Is Stephen really shady?
There is nothing unusual about introducing scholarship providers and recipients to each other. Anyone who invests that much money wants to at some point, so it pays off. How? New, highly skilled workers. They're worth their weight in gold. IRL, companies are already looking to colleges for their future workers and talent. There's nothing shady about that.
Let's get to the concerns expressed. Hello, the rumor. Many know about it and logically the press gets it and asks about it. But what is amazing is that Burke promptly answers with a firm "No". With it he does not permit any speculations to it. He contradicts the rumor. And it's just a rumor.
Riona "And I'm still fucking concerned about who's been spreading that HOTs give free tuition."
Quinn "Don't worry about it. It's just a stupid rumor."
To me, the whole thing presents itself as Stephen Burke taking action against the rumor to protect his family and to protect B&R's reputation. Of course the press is involved, nothing sells better than a huge scandal. Therefore, I believe for Stephen Burke to investigate himself and perhaps do so in cooperation with the press. That way he can clear his name and the college of the rumor and if there is any truth to it, punish the guilty. The press will have their scandal, but the reputation of Burke and the college will be restored.
Of course Stephen is shady, he is complicit in the whole psuedo prostitution at the college. Sex for scholarship. He even admitted, iirc, to sleeping around with some of the girls. You see him deleting Mona's scholarship data when she leaves. So if he running around saying "no" to the rumors it is just as much trying to cover his own ass as it is anything else. Because he'll lose his job, probably got to prison, and Jade will get everything.
Another misdirection.
You just have to understand the mindset of DPC and put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Interlude: Emma believes Zoey fucked Bret because Bret didn't deny it. But as far as we know, Zoey didn't fuck Bret.
EP3: Stephen admits that he cheated on Jade 3 times. She implies it was with female students. Stephen doesn't comment on it.
EP8: In the newspaper, Stephen promptly and firmly answers "No" to the scholarship rumor.
EP5: Here is the DPC key to the whole thing. The MC says to Jill that the mind can take dangerous paths. This is exactly what happens with all the rumors.
eeeeh using the Emma and Brett interaction as a basis to assess the Stephen and Jade confrontation doesn't really work out. He was pretty much up front with his dalliances.. But once the topic of the college girls being some of them then he goes quiet? DPC could be screwing with us, but his silence, there, is almost deafening.
You didn't understand.
DPC is throwing this at us without confirming it, so players' minds are going down these dangerous paths.
Confirmed is actually only for Quinn to deal drugs and her restaurant. She personally offered that to the MC. That again has nothing to do with the grants.
It does amuse me that people here, and on the BaD reddit, have these massive theories and debates about the story as if they know. Entertaining! I think Stephen is a scoundrel but if that turns out not to be true. Then colour me surprised! Happily so. DPC does write in a Telanovela style at times pertaining to drama. So it could go anywhere at this point.
Theories are fun most are wrong ok closer to 99.98 and haft are wrong and then there's Dalli
I hear scoundrel I think Han Solo so Stephen is going to have himself frozen to pay for Maya's College, i like it
People (not just Dalli) are giving DPC too much credit about how complex the storylines will be. He hasn't broken a trope yet so Burke will be an antagonist just like he's been set up to be. There's no underlying plot where the Nerds are running everything behind the scenes. The only potential "twist" on the horizon is potentially Nick not being in league with Vinnie and it being another DIK (if indeed Vinnie has an ally at all). Nick's been shown too often to be suspicious but with no proof about what he's doing that the common story trope is that he is in fact innocent, but he will be unfairly accused by Fuckface and/or other DIKs before his innocence is proven.
I agree. There has been too much build-up on Burke for it to be a red herring. That's a "plot thickens" development, not misdirection. Without it, DPC would have given us more or less no clues the first 2 seasons. What would be the point in only giving us red herrings and no real story development in the mystery? That would have been really bad writing.
Besides, some of the things we have seen Burke do can't have any reasonable explanations. It's also just one piece of the puzzle. I doubt he's the main villain.
Also, the MC's reaction at the end of Episode 8 is proberbly supposed to reflect our reaction. In reality he doesn't really know much about what is going on (way less than we do) so there was no real reason for him to be so horrified (unless he slept with Jade). That's why nothing really comes of it because it's foreshadowing that the MC and his friends will get drawn into the plot more.
DPC has deliberately used misdirection before, by having the characters thinking things that are not confirmed, like the mc interpreting Josy's "relationship" as being with a boy so that we start to assume it's a boy, and when it turns out to be a girl, we can't say, "She said it was a boy!" because she never did, the mc assumed wrong.
Then we have cases like man bun at the Preps' party. Many (myself included) were certain it was Sage's dad. He had the red hair, he was looking for his daughter (Sage was hiding from her dad), he couldn't contact her (Sage had turned her phone off), he was there to make contacts (we saw him schmoozing and failing with other dudes). Turns out to be a red herring, he was most likely Arieth's dad.
We also have most of the characters just assuming it was the Alphas that trashed the mansion, even Quinn assumes it when she points to the alpha tag on the wall. It's almost a full gone conclusion. Except it's not, and it was probably related to Vinny searching for something. We've now had three cases where Vinny or his associates are looking for something from the mansion: Nick skulking around the library during the Cathy cluck, the mansion trashing, and now Vinny himself ransacking the mc's room.
But with Burke, we know Mona didn't have a scholarship when she signed up to B&R, otherwise she wouldn't have jumped at the chance to get free tuition when Quinn offered it. We know that Mona did get a scholarship after she signed up with Quinn. We know that Burke deleted this dubious scholarship when Mona left. I'm fairly confident these are facts. It's hard to come to any innocent conclusion there.
We also know that Burke was going to set up some sort of scholarship for Maya (he had the page loaded when discussing her circumstances), and in this case it most likely would have been a legit scholarship, since this one was being done with the knowledge of his daughter and friends. But then something Maya said made him change his mind, after which he rang "Priscilla" to discuss what just went down.
We also know Burke is cheating on his wife, he as confirmed 3 cases.
So bottom line: No matter how this pans out, Burke is a shady cunt.
