Previously: We spent Thanksgiving with the Cohens and Ryan went home for a hot minute.
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The Secret
Melodie: I preface this with this bit of knowledge: I have never watched the OC. All I know about it is that they are in the “OC” which I think is in California somewhere, I want to say Orange County? Which I think is Los Angeles…ish? Look at me figuring things out all by myself! I’m sure I can figure out this teen-angst-plot-drama-rama with just one episode!
This episode is called “The Secret.” Unless the secret is that someone is Batman, I am not interested. However, I promised and while this isn’t a show I would watch on my own, it certainly has to have some loltastic moments in it. Any show, no matter how straight and serious, has loltastic moments.
Further up and further in! After the previouslies, we start off with an establishing shot of California with some peppy music. (L: “A long time ago, we used to be friends…“) There’s a dude in boxers, a t shirt, and a robe (Seth) dancing to this peppy music. Peter Gallagher (Sandy) is in the kitchen! (I love you Peter Gallagher!) There’s another blonde haired kid (Ryan) in the kitchen too, and Seth all of a sudden pulls a stop and says “Oh, I’m not feeling well” which sounds like an excuse to get out of school to me. He gives a couple of unconvincing coughs, but Sandy is not fooled. Sorry, your dancing did not work.
Sweeney: Sandy Cohen’s Eyebrows of Non-Negligent Parenting are not so easily fooled, Seth.
Melodie: Seth and Ryan snap at each other back and forth, and Sandy interrupts asking if Seth is going to school and Seth says he WANTS to go to school, but he doesn’t want to take a chance “infecting others.” Sandy calls his bluff by saying, “Let’s go straight to the ER!” I have to admit I laughed there.
Ryan says that Seth could go to school and apologize to Anna and Summer. Is it weird I immediately think of Summer Glau and Anastasia Steele? It makes for a very strange mental image of this show.
Lor: Very true, but I got momentarily excited about the idea of Summer Glau kicking Ana Steele’s ass.
Melodie: That should be a summer blockbuster! (pun intended)
Anyway, both of those girls kissed him on Thanksgiving, which I just cannot see at all as he reminds me of a weasel. This feeling is confirmed when he weasley-weasels, “But I was ASSAULTED! I’m the VICTIM!” Mom (Kirsten) walks in, saying she is going to “Yogalates”, but she is not feeling well and doesn’t know why. Douchebag Seth says, “Oh, maybe from getting drunk and passing out on Thanksgiving?” I do have to say: thank you for all the exposition show. Got me caught right up. Sandy and Ryan say the others have to go to their respective DOOMS, and Kirsten accuses Sandy of just liking to say “yogalates”, which gets more and more fun every time you say it.
Lor: If she’s been passed out since Thursday, there was way more than wine in her drink.
Melodie: I… can’t believe I missed that. That, or I was thinking it was the Friday after Thanksgiving, which has no school, so… sense is still not made. Maybe she’s actually recovering from Black Friday shopping?
After the credits, we enter into a super fancy classroom. Where are the uncomfortable desks and pencils stuck in the ceiling? I r disappoint, show. A blonde girl (Marissa, I think. A side note here… I could have sworn her name was Stephanie. All throughout this post it’s been “Stephanie this” and “Stephanie that”, and with a quick “find and replace” it is now Marissa this and Marissa that. But I would have sworn to God her name was Stephanie! Aaaargh!) passes Ryan a note saying she wants the Crusades for the two person project coming up. In a not-so-shocking twist, Ryan and his arch-enemy Luke get paired up. They get the Spanish Inquisition….
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
At lunch, Marissa complains about the “history lab partners” (dafuq? Lab in a history class? And it’s not college?) (L: RICH PEOPLE CHANGE ALL THE RULES!), and Douchebag Seth says he likes the girl Marissa got paired with. She asks, rather snottily, if he’s going to throw himself at her too. He says again, he’s the VICTIM. Ryan is going “into the heart of darkness” with Luke on the Spanish Inquisition….
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Marissa says they could end up being friends. She looks like a young Lilah to me, rockin’ that scarf. The idea of friendship is scoffed all around. Since Luke is her ex, Douchebag Seth infers they would just talk about her, because we all know boys gossip too.
Sweeney: I mentioned earlier that my Seth bias is so strong that I’m confused by recappers not liking him. That said, you’re dropping in at a particularly low moment for him, so for the first time I’m over here all like, “Yeah, that’s legit.”
