Episode Report Card Sara M: C- | 7 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Right Back Where We Started From
By Sara M | Season 4 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.21.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's six months after the last episode, and the Cohens are living in the Roberts mansion while they wait to find out about their house. Ryan and Taylor broke up for whatever reason, Seth and Summer spend their days sitting in easy chairs watching game shows, and almost everyone else in the house is pregnant -- including Pancakes and Julie. Julie's about to marry BULLIT because Frank got her pregnant and then ditched her and BULLIT took her back. The Cohens find out that their house is a total loss, and Kirsten sighs a lot and hates life. Ryan and Seth run off to Berkeley to try and buy the original Cohen house back from its flamboyantly gay owners, but they don't want to sell. So Kirsten and Sandy show up to help convince them, and Kirsten instantly gives birth there to a daughter named Sophie. Back in Newport, Julie refuses to get married without Kirsten at her side, so BULLIT flies everyone to Berkeley to get married in the original Cohen house's backyard. At this point, thanks to some prodding from Kaitlin, Frank realizes that he's a tool and tries to win Julie back. In the middle of her wedding. Over a speakerphone. Sigh. Surprisingly, Julie does not go back to Frank but instead pulls a Kelly Taylor and chooses herself. After all this, the couple decides to sell their house to the Cohens. Seth convinces Summer to go back to G.E.O.R.G.E., which she apparently passed on after the earthquake; the Cohens pack to move to Berkeley; Seth and Ryan share a nice moment and a hug; and then the episode actually takes a freaking breath and slows down and gets good.
Ryan walks through the house for the last time and flashes back to the pilot episode and the time when his hair -- and this show -- was at its best. And then we go flying forward again as the six seasons of this show they thought they were going to have are squeezed into just six minutes and we find out what happens to everyone: Sandy becomes a law professor, Ryan goes to Berkeley, Summer protests stuff, Seth admires her, Kirstenâ¦doesn't do anything, really, Kaitlin goes to Williams, and Julie Cooper graduates from college (yay!). And then Seth and Summer get married, Sophie looks like Kirsten, and Ryan is some kind of architect who spots a down-and-out kid with puppy dog eyes on the street and asks him if he needs help. Instead of a nice Sandy/Ryan moment, we got a nice moment where Ryan was Sandy. And everything and everyone moves in one big, predictable circle, except for the only character who really grew and changed over the series' run -- Julie. Some of this episode belonged to Ryan, but the rest belonged to her. Team Julie forever! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
So ... this is it. I've never recapped a series finale before, unless you count that episode of 7th Heaven that was supposed to be the series finale but then wasn't. There won't be a last minute reprieve for The O.C., though, so this is really, truly, it. Let's hope it goes out as well as it came in.
It's six months after the last episode, and everyone's living in Dr. Neil's house! So already, I'm not thrilled with this. Six months later feels like a season premiere, not a series finale. I don't want to waste time expositing what transpired in the last six months off-camera when we could be sending this show out properly. Sigh. Kirsten is hugely pregnant, which Kelly Rowan shows us by briskly walking around with her hand on her belly. Nice pregnancy waddle, there, Kelly Rowan. I've never been pregnant and even I know that was terrible. Can't she just put in a little bit of effort for the last episode? Sandy's making crepes for breakfast, as Taylor Townsend sent Kaitlin a griddle from France. So she went to France? After all we went through with her trying to go to Berkeley? What the hell? Oh, and Ryan and Taylor broke up despite seeming perfectly happy last week. When asked, Ryan claims he doesn't even think about Taylor anymore. Kirsten thanks Kaitlin for being so accommodating to the Cohens while they've been crashing at the Roberts mansion, as if this is Kaitlin's house or something. It's not, unless in the last six months Dr. Neil totally wussed out and just gave them the house. Kaitlin says their presence has given her a chance to perfect her Sandy Cohen impression. She demonstrates it, and... it still needs a lot of work. Nice try, though.
Julie enters the room, and what the hell?!?! She's pregnant, too?! Not only that, but she's about to get married... to BULLIT? Whaaaaa? But... but... we wasted so much time with Julie choosing Frank over BULLIT. Why are we going back? If there isn't a good, reasonable explanation for all this, I'm going to feel really ripped off. To hammer the point home that they're about to get married -- which they need to do since it's so out of freaking nowhere -- BULLIT walks in, kisses Julie on the cheek, and calls her "the future Mrs. Gordon BULLIT." Kirsten says that after tomorrow's wedding, Julie and BULLIT will be "just another old married couple." "Just like that one living upstairs," Julie responds.
Which one? That would be Seth and Summer, who enjoy a breakfast of toaster strudels before breaking out the recline function on their twin easy chairs to watch Briefcase or No Briefcase. This appears to be a daily ritual. "The premise is so simple," Seth says. "Yet so compelling," Summer finishes. Kind of like this show in its first season. Now, it's needlessly complicated and boring. Oh well. Sandy enters the room immediately after knocking and without waiting for a response, as he apparently wants to walk in on his son having sex. He orders Seth to accompany the rest of the family on a trip to the old house for the house inspector's visit. I guess house inspectors give your home a better review when the entire family is present? Seth says that the easy chair is his home now, but Sandy doesn't care.