Previously: Ryan went back to Chino due to Theresa being pregnant with a baby that may or may not be his, Julie Cooper married Caleb Nichol and moved with Marissa into his palace, and Seth got so upset about Ryan leaving that he just took off on the Summer Breeze without saying goodbye to anyone.
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The Distance
Katie: We open on…lots of shirtless construction workers. Unfortunately, the camera’s not on them nearly long enough. The only two people with shirts are Sandy and I guess the head construction dude, and it’s not until they start talking that I realize the construction is in the Cohen home. Their house is torn apart, literally and figuratively, which Sandy actually says out loud. As always, very subtle with the symbolism, writers. They talk about the endless construction and we learn that it’s now September. Just before the construction workers knock down a wall that almost hits them, Sandy complains about all the shirtless guys (killjoy!) saying that the neighbors have started to call their house The Manhole. Hee. Kirsten comes downstairs wearing this adorable little black dress and greets “Archie,” the head construction dude. Before Sandy goes to join her in the kitchen, he warns Archie, “Don’t ever get married. And if you do, don’t ever have kids.”
Sandy starts talking about work as Kirsten sits in silence. Then he starts throwing together random words that don’t make sense to see if Kirsten’s listening before she calls him out on it. She’s pissed because Seth is still not home and blames Sandy’s “hippie parenting psychobabble” for his absence. Sandy blames her overprotectiveness and says sometimes kids need space. Kirsten: “The Pacific Ocean? That’s not enough space?” Sandy thinks Seth will come home on his own, but Kirsten is tired of waiting and ends the scene with her best Jean Valjean impression: “Bring him home, Sandy. Bring him home.”
Lorraine: I know you probably specifically didn’t use Hugh Jackman, but the internet likes these gifs best.
Katie: Californiaaaaaaa….here we coooooooooomee!
Caleb’s palace. Marissa and Summer are sunbathing by the pool when Summer notices…a really hot, shirtless guy watering the lawn. Okay, I swear I didn’t pick this episode for the shirtless men, but it’s turning out to be a nice bonus. And this is just the first five minutes! Summer comments on his hotness and thinks he’s checking Marissa out, but Marissa changes the subject completely to complain about her mom. Blah blah exposition where we learn that Marissa has lost weight this summer, they’re drinking “Newport Beach Iced Teas” at 10 AM, and Summer is now seeing some dude named Zach. “The more time I spent with Zach, the less time I have to think about…God, what’s-his-face? Built like a beanpole, curly hair? Runs away like a little bitch on his sailboat, leaving nothing but a note for his girlfriend, who cried and cried over him until the 4th of July, when she decided that she doesn’t cry over bitches on boats?” This is all said awesomely in typical Summer fashion, and she also says that she will never be close to a boy again. (L: PFFT. She obviously doesn’t know what show she’s on.)
Another construction site! This one, we see as Theresa drops Ryan off there, is in Chino and everyone’s sadly wearing shirts. Ryan and Theresa are polite but awkward as they say goodbye, even though Theresa has nicely packed a lunch and even peeled Ryan’s orange for him. (Which is, honestly, above and beyond what most lunch-packers would do, so I award orange-peeling points to Theresa.) (S: Theresa, like Anna, is a fantastic character badly used to create dramz for the core four.) There’s even a close-up on the orange in the bag. Could it be reminding him of a certain county that he’s been missing? More brilliantly subtle symbolism, writers.
Caleb’s palace. Julie and Caleb discuss how Julie has flowers are delivered to their house every week because “they’re living things, they die” and how every time Caleb picks up the phone he hears a clicking, about which Julie calls him paranoid. She’s going to buy Kaitlin (she still exists!) a new pony because alopecia has left China, formerly the prettiest pony, “bald as a baby’s ass.” It’s just not right for a girl to love a hairless pony, she says. Poor unloved China. Caleb reminds her that they can’t write it off as a business expense, and Julie says she’ll put it on the black card.
Lor: It’s funny because when it came out that Jimmy Cooper lost millions because he couldn’t tell his wife no, you kind of just roll your eyes at him. They introduce Caleb as the most no-nonsense character ever and then put him next to Julie, to also be bulldozed by demands and ponies with hair. Freakin’ Julie.
