The OC S02 E04 – The New Era (of Tears and Possible Pedophilia)

Previously: Seth got a job to give Summer a WE’RE JUST FRIENDS present and also add Olivia Wilde to the cast. Sandy, meanwhile, lost his job for taking on a probably-guilty Caleb as a client.
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The New Era

Tyler: Hello, Traumateers! The Snark Squad has, for some reason, allowed me to be your guide through the OC Season 2, Episode 4. I have never seen the OC, nor do I have any idea what it is about; however, from the title, I’m looking forward to some disruptive, forward-thinking Original Content. AM I RIGHT? (M: Best to let it be a surprise.) So. Let’s get this show on the road.

Oh, as the opening recap begins, I’m noticing a lot of white people. And one semi-hispanic looking teenager. This is probably just situational, and there’ll be a more diverse group coming up.

Sweeney: We’ve had a surprising dearth of discussion of this show’s heavy Brown People Are Poor People motif. Welcome to the OC, bitch.

Marines: Maybe because Ryan was temporarily poor! #equality

Tyler: As the episode begins, Ryan and Seth spend a couple of minutes talking about high school things: physics homework, graphing calculators, yearbooks, etc. I assume this is to reassert the teenageness of these 20-something actors. The long sweeping camera shot melts seamlessly into Sandy and Kirsten having a friendly disagreement about how best to help the nation’s poor. Oh, no, wait, they’re talking about this guy’s having just been fired and how he’s being propped up by his wife’s father. They clearly aren’t affected by this too greatly, as their house is roughly the size of the Superdome.

The title of this episode, by the way, is “The New Era,” presumably referring to the aforementioned firing of Sandy, which I bet will translate into a transition for ALL of the characters turning over their respective new leaves. Into social diversity and Original Content, I’m sure. Because so far it’s the “Lead breadwinner gets fired, has to get propped up by in-laws to create tension” trope, and we’re only 1:58 into this episode. (Author’s note: Snark Squad, what the hell have you gotten me into?) (Editor’s Note: MWAHAHA.)

As it happens, the goal of young Seth and Ryan is NOT to fight the man; rather, they’re choosing Seth a new girlfriend from the year book. They’ve used the word “shenanigans” about 9 times now, so she’s probably a good, quirky fun time. However, her name was suspiciously non WASP-y, so I’m betting she doesn’t get much air time. Incidentally, he’s going to “Go for the new era” and pursue one Taina Wu.

Sweeney: Your observations are all astute. Editorial note that while nearly ever character discussed the “new era,” Ryan’s line “in the new era, Seth shops for girlfriends in the yearbook,” was the first full iteration of the episode title, earning him the coveted Traumaland gold star of title-saying validation. Congrats, Ryan!

Tyler: Good god. That was some fast-paced bullshit before the opening credits even rolled.

As Seth and Ryan are walking to class at what appears to be the nicest public high school on the planet, which is also suspiciously monochromatic, err, achromatic maybe, they continue their discussion on how best to pursue Taina Wu. Seth is unimpressed by another girl who says hello. Oddly, like the Cohens, she’s also ostensibly Jewish, but the bond of the Tribe is not enough for young Seth.

Ah, Lindsay! That minx, calls these boys out on their patriarchal chest-thumping, as they objectify all the women on campus as “dateable” or not. You go, girl. OH, and she exits the scene with a WICKED BURN, as she lumps Ryan and Seth into the, “No,” category. After which, Seth falls immediately in love with her, and requests Ryan to “hook a brother up.” So long, Taina Wu, we hardly knew ye (weren’t just a set piece to feign diversity).

Marissa and Summer are also jumping on the “new era” bandwagon, as apparently the writers weren’t quite sure if the audience had figure out the theme yet. Marissa—the drama magnet—declares herself boyfriend and drama free; while Summer, on the other hand, has already found someone new: Zach, the anti-Cohen.

I hope Zach and Seth never meet, lest they annihilate and turn Newport into a smoldering wasteland. Wait, no. The opposite. I DO hope that happens. Summer, ever the relationship optimist, chooses now to demonstrate how normal she is by spontaneously giving Zach the nickname “ducky,” confusing everyone in the scene. What could possible go wrong?

