Live, Marissa. And Let Johnny Die

Wow, I guess I shouldn’t have been so optimistic about The OC. I let my hopes get up after the apparent death of Johnny. That’s right, I said “apparent” death. It turns out that it takes a lot more to kill Johnny than being hit by a car or falling off of a cliff onto some rocks. No, those things will only put this guy in a coma, although this last one had the potential of lasting a lot longer than the first. Some people may think that I am being too harsh openly hoping for the death of Johnny, but can you honestly blame me? Dealing with his story, which I think is awful, simply takes time away from developing other parts of the show that could be much more interesting if we could explore them a little bit.To be honest, when I heard that Johnny didn’t die, I nearly turned off the episode. But since almost a dozen people read the OC posts every week, I could not let them down. As Summer said, Trey was unconscious for months, so maybe I was going to have to get used to Johnny sticking around. OR NOT. After a few minutes of trying to keep our hopes up, we learned that Johnny didn’t make it through his coma. He was finally down for the count. TKO. THE END.

Yes, yes I know that is a little harsh, but please don’t think I am saying this just to be cynical. One of the foundations from which this show is built is the relationship between Ryan and Marissa. Admittedly, I have always thought that the show would have been better off if the writers could have found a way for us to live without Ryan and Marissa together. Since that seems to be too difficult of a challenge for the writers and an idea that a large portion of the fans of this show wouldn’t want to live with, I have given up trying to crusade for that outcome.

However, if I am supposed to believe that these two have a love so strong that nothing can keep them apart, why must we always deal with them on the verge of constant breakup? Again, don’t get me wrong, I think that these two have the type of corpse-on-corpse chemistry not scene since Resident Evil: Matrimony. Still, if I must buy into this undying love, you would think it would be possible to have them together and happy for more than two weeks in a row. I had thought that after Marissa told Ryan that she was sorry that he ever had to question her feelings for him, which would be the end of those questions. We could coast the rest of the senior year without that as a distraction and then maybe Theresa shows up with her baby as a cliffhanger before season four. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Well, that’s not going to happen. After Johnny’s death, Marissa goes over to his house to check on his mom, and finds Chili. Poor Gwen, the only people she has to comfort her are the girl who wouldn’t return Johnny’s love, and the guy who told him to go after the girl who wouldn’t return his love. Since they have messed up Johnny’s life so much, the two of them decide the least they could do is make sure his funeral is what he would have wanted. And you know what? They were not alone. Gwen’s mother decided that it was such a difficult time for them that she would, uh, send her daughter Sadie along? I can understand that Sadie was close to Johnny, but how does that help his mom? If anything, you could have brought along both and given a nice little random cameo to somebody. But whatever, Johnny’s funeral was nice. Nobody wore a suit, and they were able to pay homage to him on the beach, although I hope that isn’t where they left his ashes.

The episode has been pretty straightforward up to this point, and I have admitted that I like it when the show gets hectic, but what the heck could you say about the rest of this episode? Well, I’ll give it a try. As we all know, Valentine’s Day is only a few days away. For the people of Newport, *the* place to be is the first annual NewMatch Valentine’s Day Ball. Julie and Kirsten are busily preparing for what they hope will bring together lots of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, but Julie is having trouble concentrating because Dr. Roberts hasn’t asked her to the dance. I wish Dr. Roberts would get in gear because I like Julie and she is quite sensitive. If you prick her does she not bleed? If she needs money, does she not make porn? I think she is more than worthy of chocolate, flowers, and the nice underwear most women are going to be enjoying on Valentine’s Day. Julie does try to drop a few hints on Dr. Roberts later, but he says that he is thinking about starting to read The DaVinci Code. Wow, at this rate, Julie is going to have to move to Portland and chase after Luke to get any play.

So we know that Julie is having problems with her love life, but it’s not like her youngest daughter has anything to worry about. Momma’s girl answers the door to find none other than Justin standing there, trying to convince her to come back to Santa Barbara. And she’s getting more than a free ride; she’ll be helping the earth because he drives a hybrid. Ladies, does that line actually work? Because if it does, I may have to rethink my policy of running all Priuses off the road and invest in one myself. If you don’t remember Justin, he was the one who tried to get Kaitlin to return the money she stole from his brother’s fraternity party at UCSB. I guess he realized that grand larceny is a small annoyance. As long as she’s getting drunk, he still has a chance. Nor surprisingly, Kaitlin doesn’t want to talk about relationships since her last relationship ended up on the rocks (pun intended).

It almost looked like there was going to be no happy couples on Valentine’s Day, not even our cutie patooties Seth and Summer. Summer walks in on Seth looking at something on his laptop. She thinks it is porn, but it is actually a spreadsheet he uses to organize his DVDs. Summer doesn’t mind, but Seth is horrified. Like flossing and masturbating, it’s something that she knows he does, but would rather not witness it. Hey, at least he wasn’t masturbating to his DVD spreadsheet or pictures of dentists.

