Girls Will Be Girls

What the hell was that? Seriously. Aren’t we in some sort of social contract with television writers? We watch their shows and make them rich. In return, they promise to work hard and prevent that show from sucking. Yes, eventually all shows wear out their welcome and plod along with uninteresting storylines. I understand that sometimes things are going to seem repetitive and even overly staged. But that shit isn’t supposed to happen until at least the third season. I’d rather be performing on stage at a Tijuana donkey show than to watch another episode of the OC like what happened last night.The episode started off pleasantly enough. Sandy rolls up to the house and apparently it is really early, so he decides to try and sneak back into his house. Uhh, who is he trying to avoid? He has a wife, and I think she is going to notice that he was gone the previous night even if he was able to slip into bed before she woke up.

Sandy isn’t the only one awake in the house either. Ryan is trying to study for an exam that he didn’t feel that he was prepared for. I do have to say that I did like those days in high school where you could fake your way through class if you had an extra hour or so in the morning. Seth walks in and is surprised to see Ryan in the kitchen. You see, it’s really early, so nobody should be there. It would have been slightly more believable that it was the wee hours of the morning if the sun wasn’t shining outside like it was high noon, but whatever. It’s been a while since Seth has had Ryan and so you think he wouldn’t wake up so early to ask him yet another question about Summer. Is Seth worried that Ryan is going to run away? Is it something that they couldn’t discuss on their walk to school?

No it was just an excuse so Seth would have a reason to be out of bed was his dad walked in. Oh, how ironic! It was only a few weeks ago that Seth was in trouble for being out past curfew. He was even grounded. Now Sandy comes in too late and we see the great role reversal. It allows Seth to come up with a one-liner and for Sandy to reply with a one-liner. As funny as that was, Sandy still has to make it through the most difficult part of the gauntlet, namely his wife. While she is brushing her teeth or washing her face or flushing her tampon, Sandy tries to sneak into the bed. Kirsten sees him and he braces for the worst. Luckily, she still thinks that Rebecca is dead, and thinks that Sandy was up all night with his mentor helping him cope with the loss of his daughter.

Why is Kirsten up when it’s so early? Well, we need some reason for her to go downstairs and talk with Ryan. Ryan talks about his non-dinner with Lindsay and Caleb, and Kirsten decides that she must do something to intervene or Lindsay may never get to know her father. They decide that the best idea would be some dinner. Afte rall, Luke Skywalker’s father was a pretty bad guy, and they got along together in the end.

I know what everybody is asking. You just stole a couple of necklaces from your lesbian ex-girlfriend’s house and are now back in Orange County. What do you do. WHAT DO YOU DO?!?! Actually, I didn’t have to invoke my inner Dennis Hopper to come up with the answer. If you remember, last week I said:

What exactly did Alex and Marissa find in common that they would hang out every day of the week. I just don’t see Alex getting excited about her next pedicure. Whatever, we all know they just sit around and get drunk together. It’s really the only thing Marissa is any good at.

It turns out that I was uncannily accurate. Marissa and Alex simply got drunk, and were picking up the empty beer bottles to prove it. But I have to admit, they were doing it in boyshorts, which was beyond what my small mind could have imagined. Marissa is more than happy, but Alex seems like she is more and more confused with what is going on. She likes Marissa, but doesn’t know if Marissa feels the same way, despite all of the obvious shit that Marissa has done lately to get the point across. This week she shows that she is comfortable enough to take her shirt off in front of Alex without a problem. As lame as the buildup to the obvious is, I am sure it is going to be much better than the way they handle the breakup.

Ryan sees Lindsay in the hall and they eventually get to the subject of the dinner that night. Lindsay is totally against it; she is fine if her dad is a complete asshole. Ryan tries to use the Luke Skywalker explanation but Lindsay makes a couple of valid points. Darth Vader had spent much of his time obsessed with killing Luke’s sister, and in their first showdown, Luke loses an arm. Ryan can’t come up with weak shit like that and expect it to fly.

Kirsten tries her luck with Caleb and is slightly more successful. When Kirsten walked in, you knew that he had no chance of winning the argument at all. He right away started talking about her figure and her clothes. When your father or husband starts doing that out of the blue, you know they are trying to cover up something they forgot. When she confronts Caleb with the details of the dinner, she mentions that Ryan had lived with them for a long time Caleb said that he didn’t want that “Inland street thug” living taking advantage of his family, which if you live in Los Angeles made you fall out of your chair. We love our readers in Riverside, but the 909 is just not that great. It’s also quite funny because Caleb married an inland street whore, so why would he care about a street thug? Kirsten makes the dinner a go.

I am sure the producers were counting on the possible return of a Seth and Summer romance to bring some more viewers who think Zach is a complete idiot and a huge pussy. We call those viewers “everybody on the planet”. Zach is somehow more interested in fantasy comic book characters than his actual hot girlfriend, so we weren’t all that surprised when Zach interrupts them and yells “You have to nail Summer.” Just before Seth would have said something like “Actually, I have, and it was great”, Zach tells us that he knows people in the comic book industry, and they loved the Summer character, so they will have to do a lot of work with her. This means (surprise!) Summer and Seth are going to be spending a lot of time really close, and Summer will be in something short and made of latex. What kind Senator’s son is this? Summer should get one of those sexual position of the day calendars and give it to Zach to give him a little bit of a hint, or perhaps some road head in his Bimmer.

Why do they even have Zach in this show any more? Is it simply to facilitate this feeling of “it can never be” with Seth and Summer? He is gung ho about the comic, but I would think that if the next big step involves Seth having to draw Summer in her heroine outfit, Zach might want to be around for that. He is not, of course, and when Seth comes in to do his little drawing of Summer, I am not thinking “Couldn’t he have done this just as well with a picture?”. No, my mind is on that ridiculous Wonder Woman outfit Summer had on last year, and what she was going to come up with for an encore.

