Knock knock knockity knock. A silhouetted figure knocks on the door of the pool house, and a shot inside shows that the interior is in complete darkness. Considering that this location is usually the setting for more grating morning time banter than the set of The View, we are to regard this as odd. The hand that knocked the cradle pulls the door open, and we discover "Episode III: Return Of The" Seth Cohen, peering into the darkened space and nervously asking, "Ryan?" A mass of unrequited despondency shifts its weight under the covers, and Seth advances into the room, mutters a sympathetic (though oddly Pauly Shore-ian), "Oh, buddy," pulls up the window shades, and gets us comfortable with the idea of him not talking for the very last time in this entire episode. And then, he's off: "Look, I know you're bummed that Lindsay left, but you can't live like this." Seth makes his way to the bed and pulls the covers back in an "I hope he sleeps naked" kind of way, and a highly unamused Ryan "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Wifebeater" Atwood grabs the covers and pulls them back. Undeterred, Seth masters the concept of circular breathing so that he can continue without a pause: "Do you remember when Summer was leaving for Italy with Zach, you refused to let me stay bedridden and depressed?" And honestly, recalling that episode does nothing more than remind of me of the twin plagues of rain and Delaney, and I've already spent the amount of money I'm going to make writing this recap downloading the collected works of Boyz II Men from iTunes, so let's try and look forward from now on instead of back or you're going to owe me a copy of Cooleyhighharmony, show.
Ryan concurs entirely, reminding Seth that when Summer was leaving for Italy with Zach, Ryan gave Seth his space and said "do what you have to do." Which is the kind of shoddy, laissez-faire advice that leads someone to buy back his weird sex boat and put it in the pool only to see it not even turn out to be a significant plot development even after all that trouble. But Seth is forced to submit to this reality, sitting down and telling Ryan that he'll do anything -- anything -- that Ryan asks. Luckily, Ryan has an answer at the ready, and he growls in response, "Fine. You leaving, right now." Hey, Chino! Look at his bad-boy persona start to creep in at the edges, all Eliza Doolittle-like, through his refined personality! Watch as Ryan returns to form and throws the verbal punch that is...extremely politely asking someone if they wouldn't mind leaving him to his thoughts! Bad boys bad boys, whatcha gonna do! But Seth won't stop, and he basically embarks on the verbal equivalent of a kid poking his older brother repeatedly on the shoulder and being all, "Does this hurt? Does this hurt? What about this? Am I bothering you? Do you like games? I like the word 'butter'! Wanna play computer? Why do cows moo? Ants are tiny!" Ryan literally resorts to putting his hands over his ears, and when Seth suggests that they go to the diner for some pancakes (or, as he refers to said breakfast, a "short stack"), Ryan has had enough and finally barks, "Seth, shut UP." Woo! The real Ryan Atwood! Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? Except not really, because he immediately adds a conciliatory "please," and then goes on to bare his girly soul and explain the source of this not-really-outburst: "This thing with Lindsay is different...different as in not fixed by pancakes." Seth starts to open his mouth, and Ryan heads him off at the pass: "And don't ask me how I feel about waffles." Note to everyone with word processing capabilities and a key to the writer's room: tough guy + "don't ask me how I feel about waffles" = hilarity. But the music cue tells us that we are take this moment with extreme seriousness, so I'll pull myself together: Ryan apologizes for taking this out on Seth, and Seth frowns, "That's what I'm here for." That's what he's here for? Since when has putting his own personal trauma aside for others been a cornerstone of the Seth Cohen experience? Either way, it's going to be a real challenge for him to get in the front door of that diner with that newly-affixed cross strapped to his back. Ryan's sad: "I've had a lot of people in my life who have just left. I thought those days were gone, but I guess they aren't." Ryan lies back down. Seth looks chastened. Seth agrees to leave, and Ryan waits until he's gone before leaping out of bed, grabbing a old duffel bag filled with pain, and throwing some clothes on top of it. You know where he's going? The mall.
