Sixty-seven years ago on The O.C.: I recapped an episodeThe O.C. And in the interim, LTG did one, and did an excellent job.
Shiny, shiny happy sunshine shines down on the southern California that exists on the TV only. Because let me tell you, I've spent winters in Scotland that have featured more sunshine than what we're experiencing now in O.C.-adjacent counties like whatever county Los Angeles is in. We find ourselves this week fading up in the Cohen kitchen, where Ryan "Professor Frink, Professor Frink, He'll Make You Laugh, He'll Make You Think" Atwood hits the books hard, as usual. He is soon to be joined by his fellow compadre in unrequited man-love, Seth "Clever Nickname Generator Has Failed, Please Click Refresh, Message 404" Cohen. Seth and his abnormally tight cords make the first inadvertent reference in weeks to anything having to do with a "chino" of any kind, and he asks Ryan what he's doing, only to be disappointed once more when the response isn't anything even slightly akin to "I am preparing for the time during which I am offering you the kind of pleasure that can only be brought about by the touch of another man." Because then? Then, we've got a television show, people. Seth, then, is doubly disappointed to discover that Ryan is studying once again, and he calls his usual amount of meta-attention to the unease of character development this show has been exhibiting all season with a defensive "Logarithms are the new upper cut. Got it." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. Except that we already have. In the forums. And the recaps. For the last seven episodes. Dude, Cohen. Go up a size, Disco Seth.
Seth sits at the table, which is a feat considering his compromised leg mobility. He seems to be flipping through some kind of a photo album, and he intentionally pulls Ryan away from his studies by noting a page in it and loudly intoning, "Wow. Now I see it." Ryan sighs internally and thinks, "Well, in the socioeconomic structure of this living arrangement, this kid is technically my boss, so...what, Seth?" Instead of saying that out loud, though, he just asks, "See what?" and Seth is at the ready with a reply: "I've been looking through old photos of my mom, looking for resemblances to Lindsay. Look at that." Seth hands Ryan the photo album, indicating a photograph that bears similarities to Kirsten and Lindsay only insofar as it doesn't look a damn lick like either of them. Or maybe it's Lindsay's headshot from when she was fourteen. It was either her or it wasn't. The plight of the redheaded stepchild is one fraught with confusing identity mishaps. Ryan, appropriately, asks Seth if he's trying to make this even more awkward for him, and Seth defends the whole mess: "It's not like you dating Lindsay is full-on incest. You're not even related." Seth's voice quavers slightly, because you just know he gave that speech as a dry run for when he delivers it again with his name in place of Lindsay's. Not to mention the fact that Ryan and Lindsay aren't really dating at all, are they? Ryan is quick to point out that Kirsten is like his mom, and, gesturing toward the photo album, "Lindsay is clearly her sister." Seth submits that it is "kind of weird," and Ryan comes up to my part of town, takes a nice, long drive down Exposition Boulevard, and fills in the blanks for the casual viewer (of which I really didn't think I was): "And the fact that your mom doesn't know that I'm dating her sister? It's a lot weird."
Seth stands up from the table so he can try to run away from his line of dialogue, choking out, "I think they did a story line like this on The Valley once." Oh, take that right back. Ryan bites, just not quite in the way Seth would like, YET, asking, "Can you tell me how it ends, then?" Seth responds with a line that would have done just fine without the show-within-a-show conceit, noting, "You have to ask yourself the question, Ryan. Is she your girlfriend or your aunt?" Just then, Sandy enters the kitchen, opens the fridge, and piles on, "The age-old question." Seth vamps on that it's a story as old as time blee blee blar, but Ryan wants to talk nuts (just not quite in the way Seth would...oh, never mind) and bolts, opining, "I just don't know what to do." Sandy asks Ryan if he's talked to Lindsay, and he responds that he wanted to give her a chance to collect her thoughts over winter break and figure everything out. "That's all you can do," Sandy says, pausing for comic effect before adding, "Unless you want to move to the south." Heh. The best part about that line was how many self-righteous Southerners got pissed off about how stereotypical it is. That's before they were all like, "You just try comin' down here and sayin' that to my three teeth, ya Jew varmint!" and then cocking their muskets and sitting in their rocking chairs drinking moonshine and cackling wildly.