Sweeney: The suggestion that a refusal to call fictional characters by their proper names could lead to catastrophe is giving me something of an existential crisis. NBD.

Tyler: The era continues to new with Sandy and Caleb, who are having a boozy breakfast, as Sandy sets up Caleb as the came-from-nothing real estate developer who has gone greedy. Sandy, ever on the lookout for social justice, makes sure Caleb knows how he feels about his greed; except Caleb in evil mastermind omniscience, knows he will be fine. They order a frittata, to assert their wealth. (S: And for dessert, the souls of poor people!)

In class, under the tutelage of a deaf and blind teacher who doesn’t notice this full-volume conversation happening in his classroom while literally nothing else is going on, Lindsay stumbles from woman-on-a-mission to practically panting over Ryan. Rather than get upset at his assumption that she would—in fact needs—to be with a man, she’s upset that he’s ribbing her about her lack of a man. After the old bait and switch, she agrees to go on a date, but with Seth! Surprise! There’s some sad music that follows, so I can only assume that both she and Ryan are secretly in love, and this will be a point of contention. Because this show’s writers are about as subtle as . . . things that are not very subtle.

Sweeney: Traumaland does not attract subtlety. In a recent poll, Traumaland voted and said, “No, we’ll have none of that.” (I don’t think they really want this either, though, but we keep making people watch it. Maybe that was a retaliation vote.)

Mari: BUT LOOK! Lindsay is also poor and white. #equality

Tyler: On the heels of the reveal of Julie’s apotheotic rise to CEO, she has clearly become delusional. She’s trying to run her company hands-on, forgetting she’s a rich white woman who can tell the other, slightly less rich white woman to do all work. The scene was very dramatic, as Julie whipped out of the room carrying the new office ficus.

In total opposition to her previous statements, Marissa has decided to visit the slightly hispanic looking character, DJ, as he—you guessed it—works on someone’s lawn. I swear to the flying spaghetti monster, I couldn’t make this up if I tried. They have a spat in which he feels scorned for her old boyfriend coming back, and she dumped him, and well, she couldn’t be seen with the hispanic kid when the rich white kid came back, could she? (S: In fairness, he’s the poor white kid. He got pseudo-adopted by rich white people, but it’s important that we not eliminate one of his defining OC characteristics.)

As we switch scenes to yet another location (the scene and location switching in this show is dizzying), Ryan lets Seth know the good news as Seth struggles to move a single stage box across a floor-level stage in some kind of hip high school-centric night club. As an aside: Do these exist? They’re everywhere in TV, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a single place like this.

Sweeney: My town acquired one shortly after I graduated from high school and it was short lived, partially because my little sister says it was generally filled with skeevy dudes who, by virtue of being over 21, had no logical non-pervy reason to go to this place.

Mari: There was one briefly in my area when I was in high school but it was also shortly lived because just letting little kids dance around your building and not selling them alcohol doesn’t tend to make money.

Tyler: Anyway, Seth is a wuss and won’t go on a date with the “powerful” Lindsay unless Ryan tags along, because we need to setup Ryan getting jealous of Seth’s dating Lindsay for a fight happening later on. We also need to get Alex (otherwise known as 13 from House) in the show, because she’s getting paid regardless of screen time, so let’s shoehorn her into this weird situation because she’d totally be hanging out with high schoolers. (S: She’s supposedly 17. Her being a dropout was meant to somehow explain why she’s a 17-year-old bartender. It does not, but somehow this is a trifling concern on the list of logical failings at play here.)(M: “Suspiciously 17” is a sub-theme of this show.)(T: This ruins so many of my jokes below, but I’m sticking with there’s no way she’s 17.) While she initially balks, inexplicably, a tickle fight changes her mind.

Jump cutting back to Julie and Kirsten, Julie completely and totally fucks up this investor meeting because she’s a moron, and I hate her. Kirsten tries to salvage things, but Julie insists on using the word “Kiki” and wanting a copy of a lunch menu, which she as CEO, is carrying for some reason. I have to imagine it’s for a vegan raw food buffet bodega.

