Previously on The O.C.: a bunch of remarkably important things happened, the dramatic dealings of Southern California's rich and powerful were chronicled in painstakingly soapy detail, and people did unexpected things you would never, ever have expected. Aaaaaand...we're all caught up.
Cohen manse under the stars. Sandy "Man Of Chevitz" Cohen enters his kitchen holding a brown paper bag proudly up in the air and announcing, "All right! Dinnertime! How do you feel about chicken parm?" Kirsten "Blonde Ambition" Cohen sits at the table facing away from her husband, perhaps in a self-protective measure to position herself downwind from the smell of Kim Delaney's rotting flesh, which still wafts off of him with disturbing frequency. Kirsten barks, "That is simply unacceptable" in what seems like a retort to Sandy's query, but when he shoots back, "Don't look at me. I'm the one who wanted Thai," Kirsten gives up trying to do business over her cell phone and tells Carter she has to call him back. It's hard for women to have a professional career when it's so evident that their place is somewhat kitchen-adjacent.
Sandy pulls plates out of the pantry to put the takeout on -- which I also totally do, even though this overstatement of presentation would be like putting one Oreo on those giant spinning cake trays like they have in diners in New Jersey and referring to it as "The Single-Decker Crèmewich" -- as he banters with his wife who doesn't hate him anymore: "I barely recognized you without a wire coming out of your ear," which is, if I remember correctly, also a line Ally Sheedy says in the 1991 cult classic Short Circuit III: Emergency Maintenance. Kirsten apologizes for being so preoccupied, telling Sandy and us, "It's just that we're unveiling the magazine to advertisers in exactly sixty-seven hours." Sandy, meanwhile, eschews eye contact, staring into the bottom of the takeout bag as if to say, "I don't remember ordering this many extra packets of clunky exposition!" But nevertheless, there they are, and Kirsten keeps spilling them everywhere, with a remarkably indiscriminate lack of aim.
Hark! Once-endearing children spilling from every room of the manse. Seth and Ryan smell food and come running like roaches into the kitchen, and they grab their containers and immediately start making tracks for anywhere else. But Sandy calls after them, informing them with numerous Brooklyn-born, Danza-esque inflections of the "oh," "ay," and "oh" varieties that they're not going anywhere. This is, as Sandy has spontaneously decided, "a family dinner." Seth expresses some "aww, shucks" reservations about this plan, complaining that he and Ryan "are in the middle of a crucial Playstation game"; Kirsten piggybacks onto this that she has to work. Sandy repeats that no one is eating unless they're eating as a family, and forces them all to sit down at the table. They do, with great reluctance, Seth snarking, "Family time is always best when it's forced." You're welcome, you spoiled, sniveling...actually I'd throw my dad over for a kick-ass Playstation game any day of the week. Noticing that correlation for the first time actually says a lot about how I live my life today. Sandy adds that if his kids don't behave, they won't be invited on the family trip he's planning. He asks Ryan if he's even seen Mount Rushmore, and Ryan shoots back a look that telegraphs, "Well, I went on a school trip to South Dakota in fourth grade, but that was before anything was carved into the rocks." But this Coyote State reverie is broken by the sound of a ringing phone, which Sandy ambles over to answer. He announces that no one will be taking any calls during dinner, but is quick to hand the phone off to Ryan when he hears who is on the other end. Ryan takes the phone and experiences the information-free portion of the conversation: "Hello? Hey. Really! When? Yeah, no, all right. Yeah. See you then." See who when? I'm doing the pee-pee dance over here. SEE WHO WHEN? Ryan hangs up the phone and lets us know: "That was Trey." Because she thinks this show has picked up hundreds of viewers rather than lost millions of them, Kirsten takes pains to clarify, "Your brother?" No, it was Trey Anastasio, former lead singer of the legendary jam band, Phish. Wrong number. I feel sad because the music is sad, and Ryan takes this opportunity to tell the assemblage that Trey is getting out of jail and wants Ryan to come pick him up in Chino. Seth stabs a bite of the food no one has eaten and barks, "Huh. There's that family trip you wanted," which seems oddly non sequitur and uncharacteristically harsh. But really, that's all splitting hairs. Let's sing!
Opening credits: Blah blah blah West Virginia something something.
Decked out in a grey hoodie and a gleaming Season 1-era scowl, Ryan sits on a chair in some anterior room of the house, waiting for Seth to enter the room. He finally does, offering a sympathetic "Hey" and continuing on that there are bagels and cream cheese to be had in the kitchen. Ryan grouses that he's coming, and Seth continues, "And yet, you're sitting." Ryan says that he was bracing himself for the day ahead, and Seth notes that picking one's brother up from prison is "not not intense." If I felt bothered by Seth's ever-increasing series of tics, verbal and otherwise, rest assured that that sentence made me feel doubly negative. Seth takes pause with his own silliness long enough to ask Ryan if he's talked to Trey at all since the fateful night that led to his incarceration, and Ryan responds that he has not: "I kind of thought he was out of my life for good." I actually thought all of greater Chino had melted into the sea, but I guess the poors make for good television too when it's convenient, those dirty, heathen darlings. Seth asks if Ryan wants him out of his life, and Ryan purses his lips long enough to turn thirty-seven and then tells Seth, "I don't know. Maybe. He's my brother, but the guy's trouble." Maybe prison made him a different person. Like, actually a different person. Seth hems considerably and decides he is way too self-obsessed to do anything for anybody else (I'm paraphrasing), but does pull a heartstring or two with this: "As your brother -- your other brother -- who is less related to you, I officially have your back." Huh. I guess I always kind of pictured it going the other way around.
