Previously on The O.C.: Julie Cooper-Nichol-Hilton-Jameson-Durst appeared in naughty porn, the clock ticked down on a character whose job was a show about porn, and not since Kinsey has passive entertainment gone out of its way to make sex quite this dull.
School! These kids go to school! I know. I KNOW! The most ambiguous vacation season ever seems to have come to an end, and we're back in the bastion of learning known as Harbor School: a school so good you can learn all of AP Physics in one day. Pretty, white extras walk confidently, their trust funds jangling in their pockets, the sun shining on them by governmental dictum because their parents pay a lot in property taxes for a reason. Eventually, the camera finds its way to Ryan and Seth, Ryan wearing his finest ChinoWear (an unbuttoned buttondown), and Seth wearing a too-tight plaid sleeveless sweater and looking an awful lot like an unopened box of Scottish shortbread. "I can't believe it, but spring is here," Seth says of a climate that defines "spring" as "the day the temperature ticks up from a frigid seventy-four degrees to a warm and livable seventy-five degrees." Ryan agrees that the year is "just flying by," which it would have for any of us too in high school if we spent it never actually having to go to high school. And then, this, from Orange County's apologist metacritic, Seth Cohen: "I gotta say: this year? Not as good as last." Please don't let this be going where I think this might be going. "I mean, look. We all tried some new things, and that was fun. Yard guys, illegitimate daughters, less fighting, more live music." Oh, ha. In fact: HA HA HA HA HA. It's a list of everything this season that crashed and burned creatively. Seems like the classy thing to do would have been not to call attention to it. Or, conversely, to mention it again. And again and again. And again and again and again: "Maybe you remember last year as better because it was all new," Ryan retorts. Or maybe because there were fewer yard guys, illegitimate daughters, more fighting, and less live music. But Seth, regardless of whether he's sentimentalizing the past, celebrates the fact that things seem to be returning to where they were at this point last year. To wit: "I'm back together with Summer. You're single again." Ryan frets, "I think I know where this is going," and Seth points to a mysteriously-appearing banner that's dropped down from seeming nowhere and reads, "It's going to the Harbor School pep rally/bonfire." I think Ryan registers a look of skepticism, but it's hard to know for sure, seeing as the camera is actually pointed square at his back, and Seth begs, "C'mon, you could rally a little pep, couldn't you?" But I don't think Ryan can, because the actor who portrays him graduated from high school in 1987 and is maybe too preoccupied checking the balance on his 401k. Sorry, Ben. But you look like my dad today. Nevertheless, Seth plugs away relentlessly, suggesting that Ryan not only come to the pep rally, but as always "invite along..." But Ryan cuts Seth off before he can continue, arguing that there's nothing going on between him and Marissa. Seth celebrates the fact that it would be "so last year," but Ryan gestures to a car pulling into the parking lot containing Alex and Marissa and notes, "She's clearly already taken." That is, until she meets a real man. Oh, lesbianism...is there anything it can do?