Melodie: Cut to Sandy, who is talking to a guy who may go to jail if he doesn’t sell his house. This must be the B plot. Also, Sandy must be a lawyer, which is why he’s got a really nice house. (S: LOL. Almost there, but they’ve got a nice house because of his wife’s money! Yay progressive teen soap operas!)
We move to Marissa in the girls bathroom. Summer is in a stall talking to her, but Marissa abandons her after a minute, when a short haired pouty girl (Anna) walks in. When Summer gets out of the stall, she’s alone with Anna! Anna flosses, which is smart, and Summer makes fun of the flossing, which is dumb and an indication of someone with bad oral hygiene. The talk turns to Seth. Summer says, “If you want him, you can have him.” Anna says she doesn’t want him. Summer says, “It’s because he wanted me, isn’t it?!” Ana calmly states something awesome: “I couldn’t possibly be interested in someone who treats women that way.” Summer is speechless, and then they bond over flossing. Aww.
They leave and run into Seth, who stammers that it’s awkward. Ana continues to be awesome by saying, “Not really.” So he says, “For me.” Alrighty, from here on out, he really will be Douchebag Seth… because only his feelings matter on any situation, right? The girls talk to each other, make BFF dates, and ignore him. Rock on!
Kirsten is at yogalates. YOGALATES! The other moms judge her for being “a drunk”, and they’re pretty snide about it. You know… asking, “Oh, how are you feeeeeeeling?” and being faux-nice. If I was Kirsten, I would have shown up with a beer and given no fucks. There is some sniping between Kirsten and Julie, who evidently had spread said gossip. I don’t know. I sort of zoned out here for a minute.
Sweeney: Quick context for the new girl: the harpies are generally the worst. It’s implied that they’re all pampered housewives who don’t work and have maids and just throw parties and gossip all day. Kirsten, meanwhile, is the #2 person in her father’s real estate business. You can tell homegirl is exhausted by having to explain shit like this to the harpies when she explains to Julie that she’s been busy in the office – the place where employed people go!
Melodie: Cut to Luke’s Perfect Home of Perfectness. Perfect Mom talks to Perfect Dad while Perfect Children rumpus around. Introductions are made, and there is music of sad feels here, so Ryan must be from a broken home and he’s envying what he doesn’t have. Which makes no sense to me because Sandy and Kirsten seem pretty fine as parents. Ryan tells Perfect Dad they are doing the Spanish Inquisition….
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Is that joke old yet? Cause it’s not for me… and it never will be, sorry-not-sorry. (L: I’m glad you were around to make it. I wouldn’t have known to, and that is sad.) (M: If even one person laughed at it, then it was worth it!)
After Perfect Dad offers to bring Ryan along to a Perfect Tailgating Party at a Chargers game (ew, Chargers), the kids go upstairs to Perfect White Boy’s Room. PWBR has no less than three surfboards, two guitars, and a big honking computer. Luke has all these ideas for the paper, but Ryan is derping all over the place, astounded by PWBR. Luke says they can print out all sorts of awesome stuff at his dad’s car dealership later.
We cut to the guy who has to sell his house or go to jail. He’s Julie’s ex husband, and she is SUPER OMG OFFENDED that he has to sell the house… wait for it… around the holidays! It’s just the meanest thing ever! He says he could go to jail, but she gives no fucks.
Luke and Ryan go to Perfect Dad’s Perfect Car Dealership. They sit down in a Mustang (hell yeah!) and jam out to the radio, and in general do a little bonding.
Lor: Sweeney and I saw this episode together and giggled for a solid minute at the fact that they turned on the car radio without a key to the car.
Melodie: After, they go to find Perfect Dad, and see Perfect Dad holding hands with another man then making out with him! Perfect Dad is Perfect Gay Dad! Snapples! They are pretty cute together. He even kisses Perfect Boyfriend’s hand. Awww. This must be TEH SEKRIT instead of “the Chargers have fans.” (L: A+) The kids totally stand there for a minute and watch them make out. Awkward!
Luke tries to run away, falls over a car, and sets off a car alarm. Oooookay. Not sure why they would have car alarms armed inside a dealership other than for DRAMATIC PURPOSES. That, and they were just in a car and somehow got in, turned on the radio, and jammed out all without triggering the alarm. Magic? PGD and his boyfriend look over, and PGD slowly walks over and tries to catch up to the running boys. Just like in horror films, it doesn’t work.