You can imagine my disappointment when Summer instead took off her robe and revealed that she pieced together her outfit from the irregular rack at a tranny thrift store. Seth kind of laughed, but was determined to get the job done. He is helping Summer pose when she sees the work he has done so far and is quite impressed. They look over some pictures, Seth shows her how to hold a pencil, and they almost kiss. If Seth wasn’t sucky enough this season, now we learn that his foreplay involves a protractor. If only I hadn’t finished all of that methadone last week.

It took some persuasion to Lindsay to the dinner with Caleb, but she did eventually get herself over there. Things seem to be going pretty well. Kirsten even made dinner, if you consider fondue dinner, and they started to have a nice conversation about Brahms[Sorry Jash, I prefer Wagner myself]. Lindsay plays the oboe and so Caleb offered her box seats to the Hollywood Bowl whenever she would like. I’m not sure who Caleb thought Lindsay was going to take with her, but he seems offended when she asks Ryan. It’s his chance to make fun of Ryan for being low class. Why would anybody from Chino enjoy classical music

Caleb’s derogatory comments lead to a big argument between him and Ryan. Although Caleb is clearly the jerk in this scenario, he did actually mention Ryan and his inability to keep it in his pants. I have to applaud him for saying *something*, since everybody else seemed like it was no big deal. Ryan gets up and tells Caleb to bring it on. And that is the problem with this show. Who cares if Ryan punches Caleb? It would be much more interesting if he beat up somebody at school to prove his love for Lindsay.

Ryan never gets a chance to put the beat down on Caleb, because Caleb grabs his chest and has heart attack first. Even Ryan doesn’t have enough self-righteousness to combat somebody when they play the myocardial infarction card. Now if you thought that Caleb collapsing was a cheap trick and an easy way out for a lot of things with the plot, you would not believe what was to come next. That’s right. Caleb has turned over a new leaf. It just took a heart attack to get him to see how wrong he was. He takes his two daughters in his arms and asks if they could just start over. I predict that the writers have Caleb shot at the end of the season and give us a Who Shot JR/Mr. Burns style cliffhanger.

Everybody went to visit Caleb in the hospital, although not everybody into the room. Even Sandy came, and he has been putting in a lot of long hours in at the office. He not only failed to tell Kirsten that Rebecca is still alive, he failed to tell her that he has taken up the case to clear her name. And what great lawyer doesn’t let his fugitive client sleep in his law office. And we finally found out what Kim Delaney is so fat. It turns out that Rebecca is a huge pothead, and carries along a Q.P. in her back pocket for such occasions that she might find herself away from her stash for more than three days. She has the munchies, and God knows that Cheez WIz and triscuits are only good for you in theory.

Now, I have no good segue into the next portion of the story, because it really was quite random. Remember that whole Alex and Seth thing? Was he a good beard or what? Alex finds her way to Cohen’s house to, uh, return a sketch, saying it might be worth something someday. Of course it made no sense, but at least it gave Seth and Alex a chance to resolve their differences, and perhaps give each other pointers on finding the G-spot. Just in case you hadn’t picked up how Seth has not quite gotten over his obsession with Summer, Alex flips through the ever-present sketchbook and makes mention of the fact. She thanks him for helping her prepare for what’s next, and then leaves.

Seth decides he has to tell Summer something, so he goes over to her house and they decide to spend less time with each other, in the interest of a professional relationship. It seems like it is going to work for everybody until Zach shows up and lets them know that the comic book company wants to meet them and they have to take a trip to San Diego. Remember when Jerry and George did their own sitcom over a couple of seasons of Seinfeld? This whole comic book thing is less original and makes me even more bored every week. I am sorry, but Zach is simply not that much of a tool. His water polo teammates would have kicked his ass by now.

You can never go two weeks in the OC without visiting the bait shop, and since we went without it last week, we have to get it this week. They are playing a love song on stage, and Alex can’t help but look around and see all of these happy couples. She just broke up with her old girlfriend officially, just learned that she was nothing more than a rebound for her recent boyfriend, and is confused as hell about the girl who she is spending all of her time with. They like each other a lot, but enough to be in a relationship? Her questions are answered when Marissa comes to the bait shop, sees Alex, and then walks up to her and hold hands. Fingers interlocked, they share that little private moment that says they are ready for what is about to come and are happy that they found somebody to share it with. If there was any scene that was done right this week, it was this one.

As for the rest of the episode? Eh. For some reason, Lindsay breaks up with Ryan. Although Caleb is a changed man, she saw what happened to him when he was around Ryan. It looks like she went with the money instead of the looks on this day. If Caleb was really changed, she would not need to breakup with Ryan. All she had to do was take the example of her big sister. Kirsten chose her love of Sandy over her father. He hates Sandy, but still loves Kirsten like no other. Maybe Caleb has changed. Yeah, and maybe he’ll get rid of his trophy wife.

Sandy is still trying to find a way to tell his wife about Rebecca, so he makes her favorite dinner. It turns out that she needs to go to the store to buy something and decided to get a few things to spruce up Sandy’s office. On her way back, as she lets herself into her husband’s office, she bumps into Rebecca. Oh has the shit hit the fan now.

Perhaps I was overly bitter this week, but god did the OC completely suck tonight. Sometimes you get a few clunkers in the middle of a season, but I hope the writers get their shit together soon enough, because they repeated their problems of a year ago of not sustaining interesting plot lines long enough, which is bad because they don’t yet have a handle on juggling multiple story lines throughout an episode.

Still, next week we are promised the HLA. Don’t forget to check TVgasm, because we’ll have video.

“Hey!” Count: Episode – 11, Season Total – 128