TV: The OC, S1 Disc 5

It was with this disc that I had to look ahead, and to my disappointment, find that there's 27 episodes in the OC's interminable first season. Rough sledding.



Episode 17:  The Rivals

Escalating his suicide-sympathy game from last time, Oliver has finagled a transfer into Harbor, where he has further finagled an exact duplicate of Marissa's schedule.  This completely unhinges Ryan, who immediately launches a nighttime b&e on the file room to get a look at Oliver's past.   When this turns up nothing he can use, Ryan steals Oliver's oh-so-emo letter from Marissa's locker, which, when discovered, naturally, forces them to break up. 



Dragging the episode down further is that the title? Yes, that pesky plural.   So while Oliver moves in on Marissa, Summer's new boyfriend, Danny, a riotous comic stereotype lifted from an episode of Undeclared (sigh..), is absolutely killing Seth, his relationship with Anna, and anyone who happens to be in the cafeteria.  Sandy's reaction to the kid is the episode's only high point.

And in the land of grown-ups, Julie has beome Kiki's... rival! Hired for a job she has no experience or ability to do, Julie is the meddling boss's squeeze who is ruining life at the Newport Group.  In line with its handling of other adult-world subplots,  what initially seems to be grist for several episodes' worth of subplot comes to a head and gets buried by next week.
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Pros: Luke's finest series moment: "Give me the word, and I will drop the Great Gatsby."

Cons: Nobody believes Ryan? Really?

Then: B
Now: C


Episode 18: The Truth
 
Payoff aplenty here, as we shift into the third act of the opening season.  In order of screen-time importance: Opportunistic, gold-digging Julie has been dumped by Charles, and true to form, is indignant at his shoddy treatment.   If the viewer thinks she rebounded quickly from Jimmy, they've seen nothing yet.

The suffering of poor Anna (...her?) comes to an end.  The show finally gives in to its destiny, and lets Seth get with the vapid girl of his inner six-year-old's dreams. Sandy is so aghast at this turn of events he strikes his son on Anna's behalf.

There is one thing to be said in Summer's favor: at this point, she and Luke are the only characters who support Ryan's view of Oliver. Suspended from school for roughing up Ollie last week, Ryan mopes around the poolhouse in a montage catchily set to "Love of the Loveless."  Sandy, usually the smartest and wisest man in the OC, is dumbstruck at Ryan's behavior, especially in light of Oliver dropping the assault charges.  Really, though, consider the potential courtroom scene: does Oliver want to be cross-examined, likely by Sandy himself?

While Summer poaches Seth away, junior detective Luke launches his own investigation into Oliver's background, discovering that Ollie's alleged on-again, off-again absentee girlfriend Natalie doesn't, in fact, exist.  Well, not entirely.  After a warning phone call from Luke*,  Marissa accidentally ("by accident" and "being told by someone directly" are the only two ways Marissa ever figures anything out; I can't believe she has a high GPA) confirms that Natalie is actually the concierge lady at Ollie's hotel, who "used to babysit him." Ew.  Rather than wait around in the lobby for Luke and take the next car out of town, she returns to Oliver for a confrontation that ends, perhaps predictably.

Ollie goes offstage for a moment to give Marissa time to make a frantic call, not to the police, or to hotel security, no; to Ryan of course.  Oliver overhears this, produces a tiny pistol (no comment on his virility, I'm sure) and apologizes incessantly for taking her hostage in the most passive-aggressive way imaginable.  Luckily, ace hostage negotiators Natalie, Ryan, and Sandy are on the case and quickly defuse the scene. Oliver is sent to the hospital, never to be seen again.

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* It's oddly distracting the way Mischa Barton enunciates "clothes" in this scene, making the t audible and adding a half-syllable to the word.

Pros: Even in the middle of talking Oliver down, Ryan gets a dig in on Marissa's faithlessness.

Cons: Poor, stalwart Annabelle.

Then: B
Now: B



Episode 19: The Heartbreak

With the Valentine's day gala imminent, Kirsten is determined to reset the status quo.  Briskly turning the page on the Oliver-centered melodrama, she forces everyone to attend, with the expectation we're in for another Ryan fistfight to cap the evening.

But episode nineteen is all about subverting the audience's expectations.  Marissa expects to go back to Ryan cleanly; he rejects her in favor of a conveniently event-catering Theresa. When Marissa gets a hang-in-there pep talk from Sandy, Ryan surprises the audience again by acting like a real person unable to forget a crippling breach of trust in the space of forty-four minutes.

Seth blindly expects Summer to get with him; she initially rejects him for the audience to expect a second interminable courtship, then she impulsively deflowers him.  Seth's performance mortifies both of them, thus -- get the picture -- subverting Seth's expectations about sex.   With that much subverted, is it a surprise that Seth wasn't the only carrier of a v-card in the room?

Even the adults find audience-delighting surprises: Jimmy receives secret-admirer cookies from a surprisingly still-in-town Haley, whom he then surprisingly rejects, and Julie, rejected by Haley's dad, gets drunk and cougars a pining Luke (truly a "go there" Degrassi moment, sold by Melinda Clarke's eye-roll and quick scoff of the last of her wine before moving in for the kill).

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Pros: No fistfight! A good, status quo-resetting episode.
Cons: If the slight fluffiness of Haley/Jimmy is the worst I can come up with, the episode's pretty clean.

Then: B
Now: B

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Episode 20: Telenovela

Continuing to mortgage the series' future, Telenovela, when not falling back on Seth frequently defining the term for the Fox nation, centers on pushing Ryan toward a rebound fling with Theresa. Theresa, who we learn is engaged to one of Ryan's friends from the hood.  But that was before she decided to attempt a little class mobility; if Ryan can do it, why not her?  More importantly, is there one episode of this series without a prominent love triangle? And if Ryan felt emasculated by Oliver, how better to regain his manhood than by stealing a bigger, tougher (he's from the hood; so also browner) guy's woman? That is to say; he wants to be an Oliver?

Who did I like better?

Seth's recently-resolved triangle is only slightly better off. Summer has unilaterally taken the Cordelia-Xander approach to hiding relationships to the degree that she'll happily work the kissing booth with no thought at all to poor Seth's feelings.  But he has Anna, returning briefly from Pittsburgh (where she'll shortly be exiled to for good) to act once again in her wise Watts role of relationship coach.  Where was all her savvy when she was actually dating Seth?  Could it be she was never meant to be a serious contender for him? Gasp!

Both sets of parents have their own trouble; Julie's begun to tire of Luke (though for now finds his gotta-motor-to-homeroom exits endearing) just as Widmore comes a-calling to patch things up. Widmore is also a strain for the Cohens, when Sandy is enlisted to bail his Michael Clayton out of hot water.


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Pros: Theresa is more interesting than Marissa ever manged to be.
Cons: Is the title really just there to play on Theresa's ethnicity?

Then: B
Now: B-