Previously: Oliver kept being shady but Marissa still wasn’t cluing in.
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The Truth
Dutchface: I just want to start this with their “Previously on The OC” intro simply for… FANTASTIC curtain hair, oh god early 2000’s everywhere. You’d have thought they would have gotten over this by now but NOPE, not in the OC. Also I have come into this having not seen a single episode since the first run just so I can be vague about everything I see in the next 40 minutes… and now on to the show!
Ryan is sitting in his super large pool house, you know the one that is roughly the size of my whole house, reading a book. It could be manga, it could be some sort of school book, I’m not sure; let’s just assume it’s not important to the plot of this episode and move on. Eyebrows Sandy comes in offering breakfast and to inform Ryan that he’s been suspended from school. He could have at least brought the breakfast with him at this point to soften the blow, jerk.
Sweeney: Right? Since Sandy/Bagels is the new OTP ’round here, it’s deeply disappointing that he didn’t think to get that breakfast down in front of Ryan before the bad news. You’re better than this, Sandy.
Dutchface: Ryan isn’t sorry because he’s a brooding teen and then becomes dumbfounded when he finds out the Oliver has dropped assault chargers. Because this is The OC and kids fighting in school leads to arrests and not just another fight in the park after school as was the case with me.
Important life lessons early on in this episode as Eyebrows Sandy begs him to talk to insane people and not to raise his fists to fight because Sandy is here for him. He tells Ryan he can’t ground him but then follows up with that he can’t go anywhere without his say. SOLID confusing talk.
Lorraine: I especially like that Sandy is all, “talk to me Ryan.” Ryan replies, “Oliver is dangerous!” and Sandy continues to be all, “but, like, what is going on? TALK TO ME.” Um. I think he’s trying to, bro.
Dutchface: Credits time and this rum is making me sing along.
Montage time: Eels Love of the Loveless and I’m not 100% sure how much time this is meant to show passing, as boy does Ryan look bored, but he’s shown reading twice, doing two pushups with no sweat dripping from him and all this happens with the same fantastic grey sweater and jeans on because we all work out in jeans. Right? Someone’s alarm goes off and its a new day, maybe, that was a confusing montage of sorts. None of this matters now however as Rachel Bilson is now on the screen and… I knew there was a reason I agreed to do this.
Sweeney: This seems to be a running theme with the small pool of attracted-to-women persons we’ve invited to the party. New recruitment strategy: emailing pictures of Rachel Bilson in a bathing suit and a message that reads simply, “WATCH THIS? Y/N?”
Dutchface: Summer and Marissa are walking along campus chatting about how Ryan “just punches people”, how he’s “violent yes, but not stupid” and I’m sorry but I’m at least 60% sure that’s Sunnydale high they’re walking around.
Lor: I SAID THE SAME THING. The campus is very Sunnydale and sorry, but I’m not going to stop expecting Buffy to jump out and punch Marissa in the face. For something.
Dutchface: Anyway, Summer and Marissa are talking about how Oliver could never do the things Ryan says he is doing. Regardless, it’s time to stop talking about this because they’re both single now. Apparently this is “awesome” because they are “free” and “liberated.” I’m pretty sure they were in the slave trade and not a relationship if these are the verbs they’re using to chat about this. Now they can finally do all the things they wanted to do… like facials! (giggles, NO shut up brain) No, wait they can’t because they have to spend time with their families on the weekend which is like, such a bummer, right? Totes.