The real reason why it isn’t important to Summer is that she found Seth’s pot. It’s not like it is that big of a deal, because Seth was a late bloomer for a lot of things, but he had been given many chances to come clean, and he didn’t do it. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy the implication that smoking marijuana somehow means that you aren’t mature in your development as an adult, Summer was correct when she said that Seth has to do more than just promise her that he won’t do it again; she just couldn’t trust him.

Over at the Newport group, Matt was having a little bit of a problem. The physician’s board was still discussing the bid, so to move it along, Matt decided that he would call Maia again. It has been a couple weeks, so Maia saw right away that Matt was interested in her not because he wanted to be with her, but because he was trying to look good for her father. She refused to see Matt, so Sandy decided that he would recruit Kirsten to get Maia to come to the Valentine’s dance. It would help business, and hey, Matt was actually beginning to like her. Kirsten agrees, but she wants Sandy to get into the spirit of the holiday, although she did have her limits – nothing red, see-through, or even remotely edible. What Kirsten, not even the massage oil? Live a little! Kirsten does convince Maia to go. Maia was hip to Matt’s plan, but she does still like him, and the dance is a good idea anyway. How did it work? Well, Maia and Matt hit it off, which should be good news for the Newport Group.

As I said, Johnny’s funeral was nice, and there was a lovely reception….at the Bait Shop. Umm, OK. Whenever you want to start making sense, Josh Schwartz, you may begin. I am not sure why we care beyond the funeral, and then I find out. It turns out that Volchok, the butthole surfer who broke Johnny and his ex up by making out on Chili’s bed, had a thing for Sadie, and decides a great place to rekindle his flame is while she mourns for her cousin. Sadie wants nothing to do with him, and of course, out of nowhere, Ryan shows up to shoo him off. She and Ryan then spend some time discussing loss. Sadie lost her mom, dog, and best friend, and Ryan lost, well, nobody close to him, so he can’t relate.

Apparently Ryan doesn’t count the miscarriage death of his potential child as all that big of a deal. I mean, he obviously didn’t mourn, and actually high tailed it out of Theresa’s house really quickly, but you would have though it would have bothered him a *little*. The worst thing about this interaction, however, is that it clearly means that we are going to have to see the Sadie/Volchok thing play out, and Ryan will of course be involved. For what reason? I don’t think we’ll ever know.

Like I said, when Johnny died, the first thing that popped in my mind, well, at least right after screaming “YES!” at the top of my lungs, was that Marissa and Ryan should be able to go forward. I wasn’t the only one either. Seth said that finally Ryan could spend some time with Marissa without worrying about Johnny getting between them. Ryan sees Marissa and tells her that he wants to do something for Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t have to be big, but they haven’t had a chance to be alone together, so it might be nice. Marissa completely FLIPS out on him, for no particular reason other than Ryan wasn’t sensitive enough to how close she was to Johnny. She doesn’t want to go the dance or do anything with Ryan for that matter.

It was just last week that she told Ryan that Johnny didn’t matter, and it’s not like she can take him back now, so I don’t get the problem. This was supposed to be the year. Like Summer said, they weren’t fighting and Marissa wasn’t kissing another girl, so this should be their year to spend a romantic V-day together. Instead, he decides that he is going to go to Johnny’s house to talk to Gwen, but it really was a convenient way for the writers to get Ryan over there to spend some time with Sadie. Oh no. I can already sense that Ryan is going to find a connection with Sadie, and isn’t it so convenient that his girlfriend seems to be pushing him away at the moment? Yes they were packing up her dead cousin’s room, and it seems impossible for Ryan to emanate sexual tension with anybody (at least since season one), but I think we can all see it coming.

Ryan may not have had much luck, but boy were Sandy and Seth doing some good work. Earlier, Sandy was flipping through a Victoria’s Secret catalog (no word on if he got it from underneath Seth’s bed), which gave Seth a good idea about what to get Summer. By the time Sandy had come home, Seth had already done his shopping and was working on a card. Poor Sandy, he is just confused by the all of the underwear choices that were available to him. Bikinis, briefs, boyshorts, g-string, thong, low rise, hipsters, it’s all very confusing. I am sure it is all very confusing for Seth as well, but he really didn’t want to hear the difficult choices his dad had picking out his mom’s panties.

Which would you rather own?

After picking up some flowers, Sandy decides to show Kirsten how much he has bought into the holiday. She enjoys her flowers; the only suspense she has now is which of the little suggestions she gave Sandy he decided to bring home from for her in that pink bag. When Kirsten pulls out her gift, it looks like something from the Pink collection, i.e. geared towards a woman about two decades younger than she is, or a husband who is having some sort of fantasy. This is a fantasy that Kirsten didn’t know about, but the whole thing was a surprise to Sandy. When Sandy had come in from the store, he put his bag next to Seth’s, and then when he left, he picked up Seth’s bag.