New topic, sort of. Sandy asks if Kirsten knows about Ryan's and Lindsay's developing rural folk tale, and speaks the words, "I think it's best if the missus doesn't find out" juuuuuuuuuust as Kirsten walks into the room. They all look very, very concerned, but Kirsten tells Sandy that they don't have to lie to her, noting, "I know that Renee's testimony is today and my father is going free." Because boys will be boys, they're all totally like, "Yes, yes, that is what we're talking about," and the private pain of a wronged daughter is made the subject of hilarious sport. She goes on to say that she doesn't feel like she has to forgive Caleb, especially after what this must be doing to Lindsay, that poor, lost waif. She grabs a cup of coffee in the exact same green mug out of which I am currently drinking coffee, and sits down three miles away from the rest of her family for some reason, and speaks the words, "We should do something for [Lindsay]...we're her family." Ryan tries to remove himself from the "family" part of things, but Kirsten wastes no time reminding him, "If she's my sister, she's your aunt." Sandy thanks her for clearing that up, and Kirsten corrects herself that, seeing as she's so young, she's really more like Ryan's sister. Seth turns to Ryan and animatedly tells him he's always wanted a sister, asking, "Ryan? What about you?" Get it? It's a social taboo. week on The O.C.: Ryan marries all the pets.
Opening credits: Eat glass, Schwartzman.
School school school, yeah yeah yeah. Summer and Marissa walk down a hallway, enjoying the all-coffee, no-classes benefits of going to school on a major network drama. Unfortunately for me, the television show Massapequa High School was cancelled while I was still a sophomore, so I had to spend the rest of my high-school career learning. They discuss in vague terms a plan for someone to meet someone's parents, one which unfolds itself to reveal that plans are in the works for Tate Donovan to meet D.J. In...The Battle Of The O.C. Worst Casting Accidents! Two will enter! One will leave! Marissa continues on that her father is "the only sane person in the family," and that she really wants him to like D.J. Maybe D.J. could carve a Tate Donovan topiary and bring it as a lovely gift.
From afar, the proceedings are being surveyed by Zach, who hovers nervously at a distance until he sees Seth and pulls him over. Zach asks Seth if he got his Christmas card, and Seth tells him, "I appreciate the apology." This is a very strange conversation. Zach asks if they're "friends again," like a nine-year-old girl who stole her friend's My Little Pony and then gave it back when a mom intervened, and Seth indicates that they are. Apparently not having any other friends in the whole of O.C.H.S. even though we've seen him hanging out with adoring extras one million times, Zach asks if they're friends enough that he can tell Seth something confidential. They do the walk and talk, and Zach will just get right to it: "When I was in Cabo" -- oh, of course he was in Cabo -- "with my family, I ran into an old girlfriend. We were at Squid Row" -- I have no idea what that means. Isn't that the neighborhood by the docks on The Simpsons? -- "and we kind of kissed." Oh, well done not making Zach that good guy lap dog forever. Ten points for you, show. Seth asks Zach if he still has feelings for her, and he deadpans, "I really like her kids." We find out that she's a bit older than he is, and we also find out, "She was my math tutor when I was fourteen." And she's also a cradle-robbing rapist. Seth can't quite believe it either, making a face and noting, "Holy '80s teen comedy." Oh, I hope it is. That means we get to see Molly Ringwald and maybe a shot of someone's boobies in the girls' locker room. Seth -- who learned how to weasel out of things from his idol, the weasel -- counsels Zach just to forget the whole thing and move on, but he knows Zach was saddled with a pesky conscience, and instead tells him, "You've got to be honest with Summer." He adds that if Zach couches it in the proper way, i.e. saying it made him realize how much he likes Summer and not mentioning the kids and the divorces, he should be fine. Zach asks Seth not to tell anyone and, see, if he's the captain of the blah blah team and is so popular and has the fanciest pants, why would he choose the one person in the world who could use this information as a weapon? Oh, that's right. Because of the narrative expediency.