Cut to Seth and Anna in the school’s coffee shop and pool hall… we had a broken coke machine that some kid pissed on in my high school, just saying. (S: Similar story at most public schools here. These things are props to remind us that they go to a rich kid school and pretty much anything that appears to trample our willing suspension of disbelief is actually probably just a thing we don’t understand because POOR.) Anyway they’re also chatting about Ryan. Anna, who’s dressed like a pink cupcake and who really seems to worry about the well being of Ryan also seems to know all the things Seth should be doing, you know like talking to this “kid from the wrong side of the tracks” to see if he’s in a good place mentally. But Seth, oh Seth, he thinks he’s done enough by just telling him to stay away from Oliver. These 20 something teenagers are all really stupid. Listen to the cupcake, Seth! She really wants to help. (S: A+)
Oh no! awkward meeting of the ex’s in the hallway time. “Hey,” “hey,” “hey,” “hey.” Everyone is “good,” “good,” “good,” “good.” Solid, comedy gold here. It’s like watching the female version of The Three Stooges, only they’re all really pretty and Adam Brody is lurking around. (L: Some of us happen to think he’s really pretty too.) OH good the awkwardness has stopped at last when 30-something-year-old Oliver turns up and creepily flirts and leaves with Marissa. He seemed really happy, the rest of the group comments, as now he has her all to himself. Look how they worked out the plot of this episode after only 6 minutes!
Sweeney: It’s fun when TV show characters suddenly get good at TV!
Dutchface: Sandy and Kirsten are now shown eating lunch in front of a green screen or it could be Star Trek TNG’s holodeck. Shockingly, they are also talking about Ryan: “He’s a good kid,” — isn’t every kid who’s been to juvie? Wait! Drop the storyline as furniture needs to be moved in a redecorating scene, because you know…The OC. Wait! Stop everything again! Jim Robinson from Neighbours has just walked into the room and delivered perhaps the most “OC” line in the whole 4 seasons of this show:
“Kiki what the hell is going on? Some man has just made off with my massage chair!”
Back to Ryan, who is still wearing the same clothing as his last scene, which I thought was at least a day ago AND he worked out in them, gross boy. He has picked up a house phone. A house phone? What is this, the dark ages?
Oliver and Marissa are having lunch together, with Oliver trying to convince her to come away with him and some others for the weekend. He offers to pay, to which she says no, because after all we know she’s busy with her mum this weekend. Oliver offers again only this time to pay for a room for her and her mum near his. Who does this? Is this a thing rich people do?
Sweeney: Don’t mind me, just throwing money around and wiping my ass with it! Yaaaay wealth! Real rich people would never remain rich people if they behaved the way that TV rich people do.
Lor: More importantly, the emphasis here is probably less on his richness and more on his TOTAL CREEPER STATUS. Other rich people buys cars or houses; Oliver uses his money to stalk girls.
Dutchface: Hair curtains aka Luke has turned up and shouts at Oliver as he starts answering on behalf of Marissa. She’s fine with this though because you know, defend the weirdo. Luke clearly doesn’t like Oliver and damn it he’s leaving before even finishing his amazing looking sandwich. He seems to know what’s up but storms off like a baby. Come back you fool!
Lor: Ryan beat us all to it and now he’s wearing the same clothes he works out in all day long. It’s a cautionary tale if I ever heard one.
Dutchface: Then, like a true TV teen villain, while Marissa is away he flips her phone open and deletes Ryans message, because he is a evil evil bastard of a psychopath. This however wouldn’t be a issue nowadays due to password locked phones. I guess we just trusted people a lot more back then and locked phones are all Oliver’s fault… arsehole.
After a quick chat about going to the comic book store, you know to show that they are just NORMAL teens, Anna, Summer and Seth spot Ryan walking moodily across the carpark of the school. Seth INTERCEPTION, because we need to show Ryan as a crazy person, getting all angry and insisting that Oliver is psychotic and making up girlfriends to trick everyone into thinking he’s not. You know if Ryan just calmly spoke to his friends I’m pretty sure they would side with him, you know, like friends do? But no, he has to storm off and leave Seth thinking he’s losing it.
Sweeney: YES. Ryan’s correct about Oliver and we’re suppose to feel so bad for him because nobody’s listening, but nobody’s listening because he’s being a fucking psycho.
Lor: CALM DOWN THE CRAZY EYES, RYAN.
Dutchface: Quick scene change to a library and a Ryan/Oliver face off in what seems like a really watered down meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty and boy do I mean watered down.
“She doesn’t want to meet you and if you don’t leave her alone she’s going to get a restraining order on you.”