Morning at the manse, where food consumption and food consumption-oriented activities reign supreme. You know, I know I make fun and you and I have a lot of fun here and all that, but I do have to let my guard down and say that, when it comes to constantly calling for takeout and the kitchen the social hub of all activity in the house, this show's grasp on cultural Judaism has got Sandy Cohen pegged. All we have to do now is watch him go to a movie on Christmas Day. Er. Sigh. Fine. Chrismukkah Day. Anyway, Sandy chills in the kitchen, disemboweling a bagel using one of those industrial-sized bagel slicing apparatuses to be found in your college dining hall at this exact moment. You know the one. You used it this morning. Kirsten shares with Sandy that she shares his belief that they should help out Trey in any way they can, but that she has misgivings that Sandy immediately guesses at: "But you're scared I'm gonna wanna adopt him." Kirsten looks with concern down at the Clue weapon of a bagel slicer they have in their kitchen, her emergent roots (inappropriate! I shouldn't have to notice these things. Stylist on set, stat!) gleaming in the California sun. Sandy puts his wife's mind at ease, saying that Trey is twenty years old and an ex-con, and that he probably doesn't want to be adopted. Kirsten smiles that "good, because our property value can't afford to go down any further" smile that makes us enjoy her so, which Sandy brings back to center when he argues that they do need to do something for the troubled actor-switching shape-shifter. Just then, Seth and Ryan enter, Seth suggesting that they switch to "a more neutral topic." Like what? The latest equestrian results? I guess all of this is someone's attempt to make Seth look more sympathetic by trying to protect Ryan from the tough talk that surrounds him, but this is the order of the day and Ryan would probably not mind talking about it. This makes Seth come off so prissy he's like a lady in waiting who wanders into a card game played by brusque men speaking of such indelicate things that he needs to go lie prostrate in a drawing room somewhere until his pearl-clutching bout with the vapors is finally to come to an end. M'lady.
Sandy asks Ryan if he's ready to go, and Ryan mutters an unsure "Sure." He then leans in to Sandy and thanks him for driving him to Chino (mmmm! The exposition spread on this bagel is good and good for you!), but promises that he can take care of this by himself. But Sandy promises that "if it's a Ryan problem, it's a Cohen problem." Fine. Then you can all go for haircuts. Sensing an opportunity for self-promotion and self-congratulation, Seth (we should change his name to "Self") pipes up that he too thinks he should take a day off school and head down to the prison. He reminds his father that he's had some "behavioral issues" this year, and that prison might be just the thing to "scare [him] straight." Kirsten pumps in, all, "Nice try, junior," because even though mumbling and emo rock aren't actually crimes that come with the punishment of imprisonment, I'm not above saying that they shouldn't be.
And so to school we go, where we cut to Marissa and Summer, walking down the OH MY GOD WHAT ON EARTH ARE THEY WEARING, PART XXXVIII? I mean, Marissa, I can understand. After all, her combination of a flashy color palette and a ghoulish frame almost always make her look as if she's about to appear in a gay pride parade that travels sideways down an alley. But Summer? Dude? We expect better from you! And right now, the only thing I expect out of that white, beaded, Moonie ensemble is that your fellow students are going to see you walking down the hall and start whispering to one another, "It's Summer! And she's joined the Polyphonic Spree!"
Summer and Marissa are also talking, but it's just so hard to concentrate! All right. With all my power. We pop in on them talking about Ryan's trip to Chino, which Seth has apparently filled Summer in on. Marissa says she wishes she could have known, saying in her usual vocal cadence that sounds like it was recorded backwards and played forwards, "At least I could have been there for him." Summer accuses Marissa of being "girlfriend-y," but Marissa counters that she's just trying to be Ryan's friend, "which is the part we skipped over last time." Well, of course you did. The friendship part is where all the boning isn't, duh. Besides that, Marissa notes, "Ryan and Trey have a very complicated relationship." With that, a red Vespa (no, really. No. Really) pulls up right outside a window, and you can see all of the extras being like, "Seriously, dude, no Vespa parking. Check the signs." It's Zach! He's back!...why? Summer notes that she's having "a panic spiral," adding, "He was in Italy for so long, I assumed he'd bought a villa and opened an espresso bar." Instead, he was driving his Vespa across the country. After, assumedly, he drove it across the Atlantic Ocean. Marissa asks Summer if she is going to say hello (spelled, as she says it, with about nine O's, and not all of them even at the end, really), and as soon as Summer says she couldn't possibly, Zach makes his way over and offers an animated hello to them both. Then he backs up, winds up, and deals: "Buongiorno!" Oy. Marissa gets around to asking how his time abroad was. He tells them that it was the best vacation of his life. Yeah, well. Beats going to school. Beats going to about three whole weeks of school. He tells them to catch up with him at lunch to see his great, great pictures, and takes off in a flush of Euro goodness. The stereotypes are true, you guys. They really do just ride around on their scooters all day going, "Ciao!"
