TV: The OC, S1 Disc 4

 With episode thirteen, the OC embarks on its second half.  At this point, it honestly seems as if they weren't expecting to get renewed.

Early on, even as the characters were starting to gel in a rich and fertile storytelling ground of upper-class high school with one or two resulting love triangles, behind the scenes on the OC the writers were quick to pull the trigger on all sorts of dramatic complications whether needed or not.   This brought in and then quickly cashed out subplots or characters such as: Jimmy's legal troubles, Sandy's hot co-worker, Kirsten's fondness for the grape, Cal dating Julie, Theresa, Luke's dad,  and now the double-barreled  drama of Oliver and Haley.  In the sense that a pilot episode sets the tone for the series, the OC's first season laid out in miniature almost every trope it would encore for the next three years.



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Episode 13: The Best Chrismukkah Ever

Having learned nothing from their multi-front Thanksgiving meltdown, the Cohens are determined to give Ryan the titular Best Chrismukkah Ever.   The precious combination holiday is naturally the idea of Seth, who as of this episode keeps his snickering inner six year old on a shorter leash. 

In their continued contest for the body of Seth Cohen, both Anna and Summer give him comic-book-related gifts appropriate to their personality: Anna made a comic for him (and his toy horse, Captain Oats, which still sounds like a name too outre not to have been a writer's "seemed like a good idea at the time" notion), while Summer degrades herself in a Wonder Woman costume; can she has hot makeouts?  It's an embarrassing plot that drags on with absolutely no momentum, since, again, we've already seen Some Kind of Wonderful, and Seth's choice of neither simply prolongs the agony.

Ryan's lovelife fares no better; removed at last from his family, he's become the bad influence: Marissa is now acting out by shoplifting watches.  Actually, as in political crime, the real problem is that she's caught.   In a moment that becomes a milestone of the OC's road to self-parody, Julie berates her eldest child for getting busted on the same day she has to host a lavish event!  This gives Jimmy a moment to be the audience mouthpiece for a quick smackdown: "at least your priorities are in order."  It's one of the things that will kind of make you miss Jimmy Cooper when he's on one of his frequent long absences.

Still, it's enough to land Marissa into counseling, where she has a waiting-room meet cute with Oliver Trask, whose poor-man's-Tim-Olyphant look combined with therapist's office cold reading quickly has Marisa off-guard and interested.  Over the years Marissa would be used as the conduit for each season's big bad; here at least it seems... slightly fresh.

Continuing its cycle of building up subplots in the adults' universe and then having them fizzle, we learn that the Heights, for which an episode was named, that Caleb-Widmore-coveted parcel of land, cannot be built on.  Winkled out of his bum investment by Sandy for a dollar, Caleb rushes off to close his next deal for Oscar Bluth's lemon grove.

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Pros: Jimmy, retiring the Heights with a whimper.

Cons: Somehow this was successful enough to make Chrismukkuh a household word, and an annual OC tradition.

Then: B
Now: C+

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Episode 14: The Countdown

Around midnight on New Year's Eve finds everyone not doing what they want.  Seth is stuck at home, watching his trashy aunt trash the Cohen house.  Marissa is swilling virgin Mojitos at Oliver's creepy redressed-set party.  Sandy and Kirsten find themselves in New Canaan, ca. 1973.

  The throughline to all of this is Ryan's lack of commitment to Marissa.  Will those three small words come way too late? The soundtrack doesn't exactly stop with a needle's scratch when he fails to respond in kind, but the scene is still far too on the nose; luckily the series' musical direction will be put to great use paying off this drama.  However, for the moment it does serve the purpose of providing another memorable introduction, as Ryan unsuspectingly practices them for a strange, scantily-clad woman who he finds in his poolhouse.  No, it's not Cal's new girlfriend...

It's his black-sheep daughter, Haley.  Like the ghost of Jimmy's future, she turns up unexpectedly from time to time to get a few days' vacation and some quick cash from Cal or Kiki.  She's also direly unpopular with her onetime peers; apparently the bad-girls of the OC (one of whom gets the unintentionally-hilarious overwrought entrance line of "I can't believe she'd show her face in Newport again!").  Jack Horner's epic period piece from 1980: The Girl Gangs of Newport.

Oh, and speaking of OC tropes, there's that-boy-ain't-right Oliver.  As maligned a character as he is (and as the arc comes to a resounding thud, he grows into the scorn), it was how the cast responds to him that brought the show several steps closer to maturity. Everyone but Marissa learns a lesson; here she is typically clueless, failing to notice that for every five things he says, three are untrue and one's kinda creepy.  For teen drama,  that's a subtle villain.   Here, he invites Marissa (and that declaration-averse boyfriend of hers) to his Four Seasons Penthouse Rockin' New Years Eve party, and then pins his hopes on Ryan not showing up.