 
  Because Summer is a recurring character in this show, Seth had to word-diarrhea his way into telling her he had a date with a real human being. You’ve got to setup the tension of their seeing other people way in advance, so the audience is shocked and surprised when they get together later. I take back what I said before. The writers of this show clearly know what they are doing: beating you over the head with foreshadowing.

The revolving relationship door of Marissa’s life suddenly stopped cold as Ryan rejected her offer of a date, to the same sad guitar riff that played when he begrudgingly setup Seth on a date with Lindsay. That probably doesn’t mean anything. Incidentally, this is the same place she invited DJ to earlier. Because, apparently, she has a short-term memory destroying fungus in her brain. (M: That would probably explain away her vacant expressions 98% of always.) (T: I assumed the blank expressions were from the botox that helps her look like a teenager.)

After failing miserably, Julie pays a visit to her ex-husband, Jimmy. After playfully calling her a bitch, he suggests she sleep with investors. JUST KIDDING, he had to specifically say not to because Julie is such a slut, RIGHT? HAHA. Either way, despite neither of them really saying anything resembling a complete thought, she magically has the “confidence to start plan B.”

Ryan and Lindsay and Seth and Alex all meet up at the weird high school bar, which is playing the most generic music I may have have ever heard. However, the extras really seem to be working for their $25 per day, as they’re just grooving down. Good on them. I mention the extras because despite how bored they look, they are infinitely more interesting than the main characters of the show who literally did hand-shake introductions for people they had already met. As behind them, a bartender pours what I can only expect to be gin and juice, cut the gin. (M: On the rocks!)

Sandy has decided to let his hair down, as he has moved a single chair and ottoman into the middle of an otherwise empty theater-sized family room of sorts. There’s a TV somewhere in front of him, which is odd because there’s no other furniture around. Is this Sandy’s TV? Or is this the TV they use for their virtual spin classes? That’s what rich people do, right?

Sweeney: I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND THIS SETUP. The best part is that in the next episode, someone will be watching TV here again, but it will magically be a couch instead of this strangely-small-for-the-space chair.

Tyler: Anyway, after spending 45 seconds telling Kirsten how her father has been giving him puntastic “dead ends,” as leads, and how he’s been giving him the run-around, Kirsten sees fit to tell him that if her “dad is acting weird, he’s hiding something.” Which is, after all, exactly what Sandy has been telling her. Good thing she’s not running that business. She’d really Julie it up.

Speaking of Julie, she shows up with an I Love Lucy joke in tow, informing the Cohens that they are, right this minute, having a party. Yakety Sax plays as there’s a fast-forward montage of the (all white) caterers setting up for this party.

Hopping back to the high school bar/concert venue, The Killers! And it actually appears to be The Killers, which incidentally is the best thing to come of the first half of this episode. While the crowd was pretty jazzed in the beginning, as the scene cut to the characters needing to talk, suddenly the music got very quiet, and everyone was standing there, mostly dead. Maybe the zombie apocalypse came to Newport? Anyway, this is a second scene portraying how badly things are going since each pair of this “group hang” has no interest in being there, but rather than everyone just leaving, they stick it out because schadenfreude, right? Or, more accurately, they had to wait around long enough for the one set of main characters to run into the other set of main characters in the weirdly sedate crowd at this concert. The awkwardness reigns.

Sweeney: It’s a damn shame, too, because THE KILLERS! It has been at least a few episodes since I’ve acknowledged how all the music on this show is the soundtrack of my high school years. </musical acknowledgement>

Tyler: And back to the Cohen’s: Kirsten discusses the slutty Julie with Jimmy, as Julie cups some old white guy’s old white ass. But, only briefly, as we have to go back to the concert to see Summer obsess over Seth, Lindsay stare longingly at Ryan, Marissa stare longingly at Ryan, and Alex cast sidelong glances to check out Ryan. I’m not sure how old Alex is supposed to be, but I kind of get the feeling that she and Ryan should be standing at least 3 or 4 Chris Hansens apart, given the looks she’s giving him.

Once again, back to the Cohen’s (are you dizzy yet? If this recap is disjointed, blame the superb editing of The OC.). Sandy looks forlorn as he sees Caleb hand over the ole rectangle-stuffed manila envelope to some new strange woman. Caleb continues to be shifty, and tells Sandy to keep out of his business, even though Sandy is his lawyer trying to keep him from going to prison. It isn’t immediately clear that Caleb knows how Attorney/Client privilege works.