Chino County Correctional, where good alliteration gets you time off. Sandy and Ryan stand in a dingy waiting room while waiting for their brother and hobo-in-law (respectively) to emerge from where he spent the last year and a half telling cheap-shod female visitors that he can smell their genitals. Maybe. I haven't visited that many prisons. Ryan stares a youth with a similar awful haircut to his own, talking on the phone from the other side of the glass. Sandy asks if he's having flashbacks, and adds that it seems like a hundred years since he sprung Ryan from the clink. Ryan notes, "And he's been in here the whole time." Sandy then turns the topic to asking Ryan what he thought about Trey's staying with them, and Ryan pauses another hundred years before offering, "I don't know." Sandy says that "statistics say" that he'll be back in jail in a year if no one helps him. Well, maybe there's another rich sympathetic benefactor in Orange County, because isn't your pool house getting kind of full? Ryan promises, "Trey's old enough to take care of himself." You just watch. Actually, maybe "watch" isn't the best measure of Trey's newfound maturity.
And out he comes. Hey, look! A twenty-year-old who might actually be a twenty-year-old! He looks like he could be Ryan's slightly younger brother. But he's got three strands of facial hair, so it means that he three types of baaaaaad! The door to the outside world opens, and Trey (play "Guelah Papyrus!" Oh, sorry. Wrong Trey again) walks into the waiting room holding a box of his personal effects to find Sandy and Hermano waiting for him. "Little brother," he says. Ryan walks slowly to him and offers his hand for a manly shaking, but Trey pulls him in for a hug. I changed my mind. This dude is, like, thirty. Sandy introduces himself, and Trey responds with a heartfelt "Nice to finally meet you," which, translated from PrisonSpeak, means, "I have already stolen your large-screen TV." Sandy asks him if he's hungry, and he responds that he's "starving," and a cut later he's looking happy to be alive when he steps into the back of Sandy's SUV. Hungry for the ozone layer, Sandy's car? Starving.
Over at the Newport Group, no one is ever there besides Kirsten, Julie, and occasionally this weird dude with the subplot about the gay Berkeley magazine thing. We find Kirsten and Carter engaged in publishing bliss (and let me tell you: I worked in publishing forever, and the sexual tension level is always exactly this high, except that instead of sexual tension, it's recent college graduate women and their gay male bosses making fun of their publishing company's lame-ass conservative imprint for nine hours a day), watching shitty b-roll footage of a beach. Julie enters and asks what the dickens they're doing, and Kirsten explains: "Cutting a video for the showcase. An introduction to Newport Living." Julie stares at them blankly, so Carter patronizingly explains, "Your magazine? The one with you on the cover?" Julie apologizes for being so distracted, then makes no pains not to be when she asks Kirsten if she can talk to her for a minute. Carter obliges and takes his leave of the room, and Julie wastes absolutely no time: "I made a mistake, Kiki. A naked mistake." The best kind of mistake of all. Unless, of course, it gives you chlamydia. Kristen's all, Eh?" so Julie clears it up. Not the chlamydia. "A hundred years ago," she yarn-spins, "a boyfriend convinced me to let him film me in the act. I was young, living on Ramen, I needed the money." So she dated a porn director? Because if he just wanted to film his girlfriend in the act of having sex, you don't actually get paid for that. It happens TO a lot of rich people, for some reason, but it's probably just a coincidence. Julie continues on, saying that he never showed it to anyone or released it: "Until now. Unless I give him half a million dollars." She explains that Sandy has been involved and that they can get the tape, but that they still need to come up with the money. Kirsten masters that which is obvious in saying that Julie's going to have to tell Caleb. Julie looks like this would be the kind of news that's apt to kill him, which should actually make her look quite a bit happier, if you want my opinion on things.
Sandy's Range Rover, um, roves up to a ramshackle shithouse on the border of South Chino and Chino Heights. It's bad now, but they're totally going to open a Whole Foods and then it's hello, gentrification. Sandy asks Trey whom he's staying with, and he responds, "My buddy, Rick." Rick hearts crystal meth. Trey exits the vehicle and Ryan leaps out of the shotgun seat. They exchange a hug and a heartfelt goodbye that isn't actually a goodbye, and Trey walks to the front door of 100 Sad Times Blvd., finding no response. Well, at least somebody in Chino gets up and goes to work. Sandy asks Ryan, "What do you say we give it a try." Looks like we're gonna need a bigger pool house. Ryan calls for Trey and asks if he wants to go with them, and Trey grabs his box with conviction and runs back toward the car.
Listen to those plucky strings! This scene is gonna be hilarious! We're back at school, where we pop in on Zach putting books in his locker, which is the most exciting thing we've ever seen him do. Seth is soon to approach, spotting Zach and expressing excitement that he came back. Yes, the end of heinous truancy is a new and exciting opportunity for learning, indeed. Seth adds, "People never leave and come back!" Uh-huh. Hey, Cohen? That joke would have been funnier last year, I bet. Two can play at that game. Zach offers a jovial "long time no see!" Yeah, don't be a stranger! Too good to be forgotten! See you in seventh! And other yearbook platitudes of the ages. Zach asks Seth how he's doing, and Seth starts to try to explain something about him and Summer, but Zach doesn't need to hear it: "You and Summer belong together. I should have clued into that a while ago." Besides, Zach continues, something exciting has happened, but he doesn't want Seth to tell Summer about it. Seth promises to keep the secret, and Zach shares that when he was in Italy, he met a hot girl named Francesca who is "tall, blonde, gorgeous. Doesn't speak much English but she's learning." Awwww, they speak the international language. Of blowjobs. And we know she's made up right away (er, spoiler), but...blonde? Anyway, don't tell Summer.