Ryan. Lindsay. He's got all his sisters with...he. We're in another hallway of O.C.H.S., where Ryan runs into Lindsay and gives her a very, very, very chaste hug. They overlap asking each other how their Christmas breaks were, and then walk in awkward silence for a moment while the writers try to figure out what to do with her now. I predict a fairly violent boating accident. He tells her he's sorry he didn't call and she tells him she's glad he didn't. She says she really does want to hang out with him, but that they need to find their "own personal Switzerland," seeing as they can't go to her house because of her mother and they can't go to Ryan's house because of, in his words, "your sister?" Lindsay says that's not really how she sees the relationship, so Ryan tries to clarify everyone's relationship to one another in Lindsay's eyes. The Cohens? "Friends." And the two of them? "More than friends." Lindsay adds that she doesn't want Ryan to think of them as related, as she doesn't want him feeling like he's kissing his sister. Hilariously, Ryan banters back, "The thought never crossed my mind." What a kidder.
Caleb is driving an excessively sleek sports car with Sandy in the passenger seat, and the old man goes first: "I got to tell you, Sanford. You are one hell of a lawyer." Apparently he is, seeing as part of his settlement, he won them...A BRAND-NEW CAR! The year's supply of Rice-a-Roni is in the trunk. Does anyone even get that joke anymore, or did I basically write, "I am one thousand years old"? I am curious to know. Anyway, because there's no court set on this show and Single Female Lawyer has been unceremoniously cancelled, Caleb will just recap what happened to them instead: "The charges have been dropped. The secrets of our situation have been sealed by the courts. Did it. I'm a free man." Sandy calls his father-in-law (or is it "boyfriend"? With the fluidity of titles suddenly on this show, I find myself frequently confused) "smug," and reminds him that the victory came at the expense of his family. Caleb non-contrite-ly admits that he has some work to do with his daughter, but thinks things will improve once he gets back to work. Sandy puts the brakes on -- metaphorically speaking, and not literally on Caleb's BRAND-NEW CAR! -- and asks how exactly Caleb will be going back to work. Caleb reminds Sandy that the scandal is now behind them, but Sandy volleys that the woman running the company hates him. Caleb asks, "Which one are we talking about?" This is a good cue to fade into...
...Julie Cooper, standing on the deck of the U.S.S. Tate Donovan ("It's a laundry ship, sir"), barking into the phone, "Well, I hope he's not expecting a party in his honor." She ends her call with Kirsten and registers a concerned look, telling Tate Donovan that her husband won't be serving any jail time. Tate Donovan says he guesses that means it's "over," and Julie asks if he's talking about Caleb or the two of them. She tells him she should be getting back to her life, gives him a quick peck on the cheek, and leaves. Except, not! She turns to face him before exiting the boat, always sinking the thing by logging it with a tsunami of existentialism, asking, "But what if it wasn't my life? What if I could just walk away from it?" Tate Donovan finishes off the line of the '80s power ballad that was left off the Footloose soundtrack with his retort, "Well, that would depend what you're walking to." She's walking into the arms of Tate Donovan. Lady, pick the old dude. At least he's got the brand-new car. Julie breathlessly posits that maybe they just needed some time away from each other to appreciate what they had. Dude, you had Tate Donovan. Shake him off. The show certainly has.
O.C.H.S. Lindsay walks through the parking lot where she is met by a pert, SUV-parking Kirsten, who apologies for just "showing up like this" and then choosing to stay regardless. Kirsten offers Lindsay a ride home, but Lindsay points to her beater as a way of indicating that the Cohen's aren't the only family in Newport allowed to drive automobiles. Kirsten walks to her and speechifies, "I know there's no right way to actually do this...I know you're not on the market for any new relatives, but how about a friend?" And it's where Lindsay drops the bomb about Ryan because she would just assume Kirsten would already know. Got it.
