TV: The OC, S1 Disc 3

 Disc three finally establishes the series' status quo, as the Cohen boys begin their year at their posh private school.  It also begins a four-episode plotline on the elder Cohen side of the fence, one that will naturally come to nothing...




Episode 9: The Heights

It's the first day of school, and everyone's making adjustments:

In the adult universe, Sandy's hot, considerate co-worker puts a strain on his marriage; a strain that increases when she recruits him into working an environmental case against Kirsten and Caleb's development company.  Stern words are followed by the first of many Kirsten-Sandy reconciliations, showing the blueprint for years of future Cohen-senior plots.  Almost all of which involve Sandy being tempted, or at at least, appearing-to-be-tempted by some work-related vixen.

The kids, also, have their own patterns emerging.   Marissa is forced to deal with word of her Mexico OD reaching her onetime friends at school, as well as with living with her now bachelor and hopeless-cook father.   More messily, she's continuing to fend off a smarmy, sorry Luke and her ongoing feelings for...

Ryan, who's resentful of Marissa having friends and activities at school when she could be hanging out with him.  A back-to-school-week carnival (really, in which world do such things happen?) finally traps them into slightly, slightly, advancing their relationship.  Which, while meager, is far better than...

Anna, who has returned to the series!  Unfortunately for her, she's the odd girl out, forced to settle for the Watts role in an extended update of Some Kind of Wonderful as a means of getting in closer to...

Seth, perfectly content to string Anna along while he pines after...

Summer, who is still a vapid twit.
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Pros: Anna!
Cons: Establishes yet another new status quo for the series. Once every three episodes!


Episode 10: The Perfect Couple

Sandy receives the first of direct pass of the series from his first not-an-affair co-worker.  Anna first begins chafing under the weight of Seth's Summer neuroses.  But the main action is with Atwood-Cooper. A few episodes back, when operating under altruistic interest for Marissa's well-being, Ryan brokered her divorce from her overbearing, trashy mom.  Now that having Marissa next door again would benefit his libido, Ryan brokers her return to the Cooper estate.

The modern, happy family!

But engineering her return sets into motion a revelation saved for, naturally, the last-act black-tie charity event (or whatever) of the week: That Julie Cooper and Cal Widmore are dating.  That little bombshell sets all of Newpsie society reeling, particularly Julie's eventual sister-in-law...(spoiler!)


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Pros: Self-aware character summaries! Seth: "So I'm just here for comic relief?" and later,  Summer: "Are you making fun of me, because I can't tell.."

Cons:  Is helping Julie out of her marriage really a subject to spend time on so early in the series?

Then: B
Now: B-


Episode 11: The Homecoming

Thanksgiving has arrived.  For a weak, sit-com-y A story, Kirsten wants to cook. (K: "How do you expect me to get better?" S: "I don't!")  She also wants to use the occasion to solidify Ryan's status as one of the family and solve a mutual problem by setting up the only two single people the Cohen parents know: Rachel the office complication and Jimmy the dumped Cooper.

The meal improves with the arrival of Anna, who wows Sandy immediately by dropping words like 'estuary' and 'anathema' into conversation.  At this early, idiot stage,  Summer would be responding with "Anna who?"

"Why are my teeth showing like that?"

Then comes a series of drop-in guest downgrades:  Julie and Caleb, and then Summer.  Widmore remains abrasive as ever, and Summer has shown up only to continue her and Seth's Xander-Cordelia clandestine makeouts.   This leaves an embarrassment-of-riches Seth forced to crib from the playbook of the only teenage lothario he knows: Peter Brady.  And as there's no Arthur riding in to save him, he accomplishes angering both girls in short order.

In the B plot, Tre calls, guilting Ryan into a turkey-day visit, which he jumps at, and drags Marissa along so he can have some more dialogue during the trip.  Of course, it's not just a hey bro, you never came to see me in all these ten episodes sort of visit: Tre needs six grand, and to get it he further guilts Ryan into running a stolen-car errand.  For once the car theft portion goes (relatively) smoothly, but introduces yet more complications: Ryan's previous girl-next-door Theresa, who as a living plot device is helpfully put on the shelf for use later in the year, but not before causing a hiccup of romantic complication for Ryan in the present.

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Pros: Cal's satisfied laugh on the reveal that Seth is juggling two women.
Cons: Later a source of melodrama, Kiki's drinking is played for laughs.

Then: B+
Now: C-

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Episode 12: The Secret

The Secret's leitmotif -- and later theme music to future blog topic Veronica Mars -- allows a momentary reversal: Brody gets a happily brief moment to demonstrate his physical humor/dance ability, and MacKenzie ripostes with some clever-for-Ryan repartee (though upstaged; Gallagher's amusement is pitch-perfect in the scene, as he often is)  Seth, ever callow, is contemplating a day home from school to postpone his woman problems from Thanksgiving.

While the theme of the episode is mending fences (pretty much everyone in the series with even a minor bone to pick clears the air), The real A plot of the episode is the shift of Luke from dimwit enemy to second-tier protagonist.  A hoary teen cliche -- partnering with Ryan on a school project -- is short circuited for a modern one when the pair discover Luke's father is having an affair with another man.   Nothing gives depth to a bully like having the rug ripped out from beneath him, and now Luke is forced to endure the slurs and gay-bashing he had once inflicted.

Ryan and Marissa grab the opportunity to make a lasting peace with Luke, but Seth takes this turn of events in a manner befitting early-series Seth: by letting out his snickering inner six-year-old. 

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Pros:  The strange case of the Anna-Summer alliance.

Cons: Kirsten's drunk turkey fallout is weirdly built up and then tossed aside.

Then: B
Now: B