Car pulling into driveway b-roll cuts to Sandy opening the door of the house for Ryan and his new son Trey. "Well," he announces, "this is the crib." Aw, shiznit, Sandy! Turn that spizzle down. Trey pans across it and mutters, "You gotta be kidding me." Sandy tells Trey he'll be staying in the pool house, and that Ryan can take the guest room. Outside now, Ryan walks Trey across the back yard, while Trey keeps laughing in disbelief and chokes out, "You got hooked UP." Hey, Dr. Dre, you leave that jive talk in the prison, where it belongs. They walk into the pool house, Trey saying, "I'm sorry I'm kicking you out of your cabana mansion here." Ryan retorts with a smile, "It's only for a few days." He immediately apologizes, but Trey recognizes with the usual amount of foreshadowing that Ryan has a good thing going here: "I'm not gonna screw it up." Ryan looks back as Trey takes off his tough man denim jacket. Well, "tough man" if he'd gone to prison in the "Keeping the Faith" video, but the thought was certainly there.
Seth makes his way into the pool house by the light of after school, hearing running water coming from the bathroom and shouting, "Hey, man. I want some details." He starts grilling the indoor plumbing for news about Trey: whether he seems different, whether he's found Jesus or got a tattoo or shaved his head. But lo! Suddenly from the bathroom emerges Trey instead of Ryan, and the sassy older brother announces, "0 for 3." Seth observes that Trey is not Ryan, but that he is "still an Atwood," and, in fact, "a slightly more edgy, darker version. I think." Trey takes this moment to note that Ryan told him that Seth talks kind of a lot, and Seth retorts that it's "kind of a problem," but one he hopes Trey will come to find endearing over time. He will. And then slowly come to resent the staccato chatter of its neverending, insectile hum. What I'm trying to say, Seth, is that I kind of liked it better last year. Sandy enters with Ryan in tow, and Sandy informs Seth that Trey will be staying with them. "Just until I can find my own place," Trey helpfully annotates. With which Sandy approaches Trey and takes several bills off of a baseball-sized wad of cash (note to audience: Sandy Cohen is not just happy to see you), handing them to his new son and announcing, "Just enough to get you started. For clothing, toiletries, all the basics." On an all-new Sandy Cohen Presents: Starting Over. ["Best. Crossover. EVER." -- Wing Chun] Seth asks if he should come, and Ryan suggests that Seth call Marissa and tells her to meet them. Seth notes that this seems like a project for "CosmoGirl," which I believe is a magazine publication that recently saw Mischa Barton, the actress who portrays the character of Marissa, on its cover. Oh, good. A commercial for the actress within the suspension of disbelief that is fictional, scripted television. Are you thinking what I'm programmed to be thinking? Shopping spree!
Palace Nichol. Julie fusses around in the kitchen as a suspicious Caleb asks Julie what she's doing home for lunch. First of all, she's home for lunch in the time zone of Hawaii, because it's seriously 4 PM if Seth is already home from school. Show? Try harder. And don't tell me it's "just lunchtime," because I totally call bullshit. Julie puts a plate down in front of Caleb and tells him that she's made him crawfish, also known as his "favorite." Ever since Caleb was raised a poor black child on the Bayou in the '20s has crawfish been "his favorite." Crawfish? It's like the mutton of seafood. Julie tells Caleb that she hasn't seen him at all because of all of the fuss around the magazine launch, so she wanted to take this opportunity to "check in" and "have a State of the Union." All right: privatization of Social Security is a bad idea. A gay-marriage amendment is unconstitutional. Oh, nice job with the whole feeding tube thing, Congress. That was totally your business. Wow. That was the most coherent State of the Union in years.
It was just an expression. Julie really wants to talk about herself, engaging Caleb thusly: she wants to replace a showerhead in the guest bathroom upstairs. She wants to fire the new gardener. Oh, and: "I made an adult film in the '80s with an ex-boyfriend who is now threatening to release it on the internet unless I pay him a half million dollars. Oh, and I would really like to redo the kitchen." Caleb asks Julie if she did porn, and she volunteers that it was just "erotica." From the school of semantics that brought you "we're actually a massage parlor" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Caleb notes with a distinct lack of passion that Julie's got herself in "quite a bind," and she immediately leaps down his throat that she was sure he'd react this way, showing absolutely no sympathy: "This from a man who kept an illegitimate child from me, and..." But Caleb wipes the Sea Mutton from his lips and tells Julie with his continuing rigor mortis, "I'll pay the money...your dignity's at stake. I'd say that's worth a half a million dollars." Julie takes a deep exhale and reminds him of the damage that this could have done, considering "the magazine" and "Marissa." She offers him sincere thanks and kisses him on the grizzled cheek. Nothing inside of his embalmed body budges.
Over at the Pier Of Fun (And Tears, But Only When It's Raining), we find Seth and Summer sitting at a booth for, like, nine people, Summer going on about what's eating Zach. "How can Zach act so normal about me?" she asks. Seth bemoans the fact that she's even talking about this, saying Seth was under the impression that the two of them were kind of dating. Summer apologizes, but does drive the nail in a little that she just didn't expect Zach to get over her that quickly. Seth says that Zach's resilient, promising, "Under all that floppy hair and goofy smile, there's a layer of steel." Summer guesses that Seth talked to Zach, and wants to know if they were any details about his trip Seth might have neglected to mention to her. Seth: "Nooo...?" What about any lying fakey details. Oh, those! Seth can keep the secret no longer: "He has a girlfriend...He met her in Italy. Her name's Francesca, and she's tall and beautiful and he's way into her." Summer: she's tall? Dude, she's FAKE. She's imaginary. She's from fairy tales of mirth and wonder. Of course she can be tall. Most unicorns are.
