The Last of Summer

Man, summer went fast. I can't believe I moved, sold a house, found a job, found a new house, bought it, moved twice, and survived living with my parents and in-laws. Where did the time go?

Previously on Everwood: Treat cliffhangers us.

We open on some sort of club pool setting. Screaming kids splash around. People sit in lounge chairs and read books. Amy serves cocktails to her parents and grandparents. Treat and Ephram (and I don't want to imply that I like him or anything, but let's just say that summer didn't do that boy wrong) joyfully play ping-pong. Amy giggles. Because she's so happy, see? Delia runs around the pool in her swimsuit and pushes...Colin. He's alive! Johnny Five -- Alive! Except, not. As we'll soon see. Colin tells Delia to slow down, because there's no running by the pool. Bright climbs down from his lifeguard stand and says, "Unless of course someone's chasin' ya!" He and Colin chase a gleeful Delia around the pool, until they're stopped by their boss, who tells them to get back to work. Cut to Amy. Smiling. Is she happy? I think she's happy! Colin asks her if they're still "on for tonight." Amy dorks that school starts the day. Colin tells her just to meet him under the diving board after the club closes. Amy says that junior year is the HARDEST YEAR EVER! Colin tells her to chill, that "you're even smarter than you are pretty. You're going to have a perfect year." Aw. Oops. Feisty Nurse Edna tells Amy to get her another Mai Tai, heavy on the "Tai." They all smile. Colin kisses Amy and tells her he'll see her at eleven under the diving board. Amy's happy. Did I mention she's happy? Colin tells her, "Don't be late." He backs away from her, smiling, and fades away. Poor Colin. Being dead sucks.

Cut to Amy, not happy, at a memorial service for Colin in the school auditorium. Some kid is speaking at a podium, talking about how great Colin was. Amy sits on the stage, awaiting her turn. All of our favorite Everwoodsians are sad. Mommy Hart looks like who'da thought it. Amy looks like she might vomit.

Oh, Irv. How I've missed you! "It's hard to say what happened exactly. For the most part it depends on who you ask. There are as many sides to a story as there are pairs of eyes. It's always been that way; one of those sides must be closer to the truth, but we'll never know which one."

The kid sits down. Sad Strings of Dead Boyfriends play as Amy stands up for her turn. Emily VanCamp is acting the shit out of this, though. She hesitates, then breathes deeply and starts softly, "Tomorrow's closing day at the Everwood Pool. Every year Mr. McAbee throws a luau. I never really thought much about it, but that's what I was doing just now...imagining Colin there. I was imagining what he would do..." At this point, Treat and Delia walk into the auditorium. Irv says, "I try even now to look back at that time, look past the blame and outrage that made it all so hard to see anything. I try to piece it together." Amy sees Treat. Their eyes meet, and Treat's sadness is clear and unbearable. Amy just looks pissed. Irv tells us, "What follows...is all I know." Chills, and credits.

Aw, man! They changed the song. I hated it so much last year that I grew to love it, and now they've gone and turned it into "Everwood Theme Song: Dance Party Remix." This behavior ain't cute, Berlanti.

"The funeral for Colin Hart fell on the first warm day of spring," Irv says. "For many who attended, it was the most difficult day they had ever known." We're at a gorgeous graveside scene. The crowd fades out, leaving only Amy. She's crying. "But the day was kind enough to pass. I'd like to say it took a while for Everwood to return to business as usual, but it didn't." Cut to downtown Everwood, where some kids are chucking water balloons at Patch Abbott's office. Hee. Patch runs out and gets whacked with one. Irv continues, "Bright and Amy went back to their usual summer jobs; Ephram joined them, though his duties were a little less glamorous." Bright's a lifeguard, Amy's a waitress. Ephram's cleaning the pool. Aw. Okay, can we talk about these uniforms? Because they are HOT. White polo, khaki pants, navy-and-blue-striped grosgrain belt. I want one. Delia splashes around in the pool, playing Marco Polo with a bunch of other girls, having finally made, as Irv puts it, "that group of girlfriends so important to a little girl's youth." True dat, Irv. True dat.

And now for the sadness. Cut to Treat, picking up food at the diner. Irv says, "Andy Brown, on the other hand, suffered the expected scrutiny of a community that didn't care to understand the intricacies of Colin Hart's surgery." Customers give Treat dirty looks. Patch Abbott rolls his eyes at Nina. Treat leaves, so beat down that his shoulders sag. It's pitiful.