Speaking of good-thing- we're-on-a-boat- because-I-can-see- what's-coming-- from-all-the-way- over-the-horizon, Marissa accompanies D.J. down the pier and tells him, "You have nothing to worry about. You're gonna be great." D.J. asks what Tate Donovan is "into," and Marissa offers, "Me dating the help." Actually, she says, "ESPN Classic," and I briefly for some awesome time elapse whereby suddenly it's five hours from now and the two of them are sitting on the deck of the boat, drinking cans of Miller Lite and screaming out the batting order of the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. Because that one's on A LOT. But as they approach the boat, we discover what else Tate Donovan has been getting into (eeeeeeew) lately, as they spy from a distance Julie emerging from some deep bowels of said boat. Marissa watches as Tate Donovan and Julie kiss, and her face registers what the stage directions helpfully point out is, "As if acting, if you're someone else besides you." Did Tate Donovan not know Marissa was coming over? Tate Donovan needs a new day planner.
Knock knock knock. We're at...wait, where are we? It looks like some kind of ramshackle apartment complex, like in a late '90s Tarantino knockoff, where someone is brandishing a gun, swigging Johnny Red from the bottle, and giving a deranged speech about Star Wars. It's Things To Do In The O.C. When You're Dead. Anyway, Seth has shown up to this gritty outpost, where he knocks on the door of Apartment Too Poor To Afford Numbers So Guess Which One Is Yours and announces, "Alex, it's Seth." Oh, lord. When there's no answer, he yells through the door that he wants to welcome her back, and the door opens to reveal a shirtless male ruffian of some kind who likes tough talk and boning Seth's non-girlfriend. Seth jokes, "You've really changed over break." Break? She's in the working world. What kind of break does he think she had? Shirtless Guy, kind of mad, asks, "Who are you?" Seth stammers that he probably has the wrong apartment (what with the no numbers) and starts to stumble off, but Alex soon appears sleepily at the door and calls Seth's name. He returns to the door and tells her he just popped in to say hello, and she tells him she wasn't expecting him, probably on account of us not knowing that Alex even had an apartment until about fourteen seconds ago. She tells him that she bailed from "family stuff" and came back to Newport early, and when Seth expresses some surprise that she hasn't called him, she tells him, "I've been catching up with old friends." He tries to inquire further, but she tells him that she's really hungover. He tries to play good guy and asks if he can make her some coffee or "fix [her] a sandwich," the last of which she actually repeats back to him, because he is officially everyone's grandmother as of that moment. Except for my grandmother. Who would give me a dusty Velamint from the bottom of her pocketbook and be like, "Doll, sometimes this is all we had to eat. Like in the Depression. When that pack of Velamints was actually first purchased." Just as Seth wants to whip up some delightful postum, three more scraggly toughs spill from Alex's shanty and tell her they're going to get some more "beer and smokes," because they are the very, very bad kids. Once they're gone, Seth says he has a few questions, which Alex promises to answer "tonight at the Modest Mouse" concert. Uh-oh. It's not like I don't like the band, but...well, c'mon, already. She tells him it was nice of him to stop by, adding "really nice," so when we cut back to...
...dinner prep at the Cohen house, Seth can be in the middle of complaining about how Alex kept saying the word "nice." Ryan calls attention to the fact that Seth offered to "fix her a sandwich," and Seth sighs that the more edgy and dangerous he tries to be around her, the more he becomes "like a Jewish grandmother." And no, I kid you not that I literally did not watch this episode before I started recapping it, so yes I came up with the same exact Jewish grandmother joke that they were angling for. Again, show? Nice job. It makes me want to share with you all the fact that, once, my sister and I actually wrote a haiku about my grandmother's pocketbook (that's what old people call it...a pocketbook), when she had some hard candies in it that she was trying to pawn off on us, only to take them out of the bottom of her bag and discover that they were completely covered with ants. Here's how it went:
The candy is old
Dusty, chewy Velamints
Ants a-plenty, man
I'll give you a mailing address if you need a place to send the Pulitzer.
Then Seth threatens his father with an unshucked ear of corn and I kind of think he might be writing his dialogue completely without help these days.
Oh, hey, Kirsten. She enters to find the boys cooking dinner, and when they tell her they wanted to surprise her, she offers, "I have a little surprise myself. Look who's joining us." Who is it? Who? Oh, don't bother guessing. You know it's Lindsay. She apologizes for crashing, but of course everyone's really accommodating to the bastard child, including Seth, who asks Ryan if he thinks it would be "nice" for her to join. Ryan can only freeze and squeak out, "Nice." Drama a-plenty, man.