Is this all people in The OC do? Sue school kids and get restraining orders? This isn’t school life- school life is smoking behind bike sheds and avoiding getting beaten up by skinheads (at least in my knowledge). As “bad guys” go Oliver in this scene doesn’t come across all that bad. Sure, he is ripping Ryan’s high school life apart but he really is doing it in the nicest way here. I mean other than the making Ryan look like he’s the one who’s dangerous and a bit off the hinges. Dare I say something nice here but that’s a good scene, the two enemies coming together and talking over in a calm but threatening way. Someone was clearly reading The Final Problem when they wrote this – well that or maybe they watched the Sherlock version.
Drama over now, back to the comedy side of the OC episode with the whole “changing the office so now I have to work at home in the kitchen meaning other people can’t eat when they really can still just open the fridge” storyline. Riveting stuff. Ok they live in a fucking mansion and yet all the work is in the kitchen? Use one of the other million rooms you have.
At last, it took 15 minutes but we’re getting our first bit of snobbish rich privilege bullshite. Julie and Ryan are talking and Ryan who has completely changed his attitude has now started to calmly explain to her why Oliver is dangerous but to the wrong person (fool). If he talked like this to his friends they would all be helping him by now, but no he tells the snob who gives us:
UGH, people with money are all calm rational people aren’t they? Why is everyone an idiot on this show? Someone needs to explain this to me.
Lor: Sorry. I got nothing.
Dutchface: Back to school, where we seem to be getting a fantastic lesson on “guilt tripping” from Oliver. That calculating villain we had a scene or two ago has gone and he has gone back to being a creepy smeghead again. So Marissa and Oliver plan to blow off school and take a day off in LA, having dinner in a fancy restaurant, going to an art museum and seeing a live band in a club. When we used to skip school all we could do was buy a bottle of Coke and sit on the swings in a park. Panning back we got Luke and Seth chatting about what’s crazy and what isn’t. Luke who seems to have been the voice of reason through this episode (meaning I’m no longer going to take the piss out of his floppy hair) suggests asking his other friends if Oliver’s ex girlfriend Natalie is real or not. I mean it took him a while to even think this of this idea but we’re going to forgive him because at least he is thinking… slowly, but thinking. We should all cheer Luke on for the next 30 minutes of this show.
Sweeney: LUKE! LUKE! LUKE!
Dutchface: The “fun” is back, as we go back to the adults who are still going on about furniture and their offices. Why is it the kids are having all the drama? This show is a terrible representation of what it’s like to be an adult. “Don’t worry kid viewers, when you grow up you won’t be boring. Look at all the crazy things that will happen to you in the future” you can almost hear it saying to the audience. But it’s fine, the adults scenes are just short palate cleansers for the kids lives, which we quickly go back to after hearing Jim Robinson wants his daughter to break up with his current girlfriend for him. COMEDY GOLD.
Anna, Seth and Summer are all reading comics. Ryan has been invited but he’s too busy alienating his friends by talking to them like shit when they just want to include him. Couldn’t Seth tell him they plan to go find out if Natalie is real or not and thus help him here? No, we’re just going to read comics for a bit sure. Talking of comics, Summer is taking an interest in them which is making Seth want to spend time with her which is making Anna jealous. So much that she’s talking to Sandy alone about what makes a healthy relationship, a man who has just admitted the only thing him and his wife have in common is their love for Seth. Love triangle, guys… love triangles.
Luke has arrived! He’s being helpful AND a friend here, coming to talk to Ryan after finding out that there is no Natalie.
Sweeney:
Dutchface: I am half expecting Oliver to kill Luke in a comically villainous way, like putting a deadly spider in his bed or kidnapping him and tying him to train tracks. Luke leaves and the rest of Ryan’s friends and family continue to be asshats. Everyone is around for dinner and nobody invites him to join. They just start because these are clearly THE BEST FRIENDS.
Ryan then sneaks off to Marissa’s house and continues his acting crazy around her thing, which he likes to turn off and on around different people. He tells her about Natalie not being real and naturally she doesn’t believe him, gets mad and storms off to Oliver’s penthouse because, well… I don’t even know, everyone is just nuts in this show. But she wants to stay the night. Pantomime villain Oliver is winning and he didn’t even do anything – frankly, he looks as shocked as the rest of us.