Wow, if Sandy gave the wrong bag to Kirsten, that meant Seth was giving the wrong pair of underwear to Summer as well. And since Summer wasn’t expecting underwear, if she was to get a pair that Kirsten thought was sexy, it really wasn’t going to help Seth at all. That’s exactly what happened, but it was more than that. Even if the underwear had been “age appropriate with the right cup size,” she was expecting Seth to rock her world, but what Seth did to her was more like adult contemporary-ing her world. And Michael Bolton was not going to get Seth out of the doghouse.

Ryan decided that he had one more chance to save his Valentine’s Day. Again, he just wants a chance to spend some time with Marissa alone. He understands that she needs time, but Marissa is too preoccupied with Johnny to listen to him. Johnny though highly of Marissa, and even told Sadie that Marissa was his girlfriend. Johnny asked Sadie to make Marissa a piece of jewelry that was her birthstone, plus his birthstone, with an angel in the middle, because Marissa was his angel. I could see Marissa getting choked up if he was alive, but he wasn’t and even though Ryan didn’t get her a gift with as much sentiment involved, his heart was still beating, he cares about her, and wants to help her in this difficult time. Instead of going to her boyfriend, Marissa seeks the solace of her mom? No. Her sister? No. Her best friend? No. She seeks out Chili, and they talk about how nobody else knows what they are going through. At this point, I am wondering if they are actually thinking about having Marissa hook up with Chili. Sounds completely stupid, but that is the only way I can describe Marissa’s logic this episode.

While it seemed like every couple on the show was having problems, if there is anything that can bring people together, it is cinnamon hearts (HOT DAMN = ASS) and chocolate martinis. I mean, we knew that Sandy and Kirsten would get over their problems. Give Sandy a couple of years, and I’m sure he’ll get things right. As for Seth and Summer, when she said that he didn’t rock her world, it was before she saw his cute homemade card. And then he figured out a way for her to trust him. He wrote everything he did wrong on a napkin (he must like My Name is Earl as well), and while that doesn’t mean anything, he told Summer that if he lies to her again, she could give it to his parents. It’s unfortunate that Seth basically had to give Summer blackmail material to get her to trust him, but not as unfortunate as when we hear that Summer is wearing the thong Seth gave her. I guess she is going to have to throw them away, because saying, “they belong to my mother” when describing your girlfriend’s underwear will always kill the mood right? Well, that didn’t completely kill the mood, however, as they made out on the beach a little while later.

Kaitlin was also at the party, and so was Justin. Again, I thought Justin had no chance, but he was relentless. Earlier, he brought Kaitlin a teddy bear, and although she seemed to sneer at it, his persistence was endearing, and Kaitlin decided to go back to Santa Barbara with him. She goes to tell her mom, and if you were wondering if the producers would forget about her for another two years, rest assured, it doesn’t look that way. She told her mom that everybody would be seeing a lot more of her. Although I think the Kaitlin story fell apart towards the end, and this whole Justin taking her home thing was unnecessary, I do like her character, so maybe whenever her mom runs out of money and can’t pay tuition, she’ll come back to Harbor.

After Kaitlin left, Julie was left to contemplate what her future would be. She couldn’t even enjoy her own party. They were serving oysters, but like she said, if she is going to swallow something that disgusting, there needs to be something in it for her, you know, besides making you horny. Something like a new car or perhaps an engagement ring. Luckily for Julie, it looked like she was going to have some swallows with benefits soon. Dr. Roberts finally finds her, and apologizes to her for not going with his instincts. He knew that they have complicated lives, but he wants to try and make it work, and it starts with asking Julie to be his Valentine.

Wow, is there anybody who is going to go home from this event alone? Well, Ryan was there without Marissa, but after having a talk with Kirsten, he decided to visit his favorite girl on the way home. But you know what, his favorite girl appears to be Sadie. Yes, I know Marissa has been a huge bitch to him, but there is a way to fix it, and it starts with getting as far away from the Harper family tree as possible. Sticking with Sadie can only lead to trouble, and trouble’s name is Volchok. He can’t leave Sadie alone, but Ryan is there and so everything is going to be OK.

Seriously, your girlfriend needs you, Ryan. So why are you with Sadie?

So, I have to say, this episode was only average. We didn’t really have to get rid of Kaitlin (how is her mom paying for tuition at her school?), but that wasn’t a huge deal. I am a just a little more than confused why this Marissa and Ryan thing has to be drawn out. OK, fine, she isn’t ready to move on, but do we really have to have this Sadie sideshow? And do we have to add the Volchok sideshow to it? I think there was enough going on without them. I am hoping that it all plays out well, but we’ll have to wait a few weeks before a new episode to find out where it’s going.

What did you think of this episode? Are Ryan and Marissa heading for a break up?

“Hey!” Count: Episode – 20, Season – 343