Mall Of Conveniently Forgotten -Episode-Established Backstory. Ryan and Trey shop and shop and shop and shop and shop, Trey handling a watch and noting how fancy it is. Y'know, for what comes later. Trey posits that Ryan must have a closet full of this kind of fancy stuff, like, "shirts with alligators" and stuff. I know incarceration tends to remove people from the pop-culture mainstream, but are we really meant to understand that Trey went to jail the same year that The Preppie Handbook was released? As Trey looks like he's preparing for a musical number, flipping a hat even early 'N Sync dismissed out of hand on the basis that it was "too gay," Ryan suggests that they try another store. Trey says that he's got "cash to spend" and that he's not going anywhere. Just at that moment, Marissa shows up and tells Trey, "We met before." New Trey is like, "Must've been the other guy" -- I guess he would have been called "Trey Classic" -- before remembering Marissa as "Ryan's girlfriend." Awkward glances abound, Marissa quickly turning the topping to Trey's windfall and all of the clothing that he should try on as a result of it. Trey leaves to try on his one shirt, leaving Ryan and Marissa to awkwardly lack chemistry. She turns to a rack of Ben Sherman clothes behind her and picks up a hideously awful hat, which she playfully plants on Ryan's head, announcing, "That looks really adorable on you." Ryan shoots back, "I thought ugly hats were your thing." Awww, you guys? Thanks for reading! *Waves!*
"So, to my utter shock," Julie debriefs Kirsten back in one of their offices, "he agreed to pay in full. Crisis averted." Kirsten guesses that Caleb's "softening in his old age." Yep. Nothing harder about good ol' Cal anymore. Except 90% of his arteries and his ability to maintain a believable American accent for more than six words at a stretch. "That or he has a porn tape buried in his past, too," Julie answers. "I was speaking metaphorically, of course." Of course. But Kirsten reacts to nothing, starting ahead like there's a slow gas leak in the building. Julie snaps her out of it, and Kirsten apologizes for being distracted (lots of being distracted and apologizing for being distracted tonight), staring through the office window and spying Carter out in the lobby. Julie takes all of this in, suddenly crying out, "You like Carter...here I've been so occupied with my own sex scandal, I hadn't noticed yours!" Kirsten is all deny deny deny, almost screaming, "I do not have feelings for...Sandy!" Whhhhhaaaaaaaa? Oh, it's Sandy, walking into the office. I get it. Without being asked, Kirsten volunteers, "We're just going over some magazine stuff." Julie adds, "Launch fever!" Yes, yes. Catch it! Julie takes her leave, and Sandy says he's come by to tell Kirsten that Trey is going to stay with them for a few days. "Sounds good," Kirsten responds. Sandy asks why she's not having -- and this is a quote -- a "five-alarm freak-out," and she tells him, "I trust you. I mean, you were right about Ryan, after all." She kisses him on the cheek and tells him that she'll see him tonight, but Sandy just them remembers the existence of Carter Buckley and asks if he can meet him. Carter walks past the office and waves to Kirsten just then, but she lies regardless and says that it's not a good time. Carter's up to his ears, she says. Which at least means it's covered up his weird-ass little nose.
Marissa gazes proudly on the monster she's created as Trey takes a big shopping bag full of proof of some near total stranger's altruism. As they walk out of the store, a sales rep (he's not security, because his only uniform is "vague gayness") asks Trey if he can take a look in his bag. Now, bear in mind that at some of these places, that's actually standard procedure for all customers. But Trey has been in prison and he's trying to go straight, see, so this kind of sticks in his craw a bit. The greeter or whatever is all, "I saw you handling that watch before." Then check his pockets, not his bag, because...ah, nobody listens. Marissa says that he didn't take anything, but Ryan advises his brother to let him check the bag. But instead, Trey wants to have a hissyfit like an itty little bitty girl. Trey gets right up in the grille of MaybeGay, suggesting, "Why don't you get out of my face?" So MaybeGay takes out a walkie-talking from seeming nowhere and asks for someone to be sent to the front entrance. Where was this eagle-eyed sharp-shooter a couple of weeks back when some dickhead kids thought it wouldn't be totally lame-ass to sleep in the mall? Trey tells him not to bother: "Because I paid for all of it!" With this, he undertakes the grand gesture of turning the bag over and spilling its contents all over the floor. Ryan tries to take Trey out of the store, but he breaks free from his brother's grip and overturns several racks of clothes on his way back to the absolutely fearless sales clerk. I mean, like, for a gay. The other customers are scandalized and have to be revived with smelling salts and other assorted extremely overpriced scented candles.