Next day, Marissa goes over to Ryan’s and she’s all ‘what’s up’ and he tells her “the secret” after a bit, telling her not to say anything. That so won’t last. Douchebag Seth says douchebaggy things, and prods them for information because they keep giving each other meaningful glances. Luckily, he decides they’re just ignoring him and don’t prod them for information, because I’m sure they would spill the beans.
In the library, Seth talks to Ana, who is rocking a pink fuzzy cap. (S: I don’t know if “rocking” is ever the term for that pink fuzzy cap that I hope has since burned in the same fashion hell fires as Julie Cooper’s pink velour track suits.) (M: You are not an 80’s child, when everything in dayglo colors was the height of fashion!) Summer comes in, and both girls end up brushing him off as they make plans together. He keeps looking over at them all supa jellies.
At yogalates (seriously, how can you say that and not smile?), Kirsten talks to Julie, who says she is not selling the house, because we all care about the B plot, and we find out Julie was dating Kirsten’s dad. Evidently, Kirsten’s dad is rich and could get Julie a house to live in, but he’s being a jerkhead. While they are talking, some other random lady runs in literally squeeing over some gossipy news. One guess what it is.
Sandy talks to Jail Dad. He recommends getting a realtor to show the house, and then offers to call a guy and make Julie look like a co-conspirator if she doesn’t agree to show the house. That sounds… less than honest to me. Jail Dad sort of declines, but then apologizes to Sandy for kissing with Kirsten. He swears she stopped it and it “didn’t mean anything”, but I can tell Sandy is upset.
Sweeney: This scene was painful to watch. Just shut your stupid mouth, Jimmy! Jimmy Cooper is dumb as box of coat hangers and it is physically unpleasant to witness sometimes.
Sandy then gets a call from Kirsten saying she has some news, but is only telling him. Uh-huh. Rumor mill in action, folks!
At the school, everyone is gossiping about Luke’s dad, because absolutely no one in California has ever known a gay guy, ever. (L: It was only 2003. I know 2003 had gay men.) You would think this was a town of a hundred people instead of hundreds of thousands with how fast this news gets around! Of course, since this is a high school, jerkheads make fun of Luke, and Luke gets pissed at Ryan, who says he didn’t say anything. I can completely understand why Luke was upset, because he thought only he and Ryan knew. Little does he know everyone in town knows. It’s probably on the internets by now too.
After the not-commercial break, Marissa says everyone knows and Ryan accuses her of telling people. She’s hurt, and after that non-surprising scene, it goes to Sandy and Kirsten. There was suspicion about him and a coworker (doing it? Making out? Going bowling? What?) and he asks why didn’t she say anything. She says she didn’t want to hurt him, but the kiss meant nothing. Well, if it meant nothing, why not use your words and tell him before he heard it from someone else? I guess because then too much sense would be made and we would have no dramas.
Sweeney: Because plot!
Melodie: At the family dinner, Douchebag Seth is douchebaggy, and the rest of the conversation is double-entendred. It’s pretty uncomfortable to watch as I just want to yell at the TV screen, “Use your words! Just ask her about the kiss, doofus!” Next, at the women’s locker room, everyone is gossiping about PGD and being mean about it. One woman goes as far to say that she feels relieved that now she knows the reason why PGD didn’t hit on her. Kirsten and Julie go out for beer, which sounds pretty good about now.
Luke is absent from school and Summer and Anna are bonding. However, Douchebag Seth approaches and apologizes in a really fake way. After he leaves, they forget about girl-bonding and fall all over themselves to get out of there to presumably to ask Douchebag Seth out. Vomit.
Sweeney: Their friendship was so fun, and then watching this made pieces of my soul wither and die.
Melodie: I wanted to watch a show about them! Their friendship was the best part of the episode!
Kirsten and Julie bond over talking smack about Kirsten’s dad. Then it cuts back to the school, where Summer just gushes over Seth apologizing to her, because it was “the first that I’ve ever received from a boy.” WAT. Really? No one else in her life of the male variety has ever apologized to her? I call bullshit on that. Teenage boys can be jerky McJerkheads, but her reaction to the not-so-sincere apology is a wee bit extreme for me, especially since… she asks him out. Afterwards, he runs into Ana, who also asks him out. He does do a moderately decent thing and says that Summer asked him out too, but she’s ok with that. I vomit. Again.