Marisa of course has brought Summer with her, and, just to up the contrivance quotient, Anna also makes an appearance (when did she and Marissa become hugging friends?  Anna's Ferris (...) Wheel intervention in The Heights?), if only for an early exit to mack on the all-alone Seth.  As midnight strikes, Ryan dashes up the stairs (and stairs, and stairs, and as the cross-cutting becomes more tense, he really starts dashing up those stairs some more) to the Penthouse in time to declare his love.  To which Mischa Barton, with her best acting of the entire series, responds to with an echoed, amused "Thank you."

Cut out some of the subplots-in-progress, and you would have a nice ending to a thirteen episode miniseries here. If only.

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Pros: The series is firing on all cylinders here.
Cons: Immortalizes 2003 forever by bidding it farewell: Carson Daly! Friendster! Mojitos!

Then: A-
Now: A-

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Episode 15: The Third Wheel

The episode starts strong with an unconventional opening scene, showing the Cohen's upset life from Haley's point of view.  She eats Sandy's bagels. She drinks Seth's milk.  She ducks Kiki's attempts to give her an intervention.  


Then the story bogs down into a slugfest between two plotlines extended well past their expiration date.  Our returning champion is the Seth/Anna/Summer triangle, wherein Seth hems and haws for most of the episode before revealing to Summer that he and Anna have, finally, hooked up.

Our challenger, Oliver "don't call him Bollivar" Trask, continues his attempts to pry Marissa out of Ryan's cold, preferably dead, hands.   On a Ryan/Marissa "night off,"  he plies her with Moroccan food, and, having ordered too much, invites the whole darn gang (even Luke!) over to his penthouse.   There, he one-two punches Ryan's nearest and dearest, first by cutting Ryan out of talk about snowboarding the Alps and the must-sees of Parisian landmarks. Then, Seth, the self-hating aristocrat and eventual heir to the richest man in the OC, is gosh-wowed by Oliver's opulent lifestyle and practically begs to join his entourage.

Cementing his place in the gang, Oliver finagles tickets to the amazing, sold-out, fortunately all-ages Rooney show.  Didn't that band just explode in 2004?  Except when his absentee girlfriend maintains her absentee status, he then gets morose and then busted trying to buy coke, which Ryan, hoping to score points (and he will) with Marissa gets him out of by way of Sandy.

Pros: Sandy's peevishness regarding Haley.
Cons: Everything else.

Then: B
Now: C-

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Episode 16: The Links


To repay Ryan's kindness in bailing him out for his coke buy,  Oliver takes the gang (again, everyone, even Luke)  to Palm Springs for golf.  Oh, Ryan's never golfed? Oh, does Oliver find a way to make sure he gets paired with Marissa and a gaslit Ryan's left in the dust?  No way!

Luckily, the big bad story has to share time with two new entrants in the least-interesting subplot sweepstakes.  First, the series starts up again trying to make something out of poor Jimmy Cooper, pairing him this time with Sandy as they attempt to revamp their favorite Newport dining spot.  If the series were starting today, this story would receive more attention than it does here.

Aaaand laboring under the delusion that another love triangle is just what we need, Summer goes full frenemy with Anna and Seth in repeated, not at all hilarious attempts to break them up.  Seth maintains his least-interested-boyfriend demeanor, all but forcing Anna to flee in revulsion to his innumerable and not-at-all-sexy quirks (two scenes are built around humidifier jokes...).

Only in the last act is any progress made: Oliver finally baits Ryan into a harsh word, leading to the unintentionally yet actually hilarious sight of Taylor Handy beating himself about the head while wailing inconsolably about how this "always happens."  There's a slip everyone should have noted. When Marissa arrives late enough for Ryan to be incriminated, Ollie flees back to Newport.  He then calls and claims he's taken a bunch of pills and if she can rush back to his side because he's "so scared."   Rather than asking any pertinent questions as to the nature of the pills, or his location, or best-guessing an ambulance call to his penthouse, our heroes are forced to hurry back...

As Oliver dispenses with any shred of remaining ambiguity about his nature by grooving to Tom Jones while Marisa frets.     Once arrived, Oliver is embarrassed but otherwise okay, refusing any medical attention.  Ryan's suspicious; Marissa still credulous -- enough to spend the night to be sure Oliver doesn't try again...

And we'd had such a good upturn, briefly.

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Pros: Well, at least Oliver finally cut to the chase..
Cons: But by this point, do we even care?

Then: B
Now: C-