Luke is still not at the bottom of a well or buried under some concrete and comes to find out how Ryan telling Marissa about fake Natalie went. He’s shocked to find out it didn’t go well and only drove her into Oliver’s arms more, like he should have expected more? Now he plans to go over and tell Marissa about this. Why don’t they go together? Why do they keep splitting up? This is not a bloody episode of Scooby-Doo. Work as a team and unmask Oliver as old man Peterson together. (S: 1430.)
Talking of old man Peterson, he is now trying to guilt Marissa into running away to Paris, “if you don’t want to go just say…” If they want the viewers to hate this kid, it’s working and why is she buying this? Sure, just run off to Paris for a bit with the boy who seems to have an answer for everything. Was that a look of doubt in her eye just then? I bloody hope so. Nope, guess not. Luke calls her to tell her about fake Natalie and she shrugs him off. Despite the panic in his voice, she just asks for him to get her clothes. Oliver in the meantime keeps asking “why is he calling” over the call because he’s a child who’s had his toy taken off him, it seems. Oliver then insists that its “too cold” in Paris and that “we’ll go in Spring.” Marissa gives a look, she’s starting to see his needy madness.
Good news! The office is complete and it looks rather nice. Julie has done a good job, but as the adult are the kids in this show, Jim Robinson uses his friend to break up with his girlfriend during the school’s playtime. Or, as is the case here, his daughter when she turns up for work, which she does as he walks in. Good job team. I swear, rewrite this and make these characters all 15 and the scene works just as well.
Sweeney: Far better, actually. Way to teach the kids that they need never mature, though! Great job, show!
Lor: All you need is money! It’s the poor kid that’s going crazy in a pool house.
Dutchface: Seth continues his teaching of comic books to Summer thing, while paying no attention to Anna, who is still turning up to these things. If two girls wanted to watch cartoons with me who looked like they do I would be over the moon, but somehow Seth is managing to only see one girl here because he is a massive ass and doesn’t understand breaking up with someone while having a new girlfriend. Luckily, Sandy pulls him aside and tries to be a good dad, pointing out that Seth is being an ass and flirting with one girl while his girlfriend is near. Fine, I flirt with pretty much everyone but show some fucking respect man. With a fantastic attempt at reflecting on the problem, Seth asks if this is about Ryan. It isn’t: Sandy knows an ass when he sees one and he’s for once in this episode attempting to be a bloody good parent. It failed it seemed.
Sweeney: FOR ONCE IN THIS EPSIODE? ARE YOU QUESTIONING THE PARENTING ABILITIES OF SANDY COHEN? Those are fighting words, friend.
Dutchface: Luke has at last made it to Marissa’s house to pick up some clothes for her. This leads to him and Julie talking together in her bedroom. Now, if this was another video on the internet this would lead somewhere else… Somewhere with a lot of bass guitar music. Wait, it almost did. Goddamnit Luke, this is not a episode of Cougar Town.
At last we meet Natalie, in what would have been a fantastic reveal if only they had shown the characters interacting at some point during this episode. Have Luke and Ryan been wrong all along? No, no they haven’t. Marissa who at reception goes to find out if her bags have been left, noticed the receptionist has a “Natalie” name badge. Quicker than The Flash, she finds out this lady used to babysit Oliver and then asks her second name. This is the same Natalie that Oliver has been lying about being his ex school girlfriend.
Marissa with this information then GOES BACK TO OLIVER’S ROOM *facepalm* and shares this information with him. I just don’t even know. She wants to leave and he grabs her and loses it for a second and begins hitting himself around the head shouting “this always happens!” Calming him down almost as fast as he lost it, Marissa suggests that he get changed and that she’s not going anywhere. (RUN, GIRL.) Oliver rushes out the room to get changed, instead of running she grabs her phone and frantically calls Ryan – should have been Luke, really, who was already on his way but whatever. Why didn’t she run out the door? No, she needs to explain to Ryan that he was right and that Oliver wasn’t letting her leave. She had a good minute and a half to bolt for the door, before Oliver comes storming back into the room, begging her to hang up the phone. I say begging, but he has a gun in his hand now because you know… America. He takes her phone off her and hangs up on Ryan.