Sweeney: This is also a callback. We last heard about China’s Alopecia shortly before the feds came after Jimmy. Ponies were Julie’s last major expense before finding out that her previous husband was about to lose everything. I’m thinking Julie should just get rid of the ponies – they seem to be bad luck.
Katie: Didn’t think of that, but you’re right! I guess Seth and Summer could always try to convince Kaitlin that plastic horses are the way to go.
Shirtless construction worker! Kirsten comes in with groceries and notices both the family Chrismukkah card (they keep their own card on the fridge? In September?) and a phone number for “Carson” on the fridge door. Kirsten calls the number and gets…Luke! Who hands the phone to Seth! Kirsten implores Seth to come home, but Seth is really bratty and rude about how he hates Newport and won’t come home unless his parents move somewhere else. And then he freaking hangs up on her! You know, I do love Seth in general, but he definitely has episodes where he’s a selfish brat, and this is one of them. I want to smack him and hug Kirsten, who looks devastated. (L: +1) (S: This episode is painful because Seth is being the worst but I see so much of my 14-year-old self, bratting about living in a town I hated, so this episode is ENDLESS CRINGE for me.) Sandy walks in and commiserates with her. He remarks on how Seth is turning out to be “quite the angry young man,” and I can’t tell if that’s a deliberate Billy Joel reference or not. More shirtless men drift in (God, I’d love to be the person who cast this episode’s extras) (S: “Bring in the next hot shirtless man, please!”) and then the doorbell rings—Jimmy Cooper, with whom they have plans to have dinner on a boat. Jimmy and Sandy discuss Seth’s absence and how Sandy thinks forcing him to come home would make things worse, and Seth won’t talk to them anyway. Jimmy says maybe he’ll talk to someone else.
Construction site with too many shirts. Sandy drives up and greets Ryan, who is holding a hard hat. They look very happy to see each other. They discuss Sandy heading up to Portland and Sandy asks Ryan to come to Portland with him. Ryan resists, but Sandy gives him a plane ticket in case he changes his mind, just as Theresa drives up in her yellow convertible. They say goodbye and go to their respective cars. Okay, Chino is a little less than an hour away from Newport Beach, according to Google Maps- I love how TV characters are always driving long distances to have short conversations they could have had over the phone. Also, was printing airline tickets not yet a thing ten years ago?
Sweeney: “Drop everything and go to Portland, even though you have the kind of job that will come down hard on you for missing days. No, you don’t have to, but I spent money on a plane fare, effectively guilting you into it.” IDK man, the complete lack of actual consultation seemed like a bit of a dick move on Sandy’s part.
Katie: I guess it kind of is, when you put it that way. I blame it on the aforementioned need to have TV characters do everything in person instead of over the phone.
Chino. Ryan wakes up next to a sad-looking Theresa, takes out the trash, and sees kids go by on bikes, one of whom looks like he’s Ryan’s vision of his past self. Actually, that’s definitely what he is because he disappears into thin air as a car rushes by, which real flesh-and-blood humans don’t generally do. Despite Theresa having packed him another lunch and made him breakfast, Ryan picks up the plane ticket and tells Theresa why Sandy came by. He says he’s not going to Portland, though, because it’s for the Cohens to work out and he’s not part of their family anymore. Ouch.
Sandy pulls up alongside Caleb in a parking garage because, Caleb says, he thinks his office is bugged. He also thinks it’s weird that after Seth’s best friend left, he ran off to Portland with another boy and his gay dad. He’s confused because the DA’s office visited at the beginning of the summer but he hasn’t heard from them since. Sandy says they’re either dropping it or building one helluva case, which is kind of like a doctor telling you that your headache could be nothing or it could be a malignant brain tumor. (L: I GUESS WE’LL SEE! BYE!) Then Sandy takes off for the airport.
Portland! Seth is with Luke drawing a cartoon character that looks just like Summer, who is no longer taking his calls. Luke kind of weirdly makes a comment about Summer’s “killer rack,” and speaking of which, two girls, one of whom is in a bikini, walk by. Luke kisses Non-Bikini Girl while Bikini Girl flirts with Seth. They talk for about two seconds before the girls leave again. Luke remarks that Seth should “close on” Bikini Girl as they walk inside and say hi to Luke’s dad. (Did you hear he’s gay? The show can’t stop reminding us.) Luke’s dad says they have a guest – Sandy!