Opening credits: "Don't give me no glitz and glamour like up at Hollywood and Highland/ I'll take instead that folksy, snowy charm (but no Farrellys, please) of wee and twee Rhode Island." Time for some other states to start getting their due, y'all. ["The more you do this, the more this show's producers are all, 'He thinks we're going to last fifty episodes! Maybe all the way to Puerto Rico and Guam!' I just really see the show petering out before you can even make it through the continental U.S." -- Wing Chun]
Sandy continues his Dress-Down Friday approach and applies it to every day (I repeat...jams?), padding into the kitchen in a blue sweatshirt. Kirsten, professional and prepared as usual, dresses like she's got somewhere to go. And somewhere to go she has: wherever her husband ain't. She pours some coffee and puts the pot back before she notices that he might want some coffee as well. Plots a-poppin' this morning at the Cohen manse. Kirsten apologizes and begins to pour for Sandy as well, but he pulls his mug away before she's done, which is the admission of extramarital affairs version of pulling your hand away right before someone high-fives you, smoothing down the side of your head, and yelling, "Psych!" Psych, indeed, Sandy. They apologize to one another, each taking responsibility and trying to compensate for their failing marriage by being the first one to find a paper towel. He takes her hand and promises her that everything is going to be fine, and Kirsten notes that if they pretend that nothing happened...but Sandy finishes the thought for her, looking deep into her eyes: "Nothing happened." To which sentiment I squint, tilt my head ever so slightly toward the front and left, and utter a skeptical, "Weeeeeeeell." Because, a little, didn't it? Kirsten takes a sip of coffee, and when her left hand becomes level with Sandy's eye line, he asks, "Where's your ring?" Uh-oh. Taking off the ring means, "I hate you." She regards him warily, so he explains further: "Two carats, platinum setting, lives on your left hand." She tells him, lying, "I can't find it." It's two carats. Why not start looking for it from the place you can see it most clearly. That being: in space. Sandy informs Kirsten that she never takes it off, and she counters this argument, lying that she sometimes takes it off when she's doing dishes or gardening. And we've seen copious evidence of her doing both of those things. She says she must have left it near the sink, and he assumes that it must have fallen in. She promises to call the plumber tomorrow (woo! Single for a night! Naked party with Kirsten! Y'know, if you're into that kind of thing!) and then tells him in a somewhat more tender tone, "I'm sure it's not lost." She gives him a peck on the cheek. Hey! Save it until you're married again, you two.
I'm glad that it stopped raining, but isn't it weird no one's talking about the rain? Or that one road into town that got totally washed out? Or the fact that Sandy's car is in a ravine outside Santa Clarita? No one's interested in that? Well, have it your way. On Track #1 of this week's Incredibly Intuitive Soundtrack, Vol. 1, we find ourselves listening to the strain's of Beck's "Girl," which not only contains the phrase "Torrid diamond ring stuck on her finger" (a-ha!) but also ends with the artist repeating the phrase, "Hey my summer girl" (a-HA!) over and over and over again. When someone figures out how to write a song that elegantly rhymes "I am a lesbian" with "she is no thespian," look for this episode's first Alex and Marissa scene to begin in earnest.
Seth finds his Summer girl in the diner, where she conceals a postcard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as soon as she sees him enter. He sits to her in the booth instead of across from her -- which I hate either because it is impractical or because I am dead inside -- and makes with the kissy-kissy. He pulls away and tells her to "wait a sec" (which, yeah right) to instead talk about Ryan, explaining, "This thing with Lindsay has really kicked his ass." Summer non-explainingly explains, "Which is why it's a good thing we're like the Marines." Because Seth and Ryan don't ask and don't tell? "We leave no man behind." Ah. Summer continues: "Lindsay may have turned her back on Ryan, but we won't." And instead of noting that maybe Seth's unwillingness to "turn his back on Ryan" is the reason Ryan is feeling so betrayed in the first place, I'm just gonna leave the comment right where it is and just back very slowly away from it. Summer continues her military allegiance, informing Seth, "Semper Fi," which means "always faithful" in Marine. Seth thinks that is a cute thing for Summer to say, and now it's his turn to go in for the kissy-kissy. She pulls back, noting that there are plans that need to be set in place. She explains that she's going to ask Marissa to the mall, and that Seth and Ryan should come, too. Why? Because it's the title of the episode, duh! And, really, no other reason. Seth sarcastically intones that he's real sure that will cheer Ryan up, but then he looks toward the top of the window, notices the name of the episode, and quickly gives in: "All right. I will ask him to the mall." He goes on to remind Summer that the two of them are back together and that Lindsay is out of the picture, all of which makes Seth wonder if that clears the way for a reemergence of Marissa and Ryan's lurve. Oh, golly, I hope so. Summer reminds Seth of what a shitty couple Ryan and Marissa were and, being as understanding as she is, notes, "Besides, she's happy now." Seth rejoins, "If by 'happy,' you mean 'gay,'" in a delicious reversal of the sentiment that led my retarded elementary school music teacher to make us sing "Don we now our happy apparel" in the Birch Lane Christmas Concert. Anyway, she's dead now.
