Today we continue our Back to School Special with a visit to The O.C., but before we do that, let’s take a moment to wish everyone’s favorite Snark Lady the happiest of birthdays and thank her for all the shitty books and television she subjects herself to. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOR! I even invited NPH and Elmo to the party because this gif will always be happy-making.
Anyway, on with the recap:
Sweeney: This is obviously the newest show on our list this week, but as I watched religiously in high school and it contains the requisite ridiculosity, it’s fair game. Also, it fits my apparent sub-theme for the week, “Dramatic Shows About Ridiculously Wealthy Kids.” It is no longer implausible if the kids are rich. You just wouldn’t understand, you lowly commoner you.
I haven’t watched the series through to the end (we’ll get to that), but don’t let that dissuade you from the intensity of my initial commitment. My entire family watched this show together each week. We left California not long before this show started, and I had already instituted a family tradition of playing Phantom Planet’s “California” on repeat as we neared/crossed the state line. As such, I actually remember hearing a commercial for this show before anything else. That song is the reason I watched the show. I heard the song while doing something else and looked up to the TV and saw a guy from the MTV show Undressed, which I should not have known, because I checked IMDB, and I was 11 when he was on that show. Awkward.
Lor: We haven’t shared much TV watching history this week, Sweenz, but I too watched the first seasons of The OC and then gave up. I watched with my two sisters but I did not know that Adam Brody was on Undressed. I’ll leave you to awkward turtle by yourself on that one.
Sweeney: Right.
The pilot does not actually begin in The O.C., but late at night in a sketchy alleyway. An older brother (Trey) is teaching his younger brother (Ryan) important life lessons, like how to break into and steal a car. We learn that Ryan doesn’t want to be a bad kid, because he hesitates before stealing the car.
The cops see them steal the car, in part because Ryan stands there like a moron for a few minutes, so I’m not sure if this counts as moral compass or stupidity. Show obviously wants you to go with the former. A chase ensues and Trey crashes the car.
We cut to Ryan in lock-up, being escorted to meet his public defender, Mr. Eyebrows. This is Ryan’s first charge, though he’s gotten in some trouble at school. Based on their thirty second conversation, Mr. Eyebrows knows that Ryan is super smart. Also, Mr. Eyebrows is from a bad part of the Bronx, so he totes understands Ryan’s struggles.
“Where I come from, having a dream doesn’t make you smart. Knowing it won’t come true. That’s what makes you smart.”
Anyway, Ryan is released on probation. Outside, Mr. Eyebrows waits with Ryan for his ride. His mother shows up in a shitty car, and screeches up onto the curb, to make sure you know that she is shitty like her car. She yells about how much her family sucks and that Mr. Eyebrows (who finally tells us his name, and I love Sandy Cohen too much to keep calling him Mr. Eyebrows) should have let Ryan rot in there.
Lor: Love of Sandy Cohen, however, does not take away from the fact that thems is some powerful eyebrows.
Sweeney: Sandy Eyebrows Cohen watches Ryan’s mom go all belligerent and gives Ryan his card and writes his home number on the back, in case things get to be “too much” at home. Pretty sure he’s well past that point, but whatever.
Sure enough, we jump to Ryan’s home situation, and his mom is telling him to get out. Ryan’s panic and genuine sadness are interrupted by mom’s freeloading boyfriend. A fight ensues. Or, really, Freeloading Boyfriend beats up Ryan. Then Ryan leaves.
As he rides his bike off, the magical music commences!
Lor: People beat Ryan up a lot so I’m not going to hate on his beating on inanimate objects. He deserves it.
Sweeney: That’s a fair point.
Anyway, Ryan remembers Sandy’s card! Aha!
We don’t see/hear the phone call, but sure enough, Sandy appears to drive him down. I’d like to interject here and say this: I am now supposed to talk about the implausibility of this moment, and how nobody would actually do this. HOWEVER, (1) Sandy Cohen’s choice of profession indicates that he, you know, cares about people -and- (2) Sandy Cohen is one of a handful of television parents that I have ever seen that make me think, “Yeah, that kind of resembles my parents.” Also, Sandy Cohen is basically everything I wish other fictional parents would be. He is the anti-NPotB (or show, in this case). Actually, I think that in the event that we encounter real parents we should start giving them Sandy Cohen stars. Or Minnesota stars. Like, that time Joyce noticed Buffy was upset? 2/5 Sandy Cohen/Minnesota stars.
Lor: LOVE. Sandy Cohen Stars need to happen and there is definitely a graphic in here and it features eyebrows. But we’re getting off topic. Continue.
Sweeney: On the ride back to the Cohen house, Ryan is surprised by how nice Sandy’s car is, because he didn’t think “your kind of lawyer made money.” They don’t, says Sandy, but his wife does. The show is trying to score points with this fact, and I grant them freely.