Lor: I think his magnificent eyebrows walk into the room a half-second before he does. Probably.
Katie: Jimmy and Marissa pull up to the Cohen home and greet Kirsten. Marissa asks about Seth and Ryan and Kirsten updates her. We learn that Marissa doesn’t talk to Ryan anymore because it’s too hard. Marissa walks outside to the empty poolhouse doors and looks inside wistfully.
Back in Portland, Seth, Luke, and their dads eat dinner and we learn that Sandy’s plans to open a restaurant are kaput. They continue to make small talk, which Seth rudely interrupts with snide comments about Newport. Sandy and his non-negligent eyebrows call Seth a “spoiled brat who’s had everything handed to him” who isn’t allowed to leave Newport until he’s eighteen and can afford to. Seth bitches that they let Ryan leave and didn’t even try to stop him. Sandy says Ryan had to do what he had to do, and Seth brats that he does, too, and leaves the table.
Lor: Except… what Ryan has to do is take care of a baby and provide for a family and what Seth has to do is be butt-hurt about having his BFF live less than an hour away.
Katie: TOTALLY THE SAME THING.
The beach, where Marissa pouts and drinks vodka straight from the bottle. Despite it being 11:18 at night, she calls Ryan, who sleepily answers from the bed he shares with Theresa. Marissa says nothing and hangs up as tears stream down her face. Ryan and Theresa both look angsty, like they could tell it was Marissa despite the lack of caller ID.
Sweeney: Meanwhile, Ben and Mischa got to do what they do best, “Broody staring.” I wonder if this is what their auditions looked like. “No, no, we don’t need you to say lines. Just give me your best brooding stare.”
Katie: Portland. Sandy greets Luke’s dad, who calls Seth a good, smart kid, and they bond over parenting woes. Then Seth comes in and Luke’s dad exits. Sandy tells Seth he’s been thinking, and if Seth stays there in Portland, at least Sandy knows he’s safe. Seth smiles for the first time this episode and thanks Sandy, although he looks a bit guilty and sheepish. Sandy reminds Seth that he left home at Seth’s age and tells Seth he loves him and the door is always open, which he wishes his parents had said to him before he left. They hug, and Seth looks like it’s finally dawning on him that he has the most awesome parents ever.
Sweeney: But the thing is, this was never about his parents. Seth is being a total shit right now, but I can’t help by sympathize on behalf of my own miserable teenage self. I also have the most awesome parents ever, but they weren’t the ones I had to contend with at school all day, which was absolute hell. I have a lot of feels for his bratty struggles.
Katie: It’s not about them, but it’s not their fault, either, and he doesn’t seem to care at all about all the pain he’s caused them. I do love Seth, but some of his all-time worst moments are in this episode.
Chino. Ryan pours orange juice (more oranges! SYMBOLISM.) as Theresa reminds him of her doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, Ryan forgot about the appointment and has decided to go to Portland, although in his defense, he’s been to every other appointment. Theresa mentions the late night phone call and asks what’s going on. Ryan says he left Newport to make life easier for everyone, but it seems he’s only made it more complicated. Theresa: “That’s funny. I thought you left Newport to be with me.” Ryan says he did, but he has to make things right with Seth, and Theresa eventually sighs and says she’s okay with him going, although the look on her face says otherwise.
Sweeney: Again, Theresa is better than all of these other teenagers. Theresa wins at being a person, but loses at life. That’s the lesson here. Be a good person, wind up a low income teen mother. Be a giant fucking brat, run around playing on sailboats and bouncing between your own mansion in California and your friend’s fancy house in Portland.
Katie: Pretty much, yes. It’s rare for anyone on this show to get what they deserve, in either the positive or negative sense.