I guess it's the morning. Back in the Cohen kitchen, Ryan debriefs Seth on the last scene at the mall, saying that Trey's got "a lot of pride" and that it makes him act out. Is that why the prisons are so overcrowded? Too much pride? Seth asks if Ryan has told Sandy and Kirsten, and he says that he knows he should, but can't. Just then, Kirsten enters and pours herself a cup of irony, telling Ryan that she's met his brother and that he seems to be "adjusting well." Well, now that he knows what time it is from that stolen watch and all. Right behind her, Sandy and Trey enter, Sandy showing Trey some job classifieds and hopefully explaining the difference between "help wanted" and just plain old "wanted." Trey promises that "the job hunt begins today," asking if Ryan wants to come with him. Weekend? Another plain old "school optional" day? Impossible to know for sure. Anyway, Ryan snips back that he'll pass, and, ending the awkwardness, Kirsten removes her family from the room and allows the two ex-cons to talk about their score. Or whatever ex-cons talk about when they're alone. How about...their feelings? "Again, I'm sorry about yesterday," Trey promises. "I just didn't like the way the guy was looking at me." MaybeHomophobe! Trey realizes that his old ways aren't going to work here, and he recognizes the need for change. Ryan nods and advises, "Do it soon." Trey is left alone in the kitchen, where he thinks a lot about pocketing something shiny.
A knock on Summer's bedroom door (because, image aside, the Roberts family just isn't wealthy enough to afford a rest-of-the-house) reveals Zach, who lets her know that he's there to drop off some of her stuff. I love that the prop guy got the prop list for this episode and was like, "To do: nine cardboard boxes. Done. I'm going to the beach, yo." Zach and Summer banter over the contents of the box for a few lines, which, no, and he tells her that he doesn't think it's a good idea to have reminders of her lying around. She responds that she gets that he moved on: "But do you have to totally erase me?" He wants to know what she means by "moved on," and without another word, he deduces that his master plan has worked. Genius! He keeps the ruse going -- y'know, for Francesca's sake -- saying that he didn't want Summer to know because he was afraid it would hurt her feelings. At this moment, Summer remembers that the cast of The Valley is going to be on television in some guest-VJing capacity, so she ushers Zach out of the house-room and tells him she'll drop off his stuff soon. He tries to protest, but she screams a peeved "Arrividerci" and slams the door shut. All I know how to say in Italian is "I am in need of stamps." Let me never have to fight with someone in a format that requires a sassy Italian punch line. Because all I've got in the hopper is "Ho bisogno di francobolli!"
Caleb gets out of the back seat of his car somewhere in, like, The Valley of The O.C. A knock on the door later and he's inside Lance's hotel room, suitcases in hand and with a request to "get this over with." Please, please do. Caleb throws down a briefcase that knocks several cups from craft services from a table onto the floor, and Lance brandishes a tape at Caleb and tells him that the movie is all his if the money is in the case. Caleb flips it open and reveals what actually looks like a non-pristine, unimpressive lump of cash. Lance hands over the tape after assuring Caleb again that this is the only copy. "So," Lance asks, all beefcake-y and threatening, "how does it feel to get a little glimpse into your wife's past?" Again, we're adults. Adults have pasts. It happened years before Caleb ever knew Julie. There are no stakes. I still don't see why anyone would care. But Caleb still has to utter some of those Platitudes Of Power that real men utter when a business deal is going down, and this one is, "I didn't get where I am today by being a fool." No, actually. You got where you are today by being an embezzler. A knock on the door sends Caleb over to answer it. Hey, con man? You're a retard. What are you doing letting Caleb do with the answering the...ah, forget it. Caleb welcomes in two goons, telling Lance that's his cue to hand over the briefcase. The two men shift gruffly and cross their arms. Lance does so, and Caleb takes off, quipping, "Thanks for the tape."
Hey, look! The Newport Group invested in a shiny exterior. I mean seriously, have we ever seen this shot before? Back inside Kirsten's office, we find her making final arrangements for the party when Julie traipses in holding two dresses and says that's she's going for "Donatella Versace meets Martha Stewart before the scandal." Making dead brother muffins on a CBS morning show in Miami. I'm confused at exactly where this intersection would take place. Carter enters, and Julie tells Kirsten, "Boyfriend, two o'clock." He carries in a bottle of wine she said she loved, noting that they should have few glasses before the madness of the evening. Kirsten volleys back that they have a lot riding on the presentation, and that she thinks it would be unprofessional to drink wine. He asks her if she's kidding: "We average about a bottle a night around here." She chastises him that he can celebrate at the party, but now, not so much. Rebuffed, he carries the closed bottle back out (it's no big deal...he didn't have a bottle opener with him anyway) as Julie sings the "Kirsten and Carter sitting in a tree" song. I hate that song. I never understand who is in that fucking baby carriage and why.
Somewhere at another fancy house, the Cohen manse doorbell sound effect rings and a door to not-the-Cohens' house opens. It's Summer, and she's just rung the bell to Zach's house. His mother comes to the door, espying Summer and welcoming her, "I thought we'd seen the last of you." Summer holds up a bag and asks if she can leave it for Zach, and his mother takes it with all the feminine grace evinced by the bruisers who are doing a number on Lance across town right now, asking hopefully, "So it's really over between the two of you?" Summer apologizes for what happened at the airport, and Zach's mom informs her, "You should be" (she should be). Summer does note, though, that "something good came out of it. Zach met Francesca." And who didn't know this, but Zach's mom asks, "Who?" in that same way you could hear Mario's mom being all "Family tragedy in the what now?" when The Post told her that her son had dropped out before catching herself and being all, "Oh, you mean family TRA-gedy" nine seconds later. Luckily for us, Zach's mom has no such composure, and she goes on to explain, "When would this have happened? While he was sulking over you? He never left the hotel room, Summer." Ooooh. Zach's bitchy mood-destabilized sister must have been pissed that he didn't go to her wedding.