Sandy decides that Ryan should wait in the car while he softens up said wife, and has an awkward moment where he realizes that he should probably bring the keys, but also doesn’t want to be all accusatory and stuff to the convicted car thief in his car.
“It’s no fun if the keys are in the car.”
A+
Inside, Mama Cohen is not a fan of this arrangement. She points out that Sandy is endangering the house and clearly didn’t think of their son Seth when making this fantastic choice. He asks her when she became so cynical and she asks when he became so self-righteous. His defense? “I’ve always been self-righteous.” I just love him.
Anyway, she relents and says Ryan will be sleeping in the pool house and walks off. Sandy asks her where she’s going, to which she jokes that it’s to put her jewels in the vault, but actually it’s to get him fresh sheets and stuff. Because she’s practical, not heartless. TV marriage for the win. Later in the series, when they have problems, it hurt me as though I were watching my actual parents’ marriage suffer.
Lor: I love you for getting this invested of TV. I support it too.
Sweeney: Outside, Ryan walks to the curb where we meet Marissa Cooper and we need another tangent time about why I never finished watching this series. We stopped when (SPOILER ALERT) she gets killed off. I can’t for the life of me figure out why, because she sucks. She just plain sucks and that’s all there is to it and I don’t know how we didn’t know that the show would be better off without her. I remember actually liking Marissa, too, which is a sign of how poor my teenage judgment really was. I keep meaning to start the show over and watch it all the way through, but there is just too much TV to watch. Also, there is a lot of Marissa to sit through.
She asks who he is, and he suavely replies, “Whoever you want me to be.” Oh, Ryan. Don’t do this to me.
Ryan gives her a cigarette and they chat. He tells her the entire truth about who he is and why he is there, but in a really slow trying-to-seduce-or-scare-her way (which is a popular thing in fiction, I guess, though I know of no actual life examples where this is effective, outside of girls who end up on the cover of People when they are abducted/killed). She doesn’t believe him and assumes he is their cousin from Boston. He doesn’t argue.
Sandy Cohen finally returns and Marissa says she was just meeting his nephew. “All the way from Seattle,” says Sandy. “Dad lives there. Mom lives in Boston,” interjects Ryan. We learn that Marissa has a fashion show fundraiser coming up! Rich people make for some awesome contrivance.
Marissa’s boyfriend arrives to pick her up, and Sandy takes Ryan into the house. We get Ryan settled into the pull house and meet the live-in maid, mostly as a way of driving home that they have lots of money.
The following morning Ryan wakes up and we get to see how gorgeous everything is in the daytime. Ryan goes into the Cohen living room, where we meet one of the two people I love more than Sandy Cohen. It’s the kid from Undressed! Seth is sitting in his pajamas playing video games and after an awkward stare off, invites Ryan to play.
This, for the record, is the moment I decide that I will be rewatching this series in full in the very near future.
Lor: For the record, I loved Seth and his brand of dorky, fast talking, adorable is right up my alley. Actually, now that I think of it, he’s what Buffy Season 1 Xander wishes in his wildest dreams he could be.
Sweeney: That is a fantastic and entirely accurate assessment.
They play video games and Ryan is really chill, while Seth is speaking really fast and just being spazzy/nerdy/awesome. After Seth wins the game, he asks if Ryan wants to play another game and adds, without taking a beat, “I think it’s really cool that you can steal cars.” Awkward pause. “Not that…that’s…cool.” This is how we know that Seth is socially awkward. He likes video games and doesn’t know how to talk to felons. (Except, as Sandy pointed out to Mama Cohen earlier, Ryan is not technically a felon.)
Sandy Cohen tells Seth that he should go outside and show Ryan around. Seth hesitates, but they go out on a boat that looks like it has a special name because it’s more raft-with-sails looking, but I don’t know things about boats so I can’t help you here.
They chat and Seth talks about a big sailing trip he wants to take, another way of hinting at Seth’s dislike for his life here in The O.C. and high school. His boat is named Summer Breeze, after a girl that, Seth admits, he has never spoken to. While this is super stalkery, I would like to point out that (1) it’s a stalker crush, not Stalker Boyfriend -and- (2) as you will eventually see, Summer is not wooed by stalking, but by Seth learning to actually talk to her and scale back the stalkery weirdo behavior. THIS IS A GOOD LESSON.
Lor: I was going to make this comment: “I cannot approve stalker-boat-naming as a way to learn these lessons, however. Write her name on a Trapper Keeper, like everyone else.”
Then I realized he’s freakin’ rich and this is probably his version of a Trapper Keeper.
Sweeney: Exactly. You just don’t understand Rich Kid Problems.