Oh, God, THIS SCENE. I was waiting for this. Marissa is lounging by the pool listening to her iPod when Julie comes out yelling at her for not being ready for Cardio Barre. Marissa rivals Seth for brattiness by refusing to take her headphones out and bitching when Julie stops the music. Julie finally grabs the iPod away and grounds Marissa, saying Marissa’s barely talked to her all summer. She asks Marissa what’s bothering her, and while I can’t defend what Marissa does in this scene, you’d think Julie would have a little bit of an idea that it might have something to do with Marissa’s boyfriend moving away to be with his possible baby mama.
Lor: Or being blackmailed into living with the mother she hates. Or hating her mother because she slept with her ex-boyfriend. Or hating her mother for trying to force into a psychiatric ward and then threatening her again with that psychiatric ward for illogical reasons. (Off the top of my head.)
Katie: Right, those, too. Marissa: “You really want to know what’s bothering me? Do you? Do you really want to know what’s on my mind?” Julie responds in the affirmative, and…well, what happens next is the most unintentionally funny thing in the history of The O.C. She screams, “AAAAAAAH!” while waving her hands around and leaning forward like she has a stomachache and then tossing the lawn chairs into the pool. Then she straightens up, looks at a horrified-looking Julie defiantly, and marches back into the house. Seriously, my description doesn’t do this scene justice. Watch for yourself.
Lor:
Sweeney: A+ gif usage. This scene is iconic and gold and beautiful. We pick on Marissa a lot (because it’s easy) but also this meltdown seems about right given Julie’s obliviousness to the dozen terrible things going on Marissa’s life that we just named off the top of our heads. Parenting: learn about it.
Katie: Preferably from a certain dude with magnificent eyebrows. Speaking of which: Portland. Sandy is leaving and his cab has arrived, and then…out of the cab steps Ryan. That’s weird. He called a cab and it just happened to be the same cab taking Ryan there from the airport? And Ryan just happened to show up just as Sandy is leaving? The Cab of Contrivance has brought people together. (L: A+)
Back at the Cohen home, Summer arrives with a pink crate of Seth’s stuff. Heeding her therapist’s advice, she’s divesting herself of Seth’s material possessions in hopes of having a chance at “vibrating at a high frequency.” She goes on and on with this weird self-help psychobabble to Kirsten, who has this awesome wtf look on her face, but as Summer heads upstairs, Kirsten tells her that if Seth wasn’t her son, she’d do the same thing. As Summer dumps the stuff in Seth’s room, she picks up Captain Oats from Seth’s bedside table, pets him, and says, “I hope we can still be friends.” Aw. I just can’t believe Seth left Captain Oats behind. He was Seth’s best friend before Ryan! (S: Same! OOC bullshit, writers. No way Seth left Captain Oats.) And I have now used the word “psychobabble” twice in one recap.
Portland. Luke’s dad tells the boys that they have another guest, and out steps Ryan! Soon they’re grilling and discussing the death of Seth and Summer’s relationship. Seth tells Ryan that if anything, Ryan made him stay in Newport a year longer than he should have. Ryan tries to tell him how weird it is that he’s not even in school, but Seth says it used to be perfectly normal for teenagers to board train steamers and travel the country. Ryan: “That was the Depression. They were looking for work.” In any case, Seth insists he’s not going back to Newport if Ryan isn’t. (L: This is supposed to be endearing, I know, but it errs on the side of brat.)
Caleb’s palace. Jimmy’s there complimenting the place as Julie serves him a drink and describes the horrifying acting we saw as Marissa took her rage out on the lawn chairs. There’s also a quick throwaway line about Kaitlin going to boarding school, so we will never see baby Shailene Woodley again. (S: You will be missed, baby Shailene!) They discuss providing some semblance of a normal family life for Marissa by having Sunday family dinners or something. Also a very weird bit of dialogue about how Hailey is great and “limber,” while Caleb? “Not so limber.” I…really don’t know why they needed to go there.
Sandy’s now back at the Cohen house as Caleb rings the doorbell. There’s been a lot of doorbell ringing in this episode. He’s pissed that Sandy talked to the DA the day before, but Sandy says, basically, that the shit’s about to hit the fan for Caleb and he needs to get things together.
