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Hi Dirty Cousin --

How spectacular was The O.C. last night?  I loved pretty much every minute of that.  This was the best prom since Sunnydale High had theirs.  Remember?  Buffy won that special prize from her fellow students for saving people's lives, then Angel showed up and they danced to "Wild Horses" while I cried and cried.  I think maybe we dressed up for that one. 

Which was your favorite dress?  I thought that Anna's was really pretty, but not very prom-appropriate (but looked amazing for something you would throw in your bag before hopping on a plane).  I surprised myself and really liked Marissa's.  I usually disapprove of Marissa's dress sense reflexively, and I generally find dresses with that sort of extraneous stuff all bunched in the front to be unflattering and distracting.  Somehow, this one worked, though.  Summer's was fun and very prom-y -- I liked the flounces at the bottom.  That might have been my favorite.  Who had the best hair? 

Summer's fall off the stage was kind of funny, but nowhere near as good as her dancing.  I loved the twin music montages: the one with the photo shoot and then the one of Marissa consoling herself with her beloved tequila. 

A few things I didn't like.  I'm tired of the Ryan Hits Something storylines.  This one had even more homoerotic/homophobic subtext than usual, I thought, so much so that, to quote Whit Stillman: "What do you call what's above the subtext?"

Where was Julie?  She got maybe two lines and one really good non-verbal bit -- I'm guessing Melinda Clarke is improvising stuff like last night's signal to Marissa to adjust her boobs.

Veronica Mars had its prom episode this week as well, but no actual prom.  It was amazing.  I'm at the point again with Veronica Mars where I watch each episode with my hand over my mouth because I can't believe how good it is.  It's unpredictable, and yet, everytime I'm surprised by a plot twist or a line of dialogue, my next thought is, "Well, of course.  What else are they going to do?"  Especially great this week was the Veronica-Logan business and the incredibly hot Jackie-Wallace hotel sex scene.  Jackie, by the way, had the best dress on either show. 

It's taken me two years to notice that Harbor and Neptune High share a mascot.  Huh. 

Love,

-- Pete

The Role of Anna Stern Is Now Being Played By Mary J. Blige

Dear Jenny,

I can't deal with Samaire Armstrong's whickety-whack extensions.  Can you?  I think I have to watch last night's O.C. all over again because there was a lot I missed while I was wondering if she could just cut them out already and whose idea it was to glue them on in the first place.  What about her nails?  Did you see them?  I think if it weren't for all the questions Armstrong's appearance brought up, I would have found the Anna-Seth reunion endearing.  ("Confidence, Cohen!"  OK, I'm getting a little choked up.)

Otherwise . . . Theresa is now a high-powered hotel executive, sort of a Southern California version of Lorelai Gilmore.  That's fine.  I always liked Theresa, even though Navi Rawat has less affect than Mischa Barton, and her agent comes off as such a dink in Project Greenlight.  I guess it's nice that they wrapped up that whole weird paternity business, except it's lame that they did it without building any new story momentum.  Yeah, Ryan came home early from Berkeley, but we knew he would do that for some reason or other.  The Berkeley trip itself was pretty boring.  Marissa bonded with that guy we're never going to see again; Ryan found out that people in college come from all kinds of backgrounds.  Great. 

Kirsten and Sandy . . . There was slight improvement here, in that the supporting players in this storyline, seemingly jettisoned last week (although, disappointingly, not killed or sent to jail), stayed jettisoned -- for now at least.  Also, Kirsten left the house for the first time since that tedious Valentine's Day party.  So, slightly less boring, but it's still damned annoying that Sandy's character has been pissed upon just so we could get the Melrose Place-ish closing shot of Kirsten downing a glass of her beloved chardonnay. 

All in all, it was a middling episode, but an unusually poor showing for J.J. Philbin, the one writer on staff on whom I usually rely.

What did you think?  Did you watch it yet?  Are you disappointed that they blew right through Passover, again?  Where's the Nana? 

Love,

-- Pete

PS Good news: both Autumn Reeser and Willa Holland will be back full-time next season.

Don't Take It So Hard, Seth

Dear Jenny,

I feel really bad for our friend Seth Cohen.  I've been mostly annoyed with him lately (read "all this season, last season even more so, and especially during the whole Oliver debacle, over which I have still not gotten"), but I'm sorry that he did not get into the only university to which he applied.  (How weird was it that everyone seemed to have applied to just one school apiece?)  It was especially crappy of Brown to mail his rejection letter in an enormous envelope.  I remember when I was applying to colleges: you could tell as soon as you opened the mailbox, based on how large or thick the envelope was, whether you had gotten in or not.  Is that not true anymore?  You spend more time with young people than I do, so you might know.