Marissa dons apparel that is most likely neither gay nor happy, as we pop in on Alex's shanty to find Marissa dumping a bag of clothes out on a threadbare sofa. Alex enters the room, regards the garments, and notes, "Our clothes are all pink." Shape 'em like triangles and you guys have got a whole politic going. Marissa tries to be cute -- "pink is the new black!" -- but...isn't. Faced with Alex's stony silence, Marissa tries to explain herself: "Separating your whites? Who knew?" Alex actually has an answer, and it's the correct one: "Anyone who's ever had to do their [sic -- sorry, but it is] own laundry?" Marissa apologizes and says they'll get "new stuff," which allows for entry into the other arenas of arguing they've seen lately: "With what? Have you found an after-school job?" You guys? Relax. It's socks and underwear and t-shirts with ironic slogans. I'm completely sure Marissa's endless collection of spangly tops with Bedazzled trims are not machine-washable. Marissa tries to change the topic, suggesting, "Maybe today we can do something fun," like the hottest girl-girl action in the history of temporary ratings-grabbing dilettante lesbianism. Alex says that would be great, but takes pains to add, "I have to work!" Where was this snazzy job of hers when they were first getting together and just seemed to sleep all day? And what about...y'know what, forget it. Sensing that her character's days are numbered, Alex tries to get back into Marissa's good graces, suggesting that they get takeout and sit by the water after work. I'm confused at the hours of this late-night club and concert venue. As Alex leaves, she remembers one more domestic matter, telling Marissa, "If a big fat guy with an 'I Heart NASCAR' tattoo shows up..." -- then the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is officially making house calls -- "don't answer the door, because he's our landlord and we're late on rent." With which Alex disappears and Marissa throws herself down on the squalor of pink that sits below her ass that she's now going to have to wash all over again now that it's all Marissa's-ass-y.
Ol' Man Caleb walks into the kitchen of the Cohen manse to discover Sandy under the sink, all blue collar-y, like. Caleb misfires on a snarky comment about how Sandy has finally found his calling even though Sandy has lawyered his way out of Caleb's going to prison, like, nine times, dink. Caleb reminds us of this so-called "Lindsay" we used to see around a lot, and confides in Sandy that he misses seeing her adorable illegitimate elfin mug around town. Sandy, still from underneath the sink, doesn't really want to hear it, asking Caleb if maybe he'd rather go find someone else to tell all about this. Caleb drinks from, I think, a vase and bemoans, "I've lost my daughter." This vulnerability causes Sandy to slink out from underneath the sink and be all sympathetic, telling Caleb, "If you want to talk, I'll listen." Fantastic. More Caleb talking, ahoy!
Julie is wearing a coat made of extinction and a Summer Roberts haircut. I love me some Julie Cooper, but neither works on her. She's pacing around the office holding a small stack of papers -- probably upside-down -- and ranting, "Why can't I edit my own magazine?" Kirsten, like she's explaining a knock-knock joke to a retarded six-year-old's deaf younger brother, phrases this as delicately as possible: "Because you've never edited a magazine." Explain. No, just kidding. I got it. Julie continues to sneer, explaining to Kirsten and us that the person they've chosen to edit Newport Living has a history with a magazine entitled The Ugly American. Kirsten tells Julie that TUA (for those of us in the know in the media world) has won a bunch of awards and is all fabulous and stuff, but Julie reminds her colleague that Newport Living is about "beautiful Americans." She hands Kirsten the papers and walks to the window to stare plaintively out it and into the lobby. Where something plot development-y this way comes! Julie sees a man she apparently recognizes, which causes her to slam shut the shades and peer covertly through them. A tight shot on the new guy reveals a brown leather jacket and a cropped haircut that makes his head look waaaaaay too narrow. Didn't we spend all of the last episode getting rid of our pointless B-story characters? It's as if the producers gathered in a room and were like, "Well, we're getting rid of all of the pretty, nubile pointless characters to make way for...less pretty, twenty-years-older pointless characters!" No. Totally. A receptionist informs the gentleman that "Mrs. Cooper-Nichol is behind closed doors." The guy -- let's call him "Lance," since that's about to become his name -- tells the receptionist, "Tell her Lance stopped by looking for her. She knows me. A little blast from the past." Who's named "Lance" anymore? Oh, that's right. People born in the 1960s. Fantastic.
"The girl really got to me," Caleb explains to a still sink-bound Sandy. She really got him going. She got him so he don't know what he's doing. Oh, yeah. She really got him now. She got him so he can't sleep at night. She really got...he. Shut up, Caleb. Oh, fine. Don't: "I was watching a peanut butter commercial on television, and I was blubbering like a baby." Except he throws the emphasis on the word "butter," which...why? Seth makes an appearance just now and tosses out the same joke about Sandy finding his calling, which in comedy is called a "callback" and in television is called "lazy."
Seth continues on his journey and ends up in the pool house, once again looking for Ryan. Instead, he finds a note on Ryan's bed and reads it in silence (reading in real time! Heart patients and the aged beware!), which cuts to him grabbing a set of keys and taking off from the house.
Marissa is cleaning a whole bunch of detritus up from the floor of the lesbian shanty, when she is interrupted by a knock on the door. Careful! What if it's the cliché slumlord composite Alex warned of? Paying no heed, Marissa makes for the door and, after some unconvincing peering through cheap curtains, discovers Summer. She lets Summer in and they banter about the fat guy Summer isn't and the general skunked beer stench of the apartment, and Summer tries to look on the bright side, asking, "It must be awesome to get away from your mom, huh?" Marissa retorts with an unconvincing "Totally," either because she is acting unconvincing or just is unconvincing. But Summer came because the plot compelled her to: "I have to go to the mall for the clothing drive. Battered women's shelter." Marissa doesn't even wait to be asked: "Sounds great. Let me just grab my purse." Even her purse doesn't believe she's about to come and grab it.