Back on the shore, Sandy shows up and tries to make plans for the fashion show that night. Seth is all, “K COOL YOU HAVE FUN.” Sandy reminds him that it will be a new school year, and Seth is all, “LOL SAME KIDS.” So lessons from social outcasts for our back to school special? New school year, same kids. We are known for our cheery optimism here at SnarkSquad.com
Sandy says that Ryan has to go because Marissa invited him. Seth is all, “Really, because we have grown up next-door to each other and her dad almost married my mom (I am not sure what the second fact has to do with anything other than filling in more back story; random strangers are really good for helping characters reveal their back stories) and she hasn’t invited me to anything.”
Ryan suggests that Summer might be there, which Seth concedes is probably correct because, “she is Marissa’s best friend.” As they walk back up to the house, Marissa stares at them from her balcony.
Two big dudes in suits show up Marissa’s door looking for her dad, whom she insists is not there. They give her a card, which they apparently have done before. The card reads “Securities & Exchange Commission.” She takes the card into her dad’s office, where he is obviously present. They have the “everything’s OK, right?” conversation, wherein the child is assured, but we, wise viewers, know that everything is decidedly not OK.
Back at the Cohen house, Ryan is getting ready in a borrowed suit. Sandy comes in so they can have a brief chat and a very father-son moment, in which Sandy teaches Ryan to tie a tie.
We then meet Marissa’s whole family, complete with her Overly Critical Mother, a very popular theme with rich kids. Also, her little sister Caitlin. That was a trip because I have seen one post-Marissa episode as a re-run somewhere or other, and Caitlin becomes an actual person, but she’s so little here! I’m too lazy to IMDB it, but I feel like there has to be some actress-swapping involved in this.
Lor: There was. Little Caitlin. Big Caitlin. You all should thank my job for paying me during the few minutes I used to search that. Best employee ever!
Sweeney: Thanks, Lor’s job! It is your birthday, after all. This is exactly how you should be spending your working-on-your-birthday time.
At the party, Ryan has to have many awkward conversations about where he is from. He orders a drink, just as Mama Cohen walks up, and he has to forfeit the drink to her.
Later, we further develop Seth’s awkward outcastness with a run-in with Marissa’s boyfriend who you already know you aren’t supposed to like because Ryan likes Marissa. His task is to be the douchey jock who picks on Seth, just in case you hadn’t already resolved to dislike him.
Ryan sees this happen, but doesn’t say anything. Ryan spends most of this episode floating from scene to scene in silence. It’s his stoic bad boy thing. Seth tries to subtly point out Summer to Ryan, just as Sandy walks up and very obnoxiously points to her and asks, “Hey, is that Summer?” Seth walks off to go hide in a corner.
He takes a seat at a table of children, one of whom he apparently gives sailing lessons to. Ryan is aware of the awkward, but joins him anyway.
The fashion show begins, and Summer walks out on stage, in a gaudy, obscene amount of makeup. Backstage, there are stage mothers aplenty, and nameless fashion-show-director lady insults one of the girls for not having the chest for the Vera Wang dress she wants to wear.
Summer and Marissa are getting drunk in the bathroom. By this time it is already clear that while Summer is fun and awesome, Marissa is sulky and miserable. I mean tortured! She’s just, you know, super tortured. (L: BOOOORING.) When she walks out, she makes googly eyes at Ryan in the crowd, and her boyfriend sees and his not happy.
After the show, Summer finds Ryan and introduces herself, flirts with him, and invites him to a party. Ryan goes to Seth and says that they should go to this party. Seth hesitates, but Ryan says that Summer invited them both, asking specifically for Seth. Oversell, Ryan. Calm down. Seth is on the verge of hyperventilating.
“That makes absolutely no sense, but yes, we should go.”
They pile in the back of a jeep full of girls and head to this big party, where booze and drugs abound, and clothing is about equally absent. “Oh, cocaine. That’s awesome.” Thanks, Seth. This is obviously not a place that a parolee should be hanging out. Blah, blah, more spoiled rich kids. We see Marissa drinking way faster than everyone else, just to make sure we know how tortured she is.
Summer calls her posse’s attention to the fact that she brought Ryan, and Marissa’s boyfriend hits on an incredibly stupid pigtailed blonde chick. Basically, every generic high school douche thing that you can think of will be done by Marissa’s boyfriend in this episode, to drive home the rightness of her leaving him for Ryan.
Lor: Did we mention that Marissa was tortured? Because this seems like a good time to mention it again. Douchey boyfriend = totally torturing.
Sweeney: Marissa lives out her short life in a glass case of emotion.
Back at the Cohen house, Mama Cohen is taking the trash out when she sees Papa Cooper who we saw earlier leave the parent table to go sob in the bathroom (Ryan witnessed this). Apparently rich O.C. people like to hang out on their curbs late at night? Mama Cooper can tell that shit’s not right, because of their whole almost-got-married history, but he swears he’s fine and asks about Ryan. Mama Cohen confesses that he is not a cousin from Boston but one of Sandy’s clients.