I wonder if Seth was as disappointed as I was to see that Sandy is still embroiled in that Matt/hospital storyline.  Seeing Jeff Hephner's name among the guest star cards was the equivalent of the thin envelope from your back-up school (that would be SUNY Binghamton in my case).  I am incredulous that we have not yet wrapped this whole business up.  It looks like we have at least another week of it, too.  I wish the writers would do what they did last season, in "The Rainy Day Women," and just kill everything that doesn't work, in a single episode.  Have Matt, that hospital prick, the entire Newport Group for all I care, walk up to the Cohen house one by one to announce, "This just isn't working out.  I'm moving to Indianapolis to try to reunite with my mother, Bonnie Franklin.  Have a good life."

The writers sure didn't waste any time ushering Nikki Reed off the stage.  Oh, wait.  They did.  Wasn't Sadie about to leave last week?  What was the point of building an entire other episode around whether or not she and Ryan have a future? 

What did you think about that crazy outfit Marissa was wearing for most of the episode?  It was like she was heading to a costume party, dressed as Cognitive Dissonance: short jacket over long smock, over -- were those leggings?  I confess I shut down around the point where she tucked the stolen cash into her weird yet appropriate motorcycle boots.  Maybe the whole mess had something to do with how Volchok is a bad influence on her.  I noticed that he was wearing unfashionably wide-legged jeans while wandering around without his shirt, not shaving.

Love,

-- Pete

P.S. This is at least tangentially related: a Slate article about the dangers of romantic relationships on mostly non-romantic shows.  It's relevant to why I was so sick of Seth last season.  Totally unrelated: a fairly astute observation about the Luke-Lorelai relationship on Gilmore Girls.

P.P.S.  Thanks for the birthday wishes.  For the record, though, I'm 29, not 44 or whatever you said.  If I look older than my age, it might be because certain senior cousins I won't name keep interrupting my beauty sleep with late-night phonecalls.            

Happy Birthday, Dear Cousin

Dear Pete,

Happy Birthday!  I agree: the best present you could get this year is a better Sandy storyline. I didn't even see last week's episode (it was unviewably crackly due to some, uh, DIY cable wiring on my part) so I can't weigh in on that. I still don't think I'm ready to discuss the previous week's, which, as far as teen-family-sex-squirmfests go, ranks right up there with Joe Simpson discussing his daughter's D-cups/loss of virginity. Anyway. Am I the only one who thinks Volchok is clearly a ripoff of Jason from Laguna Beach, in some incredibly weird meta art-imitating-life-imitating-art thing?

My head hurts now. Enjoy your special day! How does it feel to be 42?

Love,

Jenny

The Return of Bad Marissa

Dear Jenny --

I haven't been inspired to write about last week's O.C.  It's not that it was bad, exactly, but it felt very rehashed.   

Marissa is drinking and pouting again, and everyone agrees that it's Volchok's fault.  What exactly is so bad about Volchok exactly?  So he uses some recreational drugs, sure, and he had that weird homoerotic vendetta with Ryan -- but who hasn't had one of those at this point?  Is it the stubble?  It's the stubble, right?  He is awfully stubbly for someone who's assumedly in high school. 

Then Julie and Dr Roberts are engaged.  Did we know that already?  I feel like maybe we already knew that.  Who told us?  The Fox promotions people?  Very well.  Summer and Julie had some OK lines, I thought, but I can't remember any of them.  The bit with Julie and the Roberts's Filipino maid was lame, except that Julie's non-verbal non sequitur at the end was kind of inspired.  Melinda Clarke is hilarious. (Not as funny as her IMDB photo, though.)

What is Matt still doing around?  Why do I even know that that guy's name is Matt?  When is Sandy going to get a better storyline?  Any answer, Fox promotions people?  I missed the scenes from this week's episode. 

Love,

-- Pete

A Day Without Autumn Reeser Is a Day Without Sunshine

Hi Jenny --

What the Hell was that last night?  The O.C.?  Was there one good line?  I'm trying to think.  Seth and Summer were, um . . . You know, usually, they're the funny ones, but I can't think what they were doing.  They had a subplot and it was . . . Nope.  Can't remember.  So Julie and Dr Roberts . . . Nope.  Nothing there.  So Sandy . . . Oh!  Wait.  This was funny.  Sandy went to Albuquerque to track down Ryan's mother, Bonny Lee Bakley.  Kirsten says, "Where are you going?"  Sandy says, "Albuquerque."  Kirsten asks, "Albuquerque, New Mexico?" rather than the obvious question: "How do you spell that?"   Because there's an Albuquerque , New Hampshire.  These days, it really seems like an episode without Taylor is an episode with very little to laugh about.

So, yeah.  This was not