Uh-oh. Marissa returns to the scene of actual parental love for one another, something I can tell you I have no interest in seeing in my own family life either. Tate Donovan, wearing the same sweater you can't believe Michael Douglas ever got laid wearing in Basic Instinct, asks Marissa why she cancelled, since he was really looking forward to meeting D.J. She tells him that she had a lot of work to do and that D.J. was tired from his many blue-collar lifting duties, oh, and besides, "you were making out with Mom." He hems and he haws and says he knows how it must have looked (it looked disgusting, old man), and Marissa observes that it looks likes how it used to look when they kissed, except that was before Julie was married to someone else. She reminds him that they already went through this once, and she cries, "For once, I wish you would just grow up and be like a real dad." Which will require him getting a pair of shoes. And putting down his "frequent shoppers card" from Chess King.
Yeah, um, so I don't really want to make anyone mad or anything, but this is, like, NOT a good look for Adam Brody. I kind of just assumed that, like, the more skin the better, but it turns out that even I have the capacity for error. Amazing. Ryan walks in on Seth in the pool house, and Seth is totally wearing one of Ryan's white wifebeaters. And, not a good look. Ryan is adequately horrified, asking, "What are you doing?" Seth tries nonchalance, but the dude's in a wifebeater and not a hoodie, so that's out. He replies, "I needed to borrow a wifebeater tonight, and I thought you had several." Ryan asks why he would want to do something like that, and Seth says that he's trying to cultivate "more of a bad-boy image" ever since Alex called him "nice." Ryan worries, "I don't think that's gonna get the job done." Seth (CHANGE OUT OF THAT) sits (NO SERIOUSLY) down (HIDE YOUR SHAME, MAN!) and thinks to ask about something besides himself, pointing out that Ryan is "extra-broodish," and Seth wants to know why. Ryan offers that they all just had "a really nice family dinner," and he can't complain or make it all about him. Seth says that's something he would do, which he then posits is "perfect," because this means that if Ryan is becoming more like Seth, Seth can start playing the rule of the "brooding bad boy." Yeah, but the underdeveloped chicken pecs tells another story, Jughead. Besides, when did the entire plot of this show adopt the body-switch logic of a Kirk Cameron-Dudley Moore movie?
Did anyone else think Modest Mouse was too good and/or big and/or modest and/or mouse-y for this? Eventually, someone in every band has to have the bad idea to be the guest novelty whore band on The O.C., but I feel particularly sad about this one, I have to say. Seth has mercifully changed, and he marches up to Alex upon his entrance into the Bait Shop, where he unearths a metal flask and opens it up. She bites right away, asking, "What's that?" this paving the way for his response, "What's what?" He points to the flask and tells her that it's his "good friend John," which he quickly changes to "Jim" when she has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. Then he decides that it's Jack. But I think it's actually his buddy, R.C. He takes a swig and looks awfully near vomiting, and the Parents Television Council shoots off one strongly-worded letter and Fox spontaneously disappears from my TV dial forever. Which, come to think of it...thanks, PTC! Well done, you bastion of reactionary censorship.
Arrrrrr! But the sea-farin' Pirate Jimmy has come ashore like just another common landlubber! There he is, sitting in the Cohen living room, explaining to Sandy and Kirsten, "I've got terrible news, really. I've fallen in love with my ex-wife." Kirsten reminds him and us vaguely of the terrible things that Julie's done to him, and he explains that his pickle, as it were, is that he "can't be here and be with Julie" but -- old Chinese curse as it may be -- he can't be there and be without her, either. Kirsten wants to know just what in the living holy hell THAT means, and he tells them that he's going to take his boat to Maui. Yeah, I don't know either. He says he has to get out before he does any more damage to the people he loves. Let's celebrate Tate Donovan's unsung exit from yet another failing television program...with the dulcet tones of Modest Mouse.