And now, Ryan comes face to face with all of the very things he tried so hard to run away from. time, Ryan? Skip the note. Sitting at the Newport Greyhound Terminal (which, after Seth's trip home from San Diego and Sandy's ride back from Near Infidelity Canyon, has really been getting a lot of play lately), Ryan waits patiently to get the hell out of Dodge, but is soon interrupted by an arriving Seth. "Hope you brought a lot of snacks," he says, adding, "Long ride to Chicago." Ryan sips on some coffee even though that + bran muffin = worst cross-country drive ever, and Seth takes a seat to him and listens as Ryan promises that he wasn't going to run away, but instead was going to "show up for the weekend and surprise her." What weekend? Easter weekend? We learn later on that all of these shenanigans are ensuing on a Saturday, so even if the bus drove straight from Orange County to Chicago and didn't stop for gas because it was powered entirely on Ryan's passion for his lost love, they still wouldn't arrive in Chicago metro until, say, Tuesday midday when Ryan would long since have been expected in one of his advanced Physics classes in school unless they were still in the middle of the endless February break that seems to have stretched for several months hence. Hoo. Sorry for the run-on, but I thought that if I were going to embark on a lengthy tirade of all of the ridiculous continuity snafus this show has painted itself into, I should try and get them out of the way in one sentence. Because, I mean, man. But Seth instead argues the point that maybe Lindsay has had enough surprises for a lifetime, and that Ryan should try to give her some time. Ryan asks, "How am I supposed to do that?" I give it two weeks before you never mention her name, ever again. Lack of narrative consistency heals all wounds, Ryan. As the old saying goes. Seth goes with the best plan he's got, and he informs Ryan that Summer and Marissa are heading over to the mall, and that surely he'd like to join them. Seth extols the many values of the mall and then promises, "If, by tomorrow morning, you still want to go to Chicago, I will drive you to the bus stop myself and will generate a fantastic cover story for the parents." He's going to have to tell them that Ryan died, or never existed at all. Ryan submits and gets up, just as six men clad in military uniforms walk past, all of whom were hired, costumed, and paid just so Seth could mumble the act-out, "Saving Private Ryan!" as he exits the bus station. But seriously, support the troops.
I was trying to figure out what so galled me about the title of this episode, at which moment I received the following email from a concerned viewer:
Not only is "mallpisode" not a word, it's not a pun. If they had an installment where they had to carry heavy objects, they could have called it the "Schlepisode" (even though that is not a word).
Yes. YES. Exactly. The one where they all have a lot of energy? "The Pepisode." The one where they watch a marathon of 21 Jump Street? "The Johnny-Depp-isode." The one where they catch a chronic, mildly contagious disease characterized by ulcers of the skin? Sing it with me, people..."The Leprisode." Is the rhyme scheme of all this starting to make sense to everybody? But...mallpisode? Are you KIDDING me? That does not make a LICK of sense. But alas, we have arrived at the titular mall, where the Now That's What I Call Intuitive, Vol. 1 soundtrack rings out with a song that actually includes the lyrics "At the mall is where i want to be." Who is responsible for these decisions. Show yourself. SHOW YOURSELF. They get out of the car, Seth once again promising Ryan, "Twenty-four hours, buddy, you're gonna feel like a new man." Ryan and Marissa climb out of the back seat, while Seth's attention turns to the postcard in Summer's bag. He notes the Tower of Pisa and asks, "That's in Italy, right?" But Summer grabs the bag away and counsels Seth to hurry up, since leaving Ryan and Marissa alone is "awkward." Only if they're scene partners in acting class, it is.
This song about the mall? Not a real song.
Now, what? Why couldn't they just go to the mall to shop? Why are they there under the cloud of this random charity event? Just go to the mall. Don't be all, "I'm St. Summer, Patron Saint Of The Mall." I don't know. Anyway, the four of them are being shown into some weird anterior chamber of the mall, where a blonde girl we've never seen before seems to mumble, "The stuff for the battered women's shelter is in those boxes and on this rack." And then what sounds like, "missif those twirlyman's leffs weren't hard enough." And I've watched this scene one million times, and it will still be "twirlyman's" after one million more. Even if, as I've decided, it could be, "As if those poor women's lives weren't hard enough," it still wouldn't gel with the sentiment: "Someone ought to get a restraining order again Seth Cohen." No idea what that meant. Does Seth Cohen beat women and make them go to shelters? I have no idea what's happening. Marbly-mouth Seth-hater leaves the four alone in the back room, but not before trying on some foreshadowing in an XXL, warning them, "We close early today, so don't take too long." Why? Is it parent-teacher conference day? Pick a reason and state it.