Back at the party Ryan and Marissa flirt, while Seth wanders from one excessive sex/drugs/alcohol scene to the next. He is wicked uncomfortable, and ultimately decides that he wants out of there. He goes looking for Ryan and finds him as Summer is drunkenly throwing herself at him.
Seth gets really upset and actually says, “I named my boat after her,” announcing himself as a weird stalker, but he’s so heartbroken that I can’t help but feel really bad for him. Ryan tries to explain, but Seth is having none of it, because listening to people makes it harder to build a plot; jumping to conclusions is much more helpful for plot development.
“Why don’t you just go back to Chino. I’m sure there’s a really nice car in the parking lot that you can steal.”
Burn! Also, you know, rude. Anyway, hearing that Ryan is from Chino is enough for Marissa to lose all interest in him. Pretty much everyone at the party starts gossiping about him now, leaving him fallen from his exalted hot mystery guy position.
Down on the beach, Seth is sulking when some guys start beating him up and calling him a nerd, a standard maneuver for television high school bullies. Ryan sees this and goes to intervene, but Marissa’s boyfriend joins in and ultimately they are outnumbered. Also, Seth is kind of useless in this respect.
“Welcome to The O.C., bitch. This is how it’s done in Orange County!”
Real cool, bro. Real cool. It’s mostly humorous because he’s such an ultra-privileged little douche.
Lor: I remember that whole “welcome to the O.C.” thing being used on the promos for the show. Also, I’m upset by how much Ryan gets beat up. WTF is the point of being from the wrong side of the tracks if you can’t beat someone up?!
Sweeney: It’s a whole big rich shitting on the poor metaphor. Ryan can’t beat anyone up specifically because he is from the wrong side of the tracks and will face far greater repercussions for beating people up than the rich kids. Rich kids have no consequences; consequences are for poor kids.
Back in the pool house, Seth is all excited because this whole getting beat up thing was BEST NIGHT EVAR! Someone stood up for him! Also, he’s now on Summer’s radar! You know, as the creepy stalker kid, but on her radar all the same! He passes out. Ryan is a little more melancholy about the whole thing, because ending the night with a black eye wasn’t quite how this was supposed to go.
Ryan goes outside and sees Summer and another blonde girl carrying a passed out Marissa to the her house. They can’t find her keys, though, so they ultimately just leave her on the porch. Ryan goes to look for her keys and also can’t find them, so he carries her into the pool house and tucks her in all tenderly and shit.
In the morning, Marissa is gone before they wake up. Mama Cohen comes in and yells at Seth, who isn’t entirely sure why he has a black eye, though admits openly to having gotten a little drunk and still being drunk, because he never goes out and is in entirely new parental sharing territory. Namely, he has never been in “Do Not Share With Parents” territory before.
Sandy returns home to a livid Mama Cohen who blames Seth getting in a fight on letting their son hang out with a criminal. Sandy is just happy that Seth has someone to hang out with and somehow this conversation becomes about the fact that there is a world outside of their Newport Beach Bubble, that Mama Cohen has forgotten about.
She goes to tell Ryan that he has to leave, and finds him making breakfast for them, which is awkward, but she holds her ground. Ryan wakes Seth up to say goodbye. It’s an adorable little bro-out moment and Seth gives Ryan a map as a parting gift. It’s a symbol, you see, that there is a whole world for him to explore out there.
As Seth and Ryan drive off, Marissa is, once again, standing on the curb. Ryan watches her through the rear view mirror and sees her douchey boyfriend pull up.
Back in Chino, Ryan walks into find everything in his house gone, though we don’t learn why. He left the door open, so Sandy walks up and see this. “Come on, let’s go home,” is the final line of the episode.
Lor: Aw, man. Is it just me feeling warm and fuzzy up in here?
Sweeney: Me too, Lor. I’m glad we could give you some warm fuzzies for your birthday.
Let’s review our back to school lessons:
1) New school year, same kids. I’m going to say Seth had this lesson solidly verified.
1b) There is an exception to this rule, which is that there might be a new criminal in town. If your life was previously good, this is bad. If your life was previously bad, this is good. If no new criminal, disregard.
2) If your brother tells you to break into a car, you should probably do it; the Cohens might adopt you!
3) Probably don’t tell the girl you’ve never spoken to that you named your boat after her. Also probably don’t name your boat after a girl you’ve never spoken to.
4) If you have to part ways with your new bro, a map is a fine parting gift.
Next time: Seth tries to hide Ryan in a model home so he won’t have to go back to the hood in The OC S01 E02 – The Model Home.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