Man, the lead singer of that band really looks like this guy Ray. Lindsay and Ryan hold hands with their pinkies and she pulls him outside to have something of a talk. Meanwhile, across the bar, Zach and Summer walk through the place, Zach trying to bring up the fact that they haven't talked about their winter breaks yet. But just as he opens his mouth to spill the beans (and the dusty Velamints, judging from his most recent conquest's demographic), Seth runs over drunkenly and scream, "Modest Mouse!" but he's so drunk that he switched the "M" from the first word with the one from the second, only nobody noticed but me. He hugs Zach and Summer, and she leans in to him, takes a whiff, and yells, "Your breath smells like Marissa!" Heh. But drunk people can say some crazy things, including Seth's ill-timed comment to Zach: "You two are hanging out. I guess she was cool with it." Summer wants to know, "Cool with what?" and Seth drawls, "The tutor." Zach thanks him and Seth takes it sincerely because drunk people are heeeeeelarious which is why Ike and Tina laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time they were married.
Outside now, Ryan asks Lindsay what's the matter, and we discover that he is. He's the matter. She tells him he's been acting weird all night, and he cops to the fact that it's weird when she's hanging out with the Cohens, because it kind of makes her into his family. But before they can get any further into it, Summer comes barging out of the Bait Shop screaming at Zach that she can't believe what he did and she can't believe he told Seth. And neither can we, Summer. Neither can me. Alex appears and tells Ryan that he has to take Seth home because he's leaving a path of destruction, he threw up, and teenage drinking is bad, m'kay?
There's this movie that I hope never comes out because it's literally the most terrible thing I've ever seen called The Ringer. It's produced by the utterly creatively depleted Farrelly Brothers, and it's about Johnny Knoxville pretending he's retarded so he can rig the Special Olympics and pay off his gambling debts. If there are some movies you think should be abandoned before they even reach the pitch stage, imagine how much worse it is in execution. Anyway, Seth's drunk voice is Johnny Knoxville's retard voice, and I'm not comfortable with either of them. Anyway, never see that movie. Ryan drives the car into the Cohen driveway, trying to get Seth just to shut the hell up already. Y'know, once people start the throwing-up process, they're usually not so animatedly drunk anymore. But Seth is, as he throws his passenger side door open and falls into a giant pile of garbage cans. This causes the very alert Cohen father to emerge, as Sandy walks outside, fully dressed and alert. What is it, 9:30? Sandy asks if they're okay, and Seth appears from the other side of the car and whispers, "Sssssssh...we're being stealth" before diving over the top of the car and leaving the story editor to be like, "This isn't really a strong enough moment to get us into a commercial. Can we have him dive over the top of the car?"
Tate Donovan is back on the U.S.S. Tate Donovan, explaining to Marissa that everything she said yesterday was totally right and that he's making the same mistakes over and over and over again. He promises to end things with Julie, and Marissa tells him she thinks that's great. But that's only the non-Maui portion of the story, as he goes on to explain that he needs to get "some perspective on the world." He's going to learn "how to be a real dad" by becoming an absentee father, which is actually exactly right, in my estimation. She's sad and mad and heard that Maui's beautiful. He tells her there's going to be a goodbye party at the Cohens', because someone's gotta get punched eventually. He asks if she's okay, and she responds that he was the last thing keeping her sane, so it should be interesting to see what happens after he goes. I predict, on the contrary, that it won't actually be that interesting at all. Oh, man, that sweater is even worse than the first one! What is with the cable knit? If the last sweater keeps him from getting laid, this one actually gives him back his virginity.
Man, do these people host a lot of parties. Inside the pool house, Seth shows up for the requisite hangover self-pity-fest, telling Ryan that he's dying. He also apologizes for "whatever happened last night." I'll be waiting for a similar communiqué from The Bait Shop with a formal apology for their participation in the festivities, signed with contrition, Modest Mouse. Ryan says Seth doesn't need to apologize to him, but suggests that he talk to Zach, seeing as he "destroyed his relationship with Summer." Also, Alex won't answer his calls because of "all the vomit." Ryan stands up with a perfect lack of sympathy (my mother's Code Of Hangovers: drink away, but don't you come crying to me) and notes, "You wanted to be the bad boy. You did bad." He gets up and throws some Tylenol Seth's way, but it just hits him in the shoulder and lands on the floor all meekly.