Anyway, Marbly-mouth Seth-hater leaves, and Summer comments that it's like having "a backstage pass to the mall." Seth thinks that cute and kisses Summer. Ryan and Marissa find this awkward. I'm with you for once, Marissa. Straight people kissing makes me feel all gacky inside. ["Hey. We mate, we're straight, get used to it." -- Wing Chun]
"Do you think we should put your photo on the cover every month?" Kirsten asks Julie as she flips through a stack of soft-focus head shots of one Mrs. Cooper-Nichol. Sadly, this almost seems like an opportunity for Julie to shoot back, "Why? Do you think maybe we need to publish twice a month?" But she is quickly interrupted by New Character, who enters with the line "That would just be wrong," spoken about...I don't know. Kirsten welcomes this "Carter," who I actually thought was the Lance guy from earlier. It's not. Kirsten introduces herself to Carter. Carter is lying about his age and not getting away with it. He's wearing a suede coat and a red sweater and a haircut that would work for him perfectly if he were about, well, twenty years younger than he is. Julie steps in to introduce herself, and lets him know that she's "the founder of Newport Living." She takes him to school on the concept of the magazine, informing him, "We don't need some outsider coming in and telling us what to do. No offense." Ah, the old conversational gambit of tacking on a "no offense" and thinking that no longer means you're being offensive. That Carter tells them in response, "I don't to be here anymore than you want me to be here." Now it's Julie's turn to take offense. Carter should have staved that off with a simple, "No offense." Carter says something trendy about shoes I can't spell, and adds that he knows they resent "the publisher" for foisting him on their magazine. The publisher? Anyway, he resents being foisted. "We'll sit down a couple of times a week," he suggests. "You guys'll do what you want and I'll go home with my paycheck. Now, who wants a cocktail?" Who wants a cocktail? That hasn't worked as a slick transition line since, like, Octopussy. Ass. No offense.
Caleb and Sandy sit -- where are they? -- boozing it up like old friends. Sandy thanks Caleb for something, telling him, "Your support has been alarmingly genuine." Caleb surmises that helping one daughter might "take the edge off hurting the other one." Sandy says he doesn't know if that's quite the way things work, noting that he too has hurt Kirsten. Caleb asks what he did, and Sandy explains that an old (you can say THAT again) relation came back into his life. Caleb surmises that he had an affair, but Sandy says that he did not: "But this woman, Rebecca, was very important to me once." Before she died and then came back wrong. Sandy says he's trying to make all that up to Kirsten, and thus his "foray into plumbing." Caleb knows that the ring means a lot to Kirsten, and the wavy line of ensuing flashback almost spirits us away to The Past as Sandy explains, "It took me a long time to save up enough money to buy it." Caleb reminisces that, if memory serves, Sandy first gave Kirsten a plastic ring from a Crackerjack box. But as he is old and infirm and probably shouldn't be drinking so freely on account of being a heart patient and all, if memory serves. Sandy corrects him: "I won that ring from the Cliff House Arcade in San Francisco." Pack your bags, y'all, we're going to San Fran! Or at least I thought so, when Sandy has another one of his brilliant ideas. That we'll get to learn more about later.
Alex comes home to an empty house to discover that Marissa is all, "Eh, whatever, lesbianism, and has taken off for parts unknown. Alex picks up a phone and dials, leaving a worried message on Marissa's voicemail: "The house isn't broken into, so I assume you haven't been abducted." For the last time, Julie. Stop paying the cell-phone bill and she'll come home. Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here?
In the storeroom, Seth and Summer continue their non-stop bout of "no, you are," "no, YOU are," "mwah mwah mwah," and so on, which forces Ryan and Marissa actually to have to talk to one another. She asks him how he's doing with the whole Lindsay, like, thing and whatever, and he's forced to cop to the fact that he's not realty doing that well. Because they're sharing, Marissa tells Ryan how good it is to be out of the house, also telling him that the house she's referring to is Alex's. And then, Seth discovers that they're locked in the mall. Mallpisode, you may begin!
Just like when they got locked in the meat locker in that episode of Three's Company, this all could have been so easily avoided. Summer tries the door and discovers that they're locked in. Marissa suggests they "just call someone," which prompts Summer to start screaming fort help. Seth haughtily suggests that he meant "on the phone," but their attempts at telecommunicating are dashed by a lack of bars because, clearly, they're using AT&T. Which has now merged with Cingular to ensure the crappiest coverage to the biggest swath of people as humanly possible under existing antitrust laws. Summer then produces a safety pin, which Seth takes and hands off to Ryan with a "go to town." Ryan asks, "Now why would you assume I know how to pick a lock?" Rather than answering the question, Seth mumbles something incoherent that isn't even endearing in whatever language he's slipped into, and takes it back to try and tackle the lock himself. They all cast their eyes around for a way out, and Summer is quick to notice a vent of some kind.
Cut to Ryan climbing into said vent, Seth following close behind. He compares it to "Goonies meets Die Hard by way of Mission: Impossible," and only Mission: Impossible is like, "Yeah, that's as good as this, actually." Ryan takes this opportunity to thank Seth for getting him out here, and then Seth takes a mighty tumble off the edge of the vent tunnel. This leaves Ryan alone to eavesdrop (speaking of every episode of Three's Company) on Marissa telling Summer that the only person she's ever felt a true connection with is Ryan. Summer asks if she can ever see getting back together with him and whether she misses him, and Marissa responds, "Every day." Just then, Seth walks in the locked door, and points to a crouching, peeping Ryan. Seriously..."Mallpisode"?