Nighttime in the pool house, where Ryan finds a downcast-looking Trey sitting at the edge of the bed. Ryan asks how the job hunt went, and Trey informs him, "Tried five or six places. All turned me down on the spot." Five or six? Why don't you remember? Ryan asks if Trey is hungry and suggests that they "have a bite," and Trey thinks this is a good idea. Ryan suggests that they go to the pier: "After you clean this place up." Which is a wacky cue for Ryan to start throwing some clothes around the room and onto Trey. Fun! But at the bottom of the pile is the watch from the first act going off in the third. Not fun! "This it the watch from that store," Ryan reminds us, because we're all low-functioning retards, and Trey says that he went back today to buy it. He went back to the store that he freaked out and knocked over a bunch of shit in? Ryan doesn't believe it either: "Don't lie to me...this family is taking a chance on your, Trey." Trey awkwardly extricates himself from underneath the pile of exceedingly stripe-y designer clothing, and tells Ryan that it doesn't matter what he says, because Ryan's only going to believe the worst about Trey anyway. Probably because of all the crime. Trey suggests that he do them both a favor and "take off." And so he does. But before he goes, he wants to show Ryan the receipt for the watch that he just happened to keep really close to him, the watch that "he bought as a gift" for Ryan. Well, that was very thoughtful of Sandy's wallet to go and do that.
Ryan sits, looking awfully despondent at having his huge-ass house back. Sandy is soon to show up at the pool house, full of knowledge that "the party's starting soon." Yo, want this party started quickly. Sandy asks after Trey's whereabouts, deducing from the look in Ryan's eyes that something has gone horribly wrong. Sandy asks if there's anything he can do, and Ryan asks, "Hey, can I borrow the car?" Sandy is all, "Regular or unleaded, sir?" handing off the keys with nary a lick of suspicion. If he were my father, even I would be in jail.
Didn't Zach and Summer break up so that we wouldn't have to deal anymore with hearing anything about Zach and Summer? There he is in Summer's bedroom again, looking downcast and telling her, "I know you talked to my mom today...and I know she told you about 'Francesca.'" Now that she's fake, she's acquired some sarcastic quotes around her name. Hope you like them, "Francesca." Oh, that's right. You don't like or not like anything. You are fake. Summer tells Zach that he doesn't need to explain, but he does anyway, saying that he didn't want things to be tense between them when he got home, so he invented a "Francesca" so that no one had to feel bad about Summer and Seth being back together. Summer begins to complain that it is so typical for Seth to blab away with no sense of decorum, but Zach finally, wisely, cuts her short: "This is between you and Cohen. Which has nothing to do with me. Finally." This makes him as spontaneously happy as it will make me as I write my final line of the final recap of the season. I'll know that look. That's the look of Future Dan.
Party! Party! Party! Marissa sits in front of a giant picture of her mother, looking for an excuse not to be anywhere near it anymore. Ryan runs by and explains that Trey took off for Chino and that he has to go get him, and she offers to come with. As they walk off, we pan from them to Julie and Kirsten in their nighttime finery, Kirsten celebrating the fact that, in a few days, Julie's face will be on every coffee table in town. Julie retorts that she's shocked the whole thing even got off the ground, what with everyone wasted all the time and no one really doing any, like, work and stuff. Caleb walks up all jauntily and almost screams, "I'm not surprised at all! I know this magazine is going to be an enormous success." Julie asks if everything went smoothly, and Caleb promises, "Everything's taken care of."
Elsewhere, Summer approaches Seth, and after she regards him coldly for a minute, he asks her, "What's the deal? Is it something I said?" She suggests maybe it's "something you weren't supposed to say." He apologizes, knowing that he did something wrong, but tells her "it's kind of hard to mean it if I don't know what it is." Oh, dear. We're not really having one of those I'm-mad-because- you-don't-know-why- I'm-mad fights, are we? Because that is seriously Fresh Prince-level plot development. Not that Fresh Prince didn't rule. Summer tells Seth that she's going to go wait in his room for twenty minutes: "If you can't figure it out by then, I'm gone."
And back with Julie, Kirsten, and Caleb, Carter approaches and asks Kirsten if he can speak with her. He takes her steps from the other couple, and leaps in: "Have I said something to you? Have I done something wrong? Because the whole day you have seemed angry at me." Kirsten works her mouth and says nothing, and Cater continues and says that whatever it is, he hopes she can talk to him about it, "because we are liable to be working together for a long time." Or the two -- TOPS -- remaining episodes this character has got left in it. Y'know. Whichever comes first. Carter walks away perplexed, and Kirsten's desire to avoid wine evaporates when she sees a passing waiter. She asks him if it's chardonnay, and he offers with a toothy porn smile, "Yes, it is." It's Lance! He looks fine! What a shitty job Caleb's goons did!