Ryan goes to Luke’s house. Marissa is already there. Luke apologizes to Ryan for going off, and they all go out to drink at a baseball field. Ryans ends up saying that at least Luke’s PGD cares about him because Ryan’s dad didn’t give a damn about him at all. That’s kinda… weird to me, because Sandy didn’t seem like that sort of dad at all. (S: Sandy’s not the dad he’s referring to – Ryan didn’t come into the Cohen family until the pilot, a mere 11 episodes and couple months earlier.) (M: Heh, it’s kinda funny to see what things I’ve been getting wrong with just watching a single episode, and thank you for the clarification! Makes a lot more sense now.) A couple guys approach and say “look–a couple of butt pirates”. Really mature, show. That is the height of that conversation though, as a couple minutes later the word ‘fag’ is bandied about, and a fight breaks out.
Sweeney: Face Punching is the way that the boys of The OC cement bro-dom. It’s how Seth and Ryan became bros4lyfe, so the build up to this was very exciting because it meant Ryan and Luke were about to become besties. Then the punch outdid my expectations when it became synchronized face punching. That’s a true brolationship right there!
Melodie: True, and that was pretty funny. It was a classic movie moment where they stopped and looked at each other, and then Whammo!
After the not-commercial break, Julie drops by Kirsten’s house. She tells Kirsten she made up with Kirsten’s dad by telling him all of the things Kirsten told her over beers. He bought Julie’s house and is letting her live in it, and infers that maybe someday Kirsten’s dad might be living there too. Kirsten looks less than thrilled.
Sandy plays the ‘ask your mother’ game with Seth an a go-between until Luke and Ryan come in, beat up. Sandy calls PGD, and the kids are like “noooo, don’t do that!” In teenager logic, calling parents is always a bad idea. He ignores them and does it anyway. (S: The eyebrows of non-negligent parenting strike again!) PGD comes by to pick up Luke, but Luke ain’t coming down. He’s still upset that PGD is gay, or at least that’s implied. If it were me, I think I would be a little more upset by the fact that he was cheating rather than he was gay.
Lor: I think during the bro-chat with Ryan it was more implied that Luke was more upset about being lied to, his dad “working late” and missing his games and generally being around part time, which made him question how much of that was truth. Everyone else in Newport is being a jerk about the gay thing, but Luke is more worried about the family thing, I think.
Melodie: Good point. I would have still like to have seen a call out that he was a cheatin’ bastard, though.
Anyway, because we have to get to the moral of the story in the most public-service-announcement-after-school-special way ever, PGD explains how horrible and awful he feels for lying, and Sandy says it was the best thing he could do, coming out and being honest with himself. You know, if you are always honest with yourself, it’s always puppies and rainbows forever. Promise.
Luke comes down and while he doesn’t say anything, the audience can tell by the look on his face all is forgiven. After that, Sandy and Kirsten make up, because everything has to be resolved in an hour except for the metaplot, of course. Next day at school, Luke is freaking out because “people are going to be staring at me” because his dad is gay. In California. A very, very liberal state. They all make comparisons about how they’re “weird” (Ryan burned a house down, Marissa tried to commit suicide, Seth is a douchebag) (S: Marissa’s all “I’m still the girl who tried to kill herself in Mexico.” – GIRL, that was like a month ago and you have received no on-going treatment for your real issues which magically vanished after that, so, you know, yeah.) and they walk into school. Fin.
This plot apparently (I say apparently because I have not seen even one episode of the OC except for this one, and it was played up how Luke is Ryan’s arch-enemy) only served to humanize Luke by making him an outcast because his father is forcibly ejected from the closet. In California. I get that kids may overreact when their parent comes out, but I’m from the Midwest and that just seemed extreme even for here…even in the 90’s. (which now I read that this series was filmed in 2003, so it’s even less believeable for me here!) In a liberal state like California? Nope, don’t get it. The funny thing is the actual immoral thing the father did – cheating on his wife? Completely glossed over. It wasn’t, “Dad! You are a cheating bastard!” It was, “My dad is teh gayzors! Teh angst!”
The audience is clearly supposed to sympathize with Luke, which ignores the actual gay person’s struggle, putting them on the peripheral. What about the dad? What about his struggle? It’s really not cool to bring it up, and then address it only how it affects a straight, cis, white male. How dare his dad be gay!
Next time: We actually already recapped this back in 2012, because we actually couldn’t wait to cover the Christmakuh episode. Relive the fun in The OC S01 E13 – The Best Chrismukkah Ever.
Writer, artist, procrastinator, painter, gamer, GenXer, cat-belly-petter, snarker, moviephile... which sounds a lot dirtier than it is.
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.