In a rather fast turn of pace, we’re now back in the house where they are once again eating – this is all they do. Anna is finally calling Seth out for being an ass which only took her all of the episode. He’s trying to say sorry for turning Summer on to comic books and gets a sweet burn from Anna about “liking to turn Summer on” (oh snap).
Meanwhile Oliver and Marissa are both crying. While one is being held hostage now, the other is waving a gun around like it’s a wooden stick. I assume at this point in the recap I don’t have to explain who is doing what. Marissa’s insisting that they will always be friends, only for Oliver to continue his insanity with proclaiming his love for her. He’s taking his guilt tripping to a whole new level now with his threat to kill himself. You have to have a bit of compassion for the guy because he is clearly unwell but DRAMA guys.. DRAMA.
Lor: Yeah, that drama and the stupid plot he’s involved in makes me have to dig real, real, real deep to find that bit of compassion.
Dutchface: Ryan and Sandy make it to the hotel, only to get no answer when they phone the penthouse. What happened to Luke? He left hours before them. Where is he? If the answer is “in his bedroom thinking about his friend’s mum,” I will be disappointed in him. They’re unable to get into the penthouse unless invited in like vampires. Ryan becomes the second person to see a Natalie and just assume, although correctly, that she is the Natalie that Oliver has been claiming to be his ex which is seemingly enough to make Natalie call security to take them all up to the penthouse. Knocking on the door, all Oliver has to do is tell her that he just got out the shower and that is enough for Natalie to assume nothing is wrong, even though she called security for some reason. At last Marissa shouts out that he has a gun, making the security of the hotel open the door and walk in with their own guns. Why does hotel security have guns? America *shakes fist*.
It takes Oliver crying with a gun in his hand for Ryan finally to become the good guy here. Calm and collected, he explains how Oliver shooting himself isn’t going to hurt anyone but Marissa, using how he feels to get him to put down the gun. This is getting so tense, I’m struggling to bitch about anything here. Ryan is relating to him. The way the people in the show have treated him this episode have led to this moment so it was worth while. Oliver drops the gun and is led off. PHEW guys, it’s over hugs all around. Ryan isn’t an ass and comes good saving a life maybe even two. Sandy is a good parent for listing and Luke… well, lets not go there.
Oh, good, for a second I thought I wouldn’t have anything else to have a go at but we’re back after all that tension with Anna and Seth, who are playing Jenga.. badly it seems. Seth is wanting to call Summer, because he’s still in love with her and Anna at last calls him out on it and breaks up with him because at least some of the kids in the show need to be acting like kids, amiright?
Sweeney: My heart really hurt for Anna this episode. She was such a delightful character and so terribly used by the writers. The entire premise was literally, “She and Seth are perfect together except for the part where she’s not Summer.” I’m glad she finally dumped him because she deserves better, but the FEELS got me.
Dutchface: Ryan returns home to find Seth moping around in the pool house who then explains to Ryan what’s just happening in the whole episode while making it sound like a Thor and Loki comic book synopsis.
Overall this wasn’t a bad episode, some stupid things happen right, you might have noticed but it’s just because it has characters in it who are a bit dim. The only person who was calm and rational throughout this episode was Luke, who vanished without a trace at the end. Has this made me want to rewatch this show since the first time it was on? Maybe. Has it made me want to punch the character of Seth in the face? Yes… yes it has.
How do I even finish this? Umm Byyyyee.
Lor: That was good. You stuck the landing.
Next time on The OC: Just as Marissa and Ryan are trying to get their shit back together, his ex comes to town in S01 E19 – The Heartbreak.
Late 20-something Brit. Drinker of most alcohols, lover of fun times, foul mouthed, flirt. Proud child of the internet and Doctor Who fan-boy who once got called "chubby" by the Duke of Edinburgh at the age of 12... what a jerk.
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.