Shitty Chino Bar. An ogling gross dude checks out Marissa as they walk in. Once inside, Ryan and Marissa look past the pool table and the poverty and notice Trey standing on the other side, holding a pool cue and pretending to smoke. Look. You have to teach actors who smoke on TV to actually look like they're smoking. I'm not a smoker but I was for a reeeeeeeally long time, and you just know when people are faking it. Because they're all faking it badly. It would be like if someone said, "Well, I'm just going to read this copy of the Gettysburg Address," and then picked it up and was all, "Blar blar flonk chimney! Lolly lolly fark fark hello!" You'd know that they really didn't know how to read. I find the jarring break in the suspension of disbelief almost as jarring in this case. Anyway, Ryan approaches his pool-playing, fake-smoking brother, who has no interest in going anywhere with Ryan. But Ryan promises, "I'm not going back to Newport without you." Fine, Trey offers, suggesting that Ryan stick around and try to fit in after being away from Chino for two years: "I'm gonna go out and get some air." Tough men don't breathe! Trey takes off, and the ogling gross dude sits down to Marissa and is all, "Say, didn't I recently see you on the cover of Cosmo Girl? Or he says "nothing." Either way. Outside, Trey kicks over a garbage can in frustration because people who don't recycle just make...him...so...mad.
Seth finds Summer inside his room sitting on his bed, walking in and starting, "Okay. Uh, I thought about it...I have nothing." Summer clears it up: "Why did you tell me about Francesca?" Seth, rightly, tells her, "Um, because you begged me to." He asks the questions we've been unable to formulate all day: "Are you actually angry with me for being jealous of you being jealous of Zach?" Summer tries to deny it all, but then asks, "You were jealous?" Seth says there's no way he couldn't be, what with Summer going "on and on about Zach's new woman." Seth felt like he had to tell her because he was "a little bit worried." He was worried that they peaked just by getting back together, and that he worried about "buyer's remorse" on Summer's part. She stands now, softened, and tell him that he's really neurotic. Whereas Zach, Seth is notes, is "anxiety-free, with his big smile, natural athleticism. That guy makes me feel very Jewish." Are you trying to say that he's the WASP you? Because really, you already said that. Summer does cop to the fact that Zach looks great on paper. After all, "He's the son of a Congressman." (Pamie: "He is?" Me: "Yeeeeeeees...?") Also, Zach is "selfless" and "a little boring." Seth, on the other hand, is a bubbling cauldron of everything you grow to hate after three weeks.
Carter Buckley stands in front of a large assemblage of guests and thanks them for coming to drink his free booze or something. "Now, I would like to introduce the woman who made this all possible. Julie Cooper-Nichol." Julie steps up and introduces the product, indicating a huge movie screen behind her with the cue line, "If you really want to see what Newport Living is all about, take a look at this." With which you could see it coming from Topeka that what they were going to see on the screen was not the innocent beachfront b-roll from earlier, but instead a lengthy Oscar clip of The Porn Identity. It's a minute before anyone can operate the remote well enough to find the pause button (Worst. AV department. Ever), so the crowd is scandalized and perhaps even a bit titillated. By what looks like an exercise video in which Julie says the word "horny" once. This didn't turn out at all the way it looked in the writers' heads. Lance, meanwhile, moves into center shot to register one more toothy smile, and Julie stands in the middle of the crowd looking destroyed. And her daughter, who it would have been nice to hit a close-up on right now considering how many times we've heard about what this is going to do that poor delicate flower, isn't even there to see it all. Well done, show!
Upstairs in the Cohen manse, Caleb finds Julie in a bedroom looking -- I don't know -- saddish? Sad adjacent? Caleb tells her not to worry, and that it will all blow over. Julie says that she doesn't understand what happened, and Caleb says that you can meet someone's every demand and they'll still screw you. Hey, that's...eh. What's one more lie in this fantastic marriage? Julie says that she's never leaving the house again, which is probably going to be awkward when the Cohens want to, like, go to sleep and stuff, so Caleb suggests that she go to Europe; by the time they get back, something else will have happened to dwarf this absolute non-scandal.
Back at the party, no one really cares about the video. Sandy and Carter finally get to meet, and Sandy is soon to leave them alone. Finally, Carter speaks his newly porn-addled mind: "I have to apologize...if there's been a vibe between us, it's me." He asks if they can just leave it at that, and then walks away.
Back in dirty, dirty Chino, Ryan and Marissa sit at a booth, Marissa finally saying, "I don't think he's coming back." Ryan finally submits to standing up, but ogling gross man is right on top of Marissa because she's the only woman for nine miles, and he asks her if she feels like playing some pool. She declines, and he tries to hypnotize her into having a drink with him using the strange power of his mesmerizing NASCAR sideburns. She tries to be polite, but Ryan soon has to step in, and...FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! Trey hears the kerfuffle from outside, because whaddaya know, he really was just going outside to get some air. And yet Ryan and Marissa were categorically unable to find him anywhere. At least that time he actually looked like he was smoking. Trey runs in and holds Ryan's nemesis at bay with a pool cue around the neck, and the three of them take the hell off, for some reason laughing and laughing like they aren't in actual mortal danger of much taller and scruffier people actually making them dead. They make it to the car as Marissa thanks Trey for coming back for them, and he says the same of Ryan and Marissa. Awww, the power of family bonding through horrific ghetto violence. Ryan tells Trey to come home with them...
...and we're back at the Cohen house, where Sandy and Kirsten are soon joined in the living room by Marissa, Ryan, Trey, Seth, and Summer. Sandy indicates many trays' worth of leftovers, and Seth notes that they're finally having their family dinner. Sandy notes that it's "not so painful," and Trey agrees that it seems "pretty good." It was. It was exactly that. It was "pretty good."