Man, do these people host a lot of parties. Kirsten bustles around the kitchen talking to caterers as Seth wanders in looking broken. Kirsten welcomes him as "my son the wino," and Seth inquires as to what the party is this time. It's Jimmy Cooper's going-away party, Seth. Seth runs into Sandy in the hallway and tells him he has to go talk to a girl, but Sandy is all stern, "Get upstairs and get dressed," and that Seth really is grounded for trying to impress a girl by drinking a fifth of Jack. Seth notes that his name is "John," and damn if his hangover really lifts when he's bantering.
A knock on Summer's bedroom door reveals Zach, who has bought her a gift of "the novelization of The Valley, Season 1." Why? Why are they doing this? She tells him she already has the hardcover, and then takes off. He asks her if she's going alone, and after she proves herself worthy of dork girlfriend-hood by telling him she's going "Han Solo," she adds the somewhat brilliant zinger, "But if I change my mind, I'll have Cohen get drunk and let you know." He gives her a kind of mad "come on," but she stands in judgment, "Hooking up with your tutor, Zack? Not even that cool in the '80s. I mean, she could have at least been a hooker and helped you get into Princeton." In a movie that came out thirty-seven years before Rachel Bilson was born.
Montage! Julie and Caleb show up to the party, and Kirsten lets them in. Caleb tries to talk about remembering Jimmy as a boy, but Julie and Kirsten are quite not listening. Seth walks down the stairs, his hangover now completely alleviated by the hydrating, blood-flowing activity of putting on black clothes. He tells a passing Ryan that he has to sneak out to make things right with Alex. Ryan asks about the parents, and Seth is all, "They're scary." See, no they're not. They don't discipline him at all. There is literally zero jeopardy in this decision. But Seth tells Ryan to cover for him, throw up a smokescreen, and employ some of that "Ryan Atwood double-talk," to which Ryan self-aware-ishly notes, "I barely talk" because WE GET IT.
Yeah, they don't even know they HAVE a son. Sandy strides across his back porch to meet Jimmy, who is here called "Jimbo" and Sandy is about to add on that "Jimbo is making copies." Take that decades old cultural reference, Bilson! Sandy asks how an approaching Julie took the news, and he responds, "I haven't talked to her yet." Sandy makes himself scarce in a damn hurry, and Jimmy shepherds Julie off to talk privately. Meanwhile, Ryan runs across Kirsten and Lindsay, and god help the mister who comes between me and my sister. Kirsten leaves Lindsay and Ryan alone to get some champagne, and they walk kind of awkwardly for a moment before really awkwardly running into Caleb. He says he's looking for Julie, and when he walks away, Lindsay whispers, "Bye, Dad," and Ryan predicts, "This isn't gonna be weird at all."
Up in one of the numerous antechambers on the second floor of the Cohen manse, Jimmy asks Julie, "Do you really think this is going somewhere?" She tells him she thought it meant something to both of them and asks if he really thought she would leave him again. His defense is that history isn't so much working in her favor, and says that she deserves to be happy with Caleb. She tells him that that's a real "storybook romance," and he tells her, "At least it's real." Unlike, say, any actual physical part of her. She begins to cry, and Kirsten interrupts as she's leaning on his shoulder. She apologizes for barging in to what appears to be her own bedroom, and she holds out a hand and says, "Goodbye, James." Kirsten looks on awkwardly as Julie walks into what appears to be a closet.
Summer sits alone for a moment at the party until she is soon to be joined by Ryan and Lindsay. She asks where Cohen is, and Ryan responds that he's "hurting from last night." Summer volleys that she'd like to "hurt him for last night," and then pauses for a moment before adding as a total non sequitur, "Totally boring party." But wait! Could it be less boring is on the way? No, for Marissa enters now, with D.J. expertly pruning the status quo. Oh, she appears to be quite wasted. She marches up to her mother and throws an arm around her, slurring, "Well, if it isn't the Wicked Witch of the West Coast." Good one. Julie asks if Marissa's drunk, and Marissa pulls D.J. away and says that they should go "before she tries to sleep with [him] ." Julie yells a motherly "What did you say?" after her, and Marissa turns and spits, "You heard me, you whore." Nice! Tate Donovan tries to calm things down, but Marissa cannot be stopped! From acting! Marissa: "You know what? Let's tell everyone why you're leaving." And then she does: "Hello, everybody!" Or not, as Julie once again steps in. Julie swings at her wildly, and Julie tells Tate Donovan that he's leaving her with this screwed-up daughter of theirs. Of course she's screwed up, Marissa argues: "I'm the daughter of a thief and a slut. I just hate you both so much." Now that was a party.