"So, why is no one else here?" Ryan asks as if he's never heard of things that close. Seth suggests that they find an exit and get the hell out of the mall, but the episode title compels them to stay longer, so suddenly Summer blurts, "Wait, wait, wait. We're not going anywhere" in a strangely "Down here? Down here is our time!" kind of way. She notes that they are trapped in a department store, which is her "ultimate fantasy." Ryan, interestingly, is the one who worries about getting caught, and Summer fixes him with a shouldn't-you-be- at-a-bathroom-break- in-Flagstaff kind of way and responds, "C'mon, guys, what could be cooler? Go to sleep in a mall, wake up in a mall." Going to sleep in your own bed and waking up in your own bed has a pretty cool ring to it, too. Poor Rachel Bilson knows how silly all this sounds, so she barrels through the rest of it, suggesting that they'll all be awake and out before the mall opens at 10. Is it really worth the acreage it's going to take up pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies of this idea? Oh, fine. Well, for one, having grown up in that great suburban mall known as "all of Long Island" and having worked in a mall for three years, I can tell you first-hand that there aren't any magical gnomes who scamper around department stores in the AM hours, cleaning things up, unlocking doors, readying cash register, and generally getting things running for their human counterparts, who arrive when the customers do at 10 AM. If the mall opens at 10, the average morning worker's shift can begin as early as 7 or 8. Also, if the mall has a movie theater, it's possible that the front doors of the mall wouldn't ever be locked, for patrons whose films end after the main mall has closed. Also? Mall walkers? Can come in whenever they want. I know my complaining is very silly, but it speaks to deeper inconsistencies going on all around this set right now, and...you guys, at least pretend for me, okay?
For no discernible reason other than figuring out whether mall sex is part of Summer's whole fantasy, Seth is the first on board to agree. He thinks it could be fun to forget their troubles, and sets forth a maxim for them all: "What happens in the mall, stays in the mall." Vegas is all, "You'll be hearing from our lawyers."
And you know what happens in the mall? Hilarity! (But don't tell anyone.) We cut to the exterior of four department-store dressing rooms, panning down as each of them makes a cell phone call to explain to someone where they are. Summer gets who we assume is her stepmother, apologizes for waking her at 8 PM (heh), and asks her to tell her father that she's sleeping at Marissa's. For Marissa's part, she tells Alex she brought some laundry over to her mom's place. Laundry two days in a row? Maybe she'd make a bitchin' girlfriend after all. Seth leaves a message for Sandy that he and Ryan are "trapped in the mall and we're gonna spend the night here. Now, I know the credit card is just for emergencies, but I may have to shell out for some supplies." This is where I don't point out how very silly that is. They all exit the dressing rooms wearing exactly the same things they were wearing when they walked in. Ryan asks what now, and Summer walks over to a conveniently located display of goalie masks, putting one on and proclaiming that she has an idea. Ryan asks if she's going to kill them all with a chainsaw. Is she? Best plot twist ever. She explains: "High score gets the bed in the Ethan Allen showroom. Low score takes the tent." Why doesn't low score take the bed right to the other bed?
And then, a sentence I never thought I'd type in a recap of this show: closed mall floor hockey montage on roller skates. The ball skips around and general trash is talked, until said ball goes flying past someone (I don't know whose suspect goalie skills can be blamed...I'll just peg it on Marissa, who clearly sucks at everything) and goes flying down a stopped escalator. They give the ball chase onto a lower floor, and when they hit the bottom of the escalator, they set off a sensor that causes the mall's one camera to point in their direction. Just as Summer notes a new makeup bauble of some kind, Seth and Ryan call, "Enough of the sports! Let's eat!" The camera follows Summer and Marissa out of the makeup area, but they have their masks on, see, so the mall's one camera can't see who they are. Evil genius, I tell you.
Julie, Kirsten, and Carter head for a table in a shmancy restaurant. As they sit, Julie looks up and notices that her new stalker, Lance, is sitting at the bar. Julie is quick to confront this, and she walks over and starts right in: "What the hell are you doing here, Lance?" He growls, "Awww, that's no way to treat your first love." She retorts, "You weren't my first love. Just my first." Blah blah blah old people sex banter, and she outlines his character for the sake of narrative ease: "You wouldn't be here if you didn't want something." He tells her, "Actually, I've got something for you," to which she shoots back, "The last time you gave me something, I drank cranberry juice for a week." Unless he gave her a gift certificate to the Ocean Spray store, I'm not really following, because you don't technically give someone a urinary tract infection. I mean, I see where they're going with it, but she's the one who has to learn proper maintenance. He's just the messenger. But I'll say no more. Anyway, Lance pushes a brown paper bag across the bar, and she asks him, "What did I ever do to you?" He tells her to watch it and tell her how much it's worth to her. Near tears, she begs, "I have two daughters now." Well, THAT remains a debatable claim. Lance presumes that they're worth protecting, then, and sends Julie off without another word. She returns to the table, quite shaken, and tells Kirsten and Carter that she's not feeling well and quickly takes her leave. Two daughters? Prove it.