In Portland, the boys are playing video games (Luke, hilariously, is like, “Make me feel pain. WOUND me!”) when Ryan gets a phone call. It’s Theresa, tearfully telling Ryan that she miscarried. Ryan says he’ll head back right away, but Theresa says they should take this as a sign, since she knows that Ryan isn’t happy being with her. Ryan: “You don’t want me to come home?” Theresa: “You don’t want to come home.” Ryan can’t argue with that, and when he gets off the phone, he tells Seth and Luke, then heads into a bedroom and broods silently. Seth joins him.
BUT THEN. Back in Chino, Theresa’s mom comes in and asks if she told him, and when she nods yes, says, “Did he believe you?” Theresa says she thinks so, and her mom says this is best for Theresa, Ryan, and the baby, and they hug as Theresa sobs.
What. The. Fug.
Am I missing something? On what planet does it make sense to lie to your (possible) baby daddy that you’re no longer having your (and maybe his) baby simply because he’s just not that into you? Because it’s not going to work out with you romantically, your solution is to remove him from the picture entirely and be a teenage single parent in a poor neighborhood and make a hard situation even harder? And Ryan will just go on his merry way oblivious to the existence of (maybe) his child while Theresa does all the work by herself? When there are about a million ways Ryan could find out that a baby does, in fact, exist? They can’t just co-parent without living together or being a couple? Seriously, my mind is BLOWN by how LITTLE SENSE THIS MAKES. Talk about contrivance bringing people together!
Sweeney: I think it’s less about him not being into her than about him being miserable in Chino and trying to shoo him back to The OC. That’s a minor quibble because otherwise a giant YUP! to everything you’ve said because it’s some epic contrived bullshit which also does a giant disservice to Theresa, as a character, who’s about to get whiplash from the way she’s been flung around to create plot points. It’s also a huge – and totally OOC – stain on Ryan’s character to not even go back to her to comfort her in any way whatsoever.
Katie: I mean, it’s possible that he did go back to comfort her and there’s just no scene of it, but yeah. If they wanted some kind of contrivance to get Ryan back to Newport, couldn’t she just have miscarried for real? Too convenient, yes, but it would make way more sense.
Back in Portland, Ryan and Seth discuss what they’ll do next. Ryan says he’ll move his stuff out of Theresa’s, which will make him homeless, but he thinks he’ll figure something out. Seth’s still planning on staying in Portland and teaching sailing lessons. Ryan’s cab comes, and he almost gets in it before he and Seth both say, without actually saying it out loud, that they’ll both be going back to Newport instead. Seth: “We don’t have to hug or anything like that, right?”
Sweeney: HUGS! HUGS! HUGS!
Katie: At the Cohen house, Sandy and Kirsten are eating dinner and Kirsten is stabbing her food rather viciously when Ryan and Seth stroll in, the latter saying he’s offering “a two-for-one special on brooding young men.” Kirsten literally shrieks in delight and throws her arms around both of them, which makes me smile. There’s more hugging and when Ryan confirms that he’s staying, too, Sandy says, “Good. Because nobody leaves this family twice.” Aw. Those non-negligent parenting eyebrows have worked their magic again.
Ryan enters the poolhouse and looks around. He then starts to close the door and hits Seth, who’s come up behind him in the doorway. (Adam Brody has this look on his face that makes me think the door wasn’t supposed to hit him.) Seth has discovered the stuff Summer dumped in his room and neither of them are looking forward to Monday. Before Seth turns to leave, Ryan asks him what we’ve all been wondering: how did he make it all the way to Portland on that tiny little boat? As it turns out, he sailed to Catalina, then Santa Barbara, then ran out of snacks, freaked out, pawned the boat for cash, and took a bus to Portland. Of course he did. We fade out as Seth and Ryan try to come up with a better story to tell at school.
Man, this was fun! I love this show to the point where I own the whole thing on DVD and used to write fanfiction for it, but there’s still plenty to snark on. Thanks for this opportunity, lovely Snark Ladies.
Next time on The OC: The boys face the girls in S01 E02 – The Way We Were.
I'm a creature native to the Boston area often found writing fiction, blogging at www.purebrightfire.com, riding the T reading a book, singing to dogs, wishing my workout was over, making weird playlists, and drinking hot chocolate and Diet Coke. Life goals include finding someone to sing "The Confrontation" from Les Mis with me, a la Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel.
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.
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.