"You wanted a good old O.C.-fashioned party," Kirsten says to Jimmy sometime later, undoing at least a fifth of the good will we might have been feeling about that scene by feeling the need to call attention to it. Tate Donovan asks Kirsten if she'll check up on Marissa while he's away, and she tells him, "My father lives in that house." But that's why Tare Donovan wants her to do it. Because Marissa lives with a scary old man Frankenstein monster. Kirsten tells him, "For my oldest friend...anything." Awwwww. Tate? Just go. They hug for nine hours.
Julie and Caleb stand outside of the Cohens' looking very, very unhappy. The valet approaches and says there's a problem with Caleb's car, and when he asks if they've scratched his fancy silver convertible, the valet reports that it's been stolen.
By Seth, who is outside of Alex's place, telling her, "I stole it." She tells him that these efforts to impress her aren't so much working, since she's been with a lot of bad boys, of whom Seth is not one. That's sexy talk to be seventeen and have to tell a dude, "You're so my sloppy fiftieth, but at least you won't put out cigarettes on my arm. So, thanks for that." He starts to leave, but she tells himm she's a good guy and that's why she likes him. He's glad about that, because he feels like the bad boy thing isn't really working out for him, even though his quick-cure hangovers make for a really impressive shampoo effect, should he choose to chase one. But first...cops. A policeman gets out of the car and asks Seth, "Is this your vehicle, sir?"
Zach sits alone watching TV on Summer's floor. Summer walks in to find him, and he tells her that her stepmother blocked in his car and he can't get out. He tells her that this is their first fight that has nothing to do with Seth, and that this is all theirs to work out. He's sorry. She's just mad he didn't tell her. He promises to tell her everything, and she asks, "Why? Planning on screwing up again?" This episode? Not bad. Zach's hair? Setting itself up for the big apology.
Ryan and Lindsay finally get a moment alone in the pool house, and he tells her that they can finally talk. But she doesn't want to talk, you see, as she notes that they've hypothesized a lot about how kissing her would be like kissing his sister, but they haven't yet put it to the test. And if it's weird they can stop. But it's not weird. Until Kirsten walks in and almost catches them. But she's too preoccupied looking for Seth to notice. They say they were just looking for him, I guess, inside of each others' throats, but Kirsten is satisfied with this and takes her leave. They go at it again, and...dude, lock the door.
A knock on the door reveals Seth flanked by two uniformed police officers. Finally. Strippers!
Tate Donovan, kicking it with some serious London Fog wardrobe action, walks down the beach at night. He is soon to come upon Marissa and D.J. She asks what he's doing there, and D.J. responds, "I called him." D.J. shakes his hand and leaves, and Tate Donovan is the in a series of mediocre men to take his place besides the no-longer-drunkest girl in Orange County. He tells her he never thought he would leave, but can't life be crazy sometimes. She sits in silence until he apologizes for letting her down, at which point she starts to cry and begs him, "Don't go." Seriously? Go. He tells her that he'll send a boat or a plane if he decides to live with her, at which ninety-seven O.C. message boards simultaneously find themselves with thread topics all identically named, "Worst. Spinoff. Ever."
Ding-dong! The doorbell rings at the Cohen house, and Marissa appears, wearing the very USC sweatshirt Tate Donovan was wearing for his beach walk. What a creepily boyfriend-esque thing to do. I wonder if he also gave her his ID bracelet before taking off for parts south and west. She says that she brought bagels, which Sandy tells her is "the secret password into the Cohen house." Because you guys know what the Jews love?