Apparently, Summer and Seth lost the game. They've set up camp at a demo tent, and Seth returns with some snacks. He picks Summer's bag up off the, um, forest floor, once again noticing the pesky Pisa postcard poking out. He asks Summer if she wouldn't mind grabbing a fake log for the fake fire (there's a fake fire) so that they can make fake s'mores. For some reason, this seems like plan enough for her, and she departs. Seth hesitates for a moment and then picks up the postcard, his face registering a look of horror. Dude, how long does it take to read a postcard? He stands there for an hour, just begging to get caught, until Summer comes back and catches him.
Julie Cooper was in a porno. Got it. In what I'm sure was titled Special Delivery (no, wait...it's called The Porn Identity), a pizza boy comes to Julie Cooper's door. She's wearing a Flashdance-era bandanna in her hair to indicate that this video was shot in The Past, but it doesn't go very far in making Julie look the requisite twenty years younger. ["And furthermore, if it's so old, why is it named after a movie that came out in 2002?" -- Wing Chun] Anyway, pizza boy (is that Lance?) asks if they had sex, and she assures him, "I'm a virgin. At least I think I am." She has amnesia. "I have amnesia." Yeah, I figured. She asks him if he'll stay for a slice, and he offers that he is "starving." See, this is where she tells him that she likes her pizza "with extra sausage," but instead they just cut right to the sex part. That is, until Alex walks in and sends Julie lunging for the remote. Julie wants to know what she's doing there, and Alex offers that she got Marissa's message that she was spending the night at home. Julie says that she's not there, which we know is true, but there have been days where Marissa has been hiding in that huge house and no one has known it, so maybe she is there. Alex starts to leave, but Julie calls after her, "I guess I'm not the only one she lies to, huh?" Alex skulks back in, and Julie continues, "I know my daughter. I only let her go with you because I knew it was only a matter of time before she came back." She adds that her spoiled daughter will miss her privileged life once the novelty of her bohemian new life wears off: "Which I'm guessing is about now." Alex tells Julie that Marissa isn't happy, and Julie says that she hasn't seen happy from Marissa since about her sixteenth birthday, asking, "Have you met her new friends, Sullen and Vindictive?" Alex responds that she's only seen Marissa's other friends: "The only ones she's brought over to the house are Scared and Overwhelmed." Well, while you're out flyering the town looking for all of those people, maybe you can take along this script's best friend, Strained Extended Metaphor. At least he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Julie moves in, and actually seems to be genuine when she tells Alex, "I'm not saying this to be mean, because you actually seem like a nice enough girl and I like your pants" -- even though I'm sure they're PINK -- "you are this week's yard guy. Marissa latest drama, her weapon of torture to inflict against me." Alex says it can't be true, but Julie says she's pretty sure it is. "Marissa's only been in love once," she says. "And he looked a whole lot different in a wifebeater." Different than what?
And, now we're stealing. Ryan and Marissa meet on a landing in the middle of J.C. BloomingMacys, Ryan proudly showing her a gift basket he found containing brie and raspberry preserves. How dainty. She shows him her haul from the candy counter, where she nabbed some "macaroons and licorice bits." Why not just take all the circus peanuts and Necco wafers and a make a buffet of the grossest candies ever carved out of stone. Macaroons? What is wrong with you?
Aaaaand...fighting. Seth asks Summer why she's mad, Summer asks Seth why he was looking in her purse, Seth asks Summer why she's getting postcards from Zach, la la la la lee lee looo. She haughtily tells him that she's allowed to get a postcard from her friend, even though she won't be seeing that friend around school anymore (if they ever go back to school), I'll bet. Seth tells her that he saw the word "hot" in the postcard, and that he has a right to know what was hot. But just then, Marissa clomps in, all, "We brought macaroons." Great. Now all we need is some gefilte fish and you can have the grossest Seder of all time and swear off eating forever.
Sandy and Caleb, for some reason, have gone to the arcade together like giddy fifteen-year-olds on their first date. Sandy works the claw machine, nabbing hold of a blue plastic egg and then opening it to discover it has a keychain inside of it. "Blast!" Caleb actually says. Sandy does a Shakespearean aside that he really wanted to win the ring for Kirsten and win back her heart, but Caleb, somehow hearing this aside, tells Sandy that he doesn't need "a crappy piece of plastic" to do that, and that he can just tell her how he feels. Caleb realizes how much Sandy wants the ring, and tells him that he'll go get more quarters. Then he'll throw one of those quarters over the balcony to little Timmy waiting below and tell him to go buy the biggest turkey in the whole market! Caleb is nice now!