Cut to the pool. Patch Abbott gets out of his car, bitching at Rose that he'd rather be golfing. He has about one gallon of sunscreen slathered across his nose and cheeks. Way to protect only half your face there, Genius. He tells Rose that it's one thing to insist he take Fridays off, but another to make him spend them with "half-naked sun-damaged chuckleheads." Heh. Rose ignores him. They start to walk towards the pool, when a lady with a little baby stops Patch. She shoves the kid's ass in Patch's face and asks him to check on "Edwin's diaper rash," which she claims is getting worse. First-time mother, clearly. Slap some Desitin on that child and shut up, lady. She insists that Patch take another look. Patch tells her to get the kid's ass out of his face. No shit. Hee. Pardon the pun. Rose chides, "Haaaarold." Patch looks at the rash, and tells her to give the ointment a few more days to work. "By the time you get my bill, he should be ALL better." The lady doesn't understand. "Your bill?" Patch tells her about the bill for the medical services she just connived him out of. "Have a nice day," he finishes. I sure missed Patch Abbott.

Mayor Rose tells Patch that she thinks he enjoys being the most despised man in Everwood. Patch says he does, but that last time he checked, the slot had been filled. Cut to the Browns, driving up to the pool. Delia shrieks, "Stop here, stop here!" She jumps out before anybody can see her with her Bad Colin-Killin' Daddy. Eeeee! Ephram is driving! He asks Treat if he wants to come with them. Treat declines, saying he has some things to do at his office. Ephram: "You're actually paying people to show up now?" Ouch. He gets out of the car. Treat sighs heavily.

A fabulous, tanned Bright chills in his lifeguard seat. Suddenly, a little girl starts to scream, "Help! Help me!" Bright jumps in, "rescues" her, and gives her a little kiss on the head. Aw. Delia and her group of friends watch from the shallow end. Drowning Girl smiles slyly. "I told you it would work." Delia's all, "Oh my God he KISSED you." Drowning Girl, also known as Britney, tells the girls that they have to wait thirteen minutes until it's somebody else's turn, and then she'll decide who goes . Delia wants to know why Britney gets to decide. In classic kid logic, Britney retorts, "Because I'm the one who made up the game." Case closed.

Uh-oh. Amy's in trouble. As she stands around, lost in thought, her boss rushes over and says that somebody's been waiting for their hamburgers for twenty minutes. She tries to recover, and Ephram steps in. He tells Bossman that there's some sort of problem in the kitchen, that the grill caught fire or something. Bossman: "It's a grill. It's made to be on fire." Ephram offers to check it out, but Bossman is all over it. He runs off. Amy apologizes. Ephram says helping her breaks up the monotony of his day. Amy can't find the order she was supposed to put in. Ephram finds it on a table and tries to hand it to her, but Amy's distracted by the sight of Mommy Hart coming down the steps, looking like she's been rode hard and put up wet. DAMN, she looks bad. Apparently, losing a child ages you twenty years and makes you forget how to apply concealer. Amy goes to see what she wants. Mommy Hart asks Amy to organize Colin's memorial service. Um, what? How is this Amy's job? I mean, there's grief, and then there's crazy. But Amy says she'll handle it. Mommy Hart hugs her and thanks her. Ass.

Treat's office. Nurse Edna asks Treat if he wants to go for lunch at "M.J.'s." Treat says no. Edna says, "We thought we'd catch T3 over at the cineplex afterwards." Treat says, "Haven't you seen that already?" Edna: "Well, the first six times don't count; I was still learning all the lines!" Hee. Treat says to go ahead, but not to make a habit of it. He says that he knows they're not that busy, but there's still shit to do around there. Uh huh. Edna leaves. Treat goes to open his lunch and knocks a glass off the table. As it crashes on the floor, we flash back to Colin's surgery. He's lost a lot of blood. Treat asks, "How long has he been on bypass?" Three hours. No good. Here's where Colin and his leaky vein get into trouble. The assisting surgeon suggests trying for a new vein, but Treat says that three more hours on bypass is too long. "Prepare to close," Treat commands. The other doctor says that Colin won't make it if they do that. Treat says again, "Prepare. To. Close." We flash back to Treat, picking up not only the glass on the floor, but the pieces of his shattered life. Heh. Commercial.

Speaking of whom, cut to the Brown House of Guilt and Sadness. Delia and Ephram arrive home from the pool. Delia runs upstairs, pouting. Ephram tells his dad that he needs to get his damn ass out of the house and quit making his kids bear the brunt of Everwood's hatred, basically. Ephram says, "You're doing it again...acting like a freak. You hole yourself up in your office all day, you don't come out at night, you realize we haven't been to dinner as a family once all summer?" Tell him, Pretty. Ephram says that Britney uninvited Delia because her mom didn't want Treat in the house. Treat says he can't control anybody's mind, and make them like him. "What am I supposed to do, take out an ad in the Pinecone that says, 'I'm Andy Brown -- Still A Nice Guy and a Heck of a Surgeon'? What am I supposed to do?" Ephram says he wants his dad to stop acting so damn guilty. He says, "Why is [Colin] so different? You did your best, didn't you? You tried?" Treat: "Of course I tried." Ephram asks his dad why he can't let it go, then. Treat doesn't know. Ephram says that he better figure it out, because the guiltier he acts, "the more people are going to convict you. And us." Wah. Will Treat see the light, come to his senses, turn over a new leaf? Find out after the commercial!