Back to the club, Alex sets Ryan straight, with the first honest conversation he’s ever had in his life with a woman. Because as you are all well aware, women are incapable of having real conversations. Science says the uterus causes them to have feelings and emotions, which are the bane of every over-privileged teenage boy’s life. (Anyway, she knows he likes Lindsay, and tells him to tell her. He tries but gets shut down. He appears to almost show an emotion other than boredom on his face.

At the Rich White Folk Gala at the Cohen’s, Julie continues to woo investors by flirting and getting them drunk. Because if there’s one way to bamboozle rich white men into investing in multi-million dollar real estate deals, it’s by showing a little leg and giving them well whiskey for free. Julie pretends that Kirsten apologizes, and the editors saw fit to cut us back to the club.

Sweeney: This is a teenager show. Nobody really cares about the grown ups and their B plot.

Mari: But also the teenager A plot is pretty light and definitely not enough to fill an episode. And that is how an episode of The OC is made.

Tyler: As Ryan and Seth commiserate over their failed dates, the music changes and the lights lower, and Ryan and Seth lean in for a kiss. Wait, nope. Sorry. That was just my brain trying to find something that might be interesting or remotely Original about this so-called Content.

It occurs to me just now as Alex hands over the band’s portion of the door to their manager that she is the owner/proprietor (S: Not quite, but de facto, because contrivance has made her some sort of teen dropout wunderkind manager) of this high school hangout joint. Earlier she was saying it was her night off, and why would she want to hang out here on her night off? Except she ALSO said that live music was her “passion,” AND if she runs the place, who was she planning on having pay the band? Particularly with a tiny stack of bills over the desk. ANYWAY. I’m sure it’s not important.

Seth lets Alex know how poorly it went, be calling his experience being “discoed,” which is a word I have no idea what it means in this context. And you know what? I am willing to never know. Inexplicably, Alex kisses Seth, after which Chris Hansen has a stroke. The wicked, lecherous Alex then takes Seth out for ice cream, a common pedophile tactic. (S: 9/10 times that one makes that accusation in Traumaland, you’re right! This just happens to be the 1/10 where a show’s inability to know how teenagers work has confused things.) (M: They tried to tell us Luke is 18, so I’m willing to say this show is just straight lying to us.)

DJ somehow finds Marissa on one of any number of OC beaches, and the two instantly make up and make out, but because this is TV, we can’t see too much so the camera pans out over the dark, soothing ocean. Which is the second best thing to come from this episode so far.

In case anyone didn’t understand what happened earlier in the episode, as Lindsay refuses a ride from Ryan, he gets out of the car to stand with her. She reveals, astonishingly, that she was duped! She thought Ryan was asking her out! The refrain of the sad guitar riff wafts gently over the conversation. It likely still isn’t a sign. As she says AGAIN that she thought it was him asking, but this time the music morphs into an affirming, slightly uplifting piano solo, letting us all know that things are going to be okay. Fortunately, this is also signaling that the episode is nearly over, since most of the many, weak threads are coming together.

Closing up the other threads, we come back to the Cohen’s boudoir, whereupon Sandy begins describing a “familiar” triangle between himself, Kirsten, and Caleb. While perhaps true, not quite the bedroom image anyone wanted, I think. (S: Thanks for making sure we all got it, Tyler!) (T: Just think of the post-triangle frittata and cigarette.)

And because these are teenagers, we are treated to an ending montage during which we get to see Summer and Zach sitting arm in arm at the foot of her bed. Because the network can’t say they’re going to have sex, cause that would be wrong. We see a similar image of Marissa and DJ, the pedophilic ice cream of Alex and Seth, and we watch a bus pass by for Ryan and Lindsay, bringing the world of The OC to a nice close.

I’m going to go take a shower now. And drink heavily. And pretend like this TV show was never made. Thanks, Snark Squad.

Sweeney: We have been toying with new slogan ideas…

Next time: We’ve been short on dances, so the rich people are bringing in snow for the holidays. Find out who gets punched on The OC S02 E05 – The SnO.C.