I guess no one won the hockey game, because Ryan and Marissa are also sleeping in a tent. They're momentarily awkward because Mischa Barton's not a very gifted actress, and Ryan suggests that they find Seth and Summer. Marissa suggests that they probably want their privacy, and then non sequiturs, "What happens in the mall stays in the mall" just because nobody else has said it in a while. Her phone rings just then, and she retreats to answer it. Finding Alex on the other line, she tells her, "I didn't end up going to my mom's. Well, I ran into Summer. I think I'm just gonna hang out at her place. I'll see you in the morning?" The call terminated, she walks back to camp and tells Ryan that she's not the jealous type, but that Alex would be bummed to miss...Ryan jumps in, indicating his surroundings and asking, "All this?" Even they know how stupid it is in the mall.
Oh, dude. Mall security is quick. They find the incriminating hockey ball and look up the escalator.
Seth tells Summer he's not mad at her anymore, but apparently she does not feel the same. "Fine," he retorts. "Then I am mad at you." Oh, man. This is totally what it would feel like to recap an hour of television if the internet had been invented when Moonlighting was on. Zach? Was the astronaut who ruined that show. The mall is Burt Viola. Seth starts to rant about Zach blee blah, but Summer shushes him, which makes him maaaad. But Summer now puts her hand over Seth's mouth and gestures toward the escalator, down which they can hear the sound of walkie-talkies and see some kind of flashing lights. They run to interrupt a bonding Ryan and Marissa (who are talking about Seth and Summer), and Seth informs them in no uncertain terms, "We need to go right now."
Back where Julie has high-and-dried Kirsten with the editor of Newport Living, forced flirting. She asks him what happened to The Ugly American, and he tells her that it all went downhill while he was getting divorced. She tells him that he's still married, and he notes that she's not wearing a ring. "I lost it," she tells him. "I mean, I took it off and I can't find it." So, you lost it. He tells her that taking off her wedding ring is a "strong statement," but she tells him that she was "potting geraniums," which is gardening lingo for "getting a divorce." Carter tells of the night he knew his wife didn't love him anymore, when he "found her ring by the kitchen sink. She said she'd been scrubbing a casserole dish." It's almost like he's talking about Kirsten, in some strange way! ["I don't watch this stupid show anymore, but from the 'anyone for a cocktail' line, I kind of assumed they were coding him gay, so...was he married like Corky St. Clair was married, or what?" -- Wing Chun]
You don't think this is all kind of dumb? I think, a little it's all kind of dumb. Mall security advances on a tent that contains the sound of human voices and contains silhouettes of human people. So how could there not be humans inside? Mall security has guns drawn, I think! They pull back the tent and find four mannequins wearing hockey masks and listening to a DVD of the first season of The Valley. Showed THOSE crusty old mall security guards! Meanwhile, the four actual people run outside to the only car in the parking lot, and hop in, laaaaaaaaaughing and laughing. They peel away, Marissa immediately asking if anyone is hungry, just so that Seth can jab, "I'm sure someone would like Italian." Summer begs him to "give it up, Cohen," and they fight like five-year-olds in the back seat.
Lance calls Julie and asks if she enjoyed the show. I liked her earrings. Other than that: too many chicks. She tells him she'll write him a check for $50,000, and he tells her he was thinking more like $500,000. She asks if he's crazy, and he tells her, "I could make more than that selling that tape on the internet." No, he can't. She's not Julie Hilton. Who would care? Besides, even if people did care, "sex tapes" are the new "talent." Anyone who's anyone.
Seth and Summer are still fighting about the postcard as the car pulls up to the diner. Ryan and Marissa, already tired of the bliss of Seth and Summer being back together, retreat inside and leave S&S in the car. Seth asks how Ryan and Marissa have become "the functional couple," and Summer worries, "We cannot be more annoying than Ryan and Marissa." Not possible, so long as one of the members of that couple is still Marissa. Summer shows Seth the postcard. The thing that's hot was...the weather! It's the "Rosebud" of this episode, and the payoff is totally as satisfying.
Sandy lies in bed reading a book as Kirsten walks in from her non-date with one of the uglier Americans this show has given us. Sandy tells her that he and Caleb made a day of looking for the ring. But, he tells her, walking to her and pulling out a pink plastic egg, "I love you. And I'm so sorry I did anything to make you doubt it." Awwww. Love it good.
Finally: this week, a musical montage around town finds Julie generally fretting, Alex asleep on her couch, and Kirsten finding her ring exactly where she'd put it: in her side table to the bed. And, at the diner, Marissa tells Ryan, "It's funny. Or, not funny, really. We've been apart longer than we've been together." That is funny or not funny. Ryan wonders if that makes them like strangers, and Marissa asks, "Yeah? Well, who are you?" He holds a fry in his mouth and growls, "Whoever you want me to be," and they laugh like not strangers. Outside, a reconciled Seth and Summer watch Ryan and Marissa getting along, and Seth notes, "It looks like the fantastic four is becoming fantastic again." The four of them sit at the booth together. "Mallpisode"?