We come back to a shot of Colin's DNR, undoubtedly printed out by Miss Entitlement herself. Amy and Patch are at the Hart House. Amy explains that if Treat had seen the letter, he may not have done everything he could to save Colin. She's nearly hyperventilating, and I want to slap her. She says they need to find out if Treat knew. Mommy Hart tells her, "He did know, Amy. And so did we." Aw, yeah. Amy can't believe it. She doesn't understand how he could have done this to her. To HER. Because Colin's life is all about Amy, don't you people know anything? Amy brats, "You came to me, you asked me to plan the memorial, you asked me to go through his stuff, find pictures, and I did that for you. And you kept this from me?" Mommy Hart says she's sorry. Daddy Hart says he thought they did the right thing. Amy: "Colin's dead. How could that be the right thing for anybody?" Christ on a houseboat. Shut up, Amy. Patch nods apologetically to the Harts, and they leave.

Brown House. Treat asks Delia what she's doing. She says she's playing Cat's Cradle, but it doesn't really work with one person. I never did understand that dumb game, so I feel better that Delia can't get it either. Treat says he'll play with her. Delia says it's stupid anyway. Treat: "You're mad at me." Delia says she's not. Treat says it's okay, he's mad at him too. Aw. Delia says, "It's not your fault people hate you. I mean, you didn't mean to kill Colin." Hee. Treat tries to explain that he didn't actually kill Colin, even though he died. Delia doesn't understand the difference. He asks her if she remembers giving her hamster cold medicine back in New York. She does. Treat says, "You wanted to help him, but he died anyway." The point is, she tried to help and couldn't. Treat says that sometimes it's out of their control. Delia: "Like with Mom?" Oh, poor motherless Delia. Come over here and let me hug you. Treat agrees that, yeah, it's "like with Mom." Treat changes the subject quickly, saying that they can go to a new restaurant with Nina if she wants to. Delia wants. Yay! Treat informs Ephram that they're going out to dinner. Ephram: "Can I drive?" Treat: "No." Aren't those lines from last season? I sense a recurring theme. The one entitled, "Maybe If I Bug The Shit Out Of My Dad Enough, He'll Let Me Drive The Car."

Brenda's Planet Hollywood ripoff. It's kickin'. Brenda sashays around in a hideous Marilyn Monroe outfit. She notices the Browns walking in, and tells him they're right out of tables. Bitch. Nina pushes her way in, and says that it's her reservation. Brenda snits, "Well, aren't you a tricky little thing." Kick her ass, Nina. Brenda grudgingly leads them to a table.

The Abbotts are in a booth. Patch is making fun of the stupid menu. "Smoked Trout Nicoise Salad With Field Greens and Dijon Vinaigrette...and look at what Baxworth is charging for this culinary catastrophe." I tend to agree. Dear Chefs of the World: Get over yourselves. It's a salad, not a spaceship. Brevity is the soul of both wit and food. Watch this: "Salad." Learn it, live it, love it. Signed, The Entire Planet.

Amy sulks in the booth. She doesn't want nothin', especially not food. Shut up, Amy. Bright: "The Kelly Ripa Salad looks pretty good, Dad, except for the burnt walnuts. I'll just ask 'em not to burn my nuts." Hee. Amy catches sight of Nina and the Browns (name of my album, incidentally). Uh-oh. She marches over to Treat. He greets her kindly, because he's NORMAL. Amy asks him if he didn't think she would "find out." Oh, you mean the big "secret" that everyone was keeping from you, and only you, because the entire world revolves around...you? God. Treat doesn't understand. Amy says, "I found the letter. Colin didn't just die, you let him. You let him DIE, DIDN'T YOU?" She's freaking the fuck out. Ephram asks what's going on. Amy tells him that his father, the number one surgeon in the country, is a big joke and killed her boyfriend. Treat, calm as ever, stands up. He asks Amy to come by his office tomorrow and they can talk about it. That's code for: "Go sit back down with your family and quit making a scene, you impudent little snot." Amy doesn't take the bait. She wants to know NOW! Treat says there's nothing he could do. Amy says -- nay, shrieks -- that it wasn't his decision to make. Patch finally steps in and tells Amy to calm down. I can think of a few other things that I'd do to a child of mine acting like that. Treat says he tried. Amy, weeping now, says, "You didn't try hard enough, did you? DID YOU?" Oy. Treat says, "No." Heh, that's so crazy. He says that it was a huge risk in the first place. Amy says that's what he said the first time, and Colin ended up "perfect." Riiiight. I've always thought vandalism and beating the shit out of my friends was perfect behavior, too, Amy! Nobody understands us. Amy hauls ass, crying. Patch apologizes to Treat. Ephram looks real sad. Soundtrack of Tantrum Aftermath plays as we cut to the Browns arriving home from the restaurant.