the NCAA decision? Will Garrett be back with the team next season, or will he go pro whilst still working on completing his degree? Should I start reading the books? 

Having made his peace with Logan, Garrett went to the pre-game briefing and spoke to his teammates. After admitting that he let them down, he gave the captain C to Logan, and they hugged. They were down two players – Bertie was out due to a concussion caused by Delaney’s rough play – but the mood of the hockey boys had decidedly lifted. They played well and won; now, they just needed to win 16 more games. 

Meanwhile, Hannah completed her new song, and decided she wanted to play it at the pop showcase, despite having previously withdrawn. Daveed was sweetly supportive, and when Hannah went on stage, she saw that Allie, Garrett, and the rest of their friends were there to support her. I am glad that the show resisted the temptation to make the song too polished, though of course there was some polish there, this is tv. Hannah won second place, not the scholarship she wanted, but she got a paid internship.

Garrett waited for her outside the auditorium, and the two of them reconciled, with kissing and more kissing at Malone’s, where the baton was passed to the next main couple. Allie and Dean have been in a relationship since they started sleeping with each other, though neither of them were prepared to admit it. When Dean texted Allie asking her to come over because he just got the worst news – this was after Garrett was declared ineligible and their games were forfeit, and they also found out that Bertie was out due to concussion – Allie came, entering through Dean’s open window and falling into his shirtless arms. Allie said they needed to sleep with other people; though they always said they could sleep with others, they simply haven’t. Allie was insistent that what they had between them could not be a relationship, they needed to lower the stakes. Dean agreed, though it looked like he was only agreeing because he was desperate to sleep with Allie. But Allie had no intention of staying; she told him to text her when it was done.

The problem was, Dean could not do it. He called Beau, who already knew about his and Allie’s non-relationship, and said he had lost his game. He hit on three women, all of whom were into him, and he could not do it. Beau pointed out the obvious, that he liked Allie, and told him to tell her quickly before she hooked up with another guy.

Dean tried. He called Allie, who did not pick up, because she probably thought he was calling to tell her that he had already slept with someone else. The guy Allie knew as Carter St. James happened to be jogging nearby, and they ended up in bed together. It was as casual as Allie wanted, she did not even want his phone number, and she hurried to go support Hannah at her pop showcase. 

At Malone’s, as the team celebrated their win, Dean went to Allie to tell her how he felt. Both here and during his conversation with Beau about Allie, Dean looked so young, guileless. He told her he did not complete the assignment, that he liked her. Allie told him he needed to complete the assignment, because she did. Allie looked close to panicking as she hurriedly said it did not mean anything, it was a total stranger at a bar. Then said stranger walked into the bar.

There was a hockey player named Hunter Davenport who practiced with the team for a while, whom Dean hated. Hunter was offered a place in the team, but he turned it down. The only information Jules had was that Hunter went to the same high school as Dean’s sister Summer. It turned out that Carter St. James was Hunter Davenport, and when Dean saw him, when he realised that he was the guy Allie slept with, he immediately got into his face. Apparently, Logan recruited Hunter into the team and claimed it was Dean’s idea. There was some shoving and a fight, and Jules, who whipped out her phone to record it, murmured, ‘And that’s our new starting line.’

Congratulations on a successful first season! Off Campus was refreshing, surprising, emotionally coherent, and insistently uncynical. I had a lot of fun, at some point there were tears, and I look forward to watching the second season. We live in times of grave uncertainty, and in came this show peopled with characters who were certainly not perfect but instinctively and mostly non-toxic. It’s a rarity in the tv space, and I’m glad it is getting the attention that it deserves.  

Rating: B

Strays

🌸Guys were being weird around Hannah, and she found out through Sean that it was because Garrett allegedly put out a campus-wide hands off policy on her. Hannah stormed into the male locker room where the entire hockey team was naked. Naked, naked. There were penises on focus. I get the parallelism with the first episode when Hannah accidentally walked in on Garrett naked in the shower, and he turned around like the considerate hot campus god that he was so she could get the full view. It was also nice that pretty much everyone on the team was comfortable with Hannah, like a sister they were used to having around all the time. At the same time, given how sensitively the show has handled Hannah’s experience as a sexual assault survivor, I’m not entirely sure including this scene, where she was exposed to multiple appendages without her active consent, was the best choice. 

🌸Garrett notably was the only one fully dressed, in a suit, because this was the day of his NCAA hearing. He denied issuing a hands off policy, and it turned out this was a misunderstanding with one of the team members. Hannah of course did not want Garrett warning guys off of her, but the look on her face when he said he would never do that, she should be with whoever she wanted to be, was disappointment.

🌸There was this nice callback scene when Garrett was skating alone, then he looked up when he heard the lights on the broadcast booth being turned on, but this time it was not Hannah with her keyboard, it was a member of the cleaning crew.

🌸The way Garrett was checking if Hannah had viewed his stories was so social media generation coded. Hannah was not there because she had been looking at Garrett’s social media posts via Allie’s account, so he wouldn’t see her there. 

🌸Garrett viewed Hannah’s old post of her singing the song she wrote in high school, and liked it. Hannah saw the like and immediately put her phone down. These two were not even on the same place but the longing in this scene was off the charts.

🌸’I am the girl that I am because of the girl I used to be.’ Word. 

You can access Recap Lab's full coverage of Off Campus via this link.

Episode Title: The Line Change

Episode Teleplay: Louisa Levy

Episode Director: Dawn Wilkinson

Original Release Date: May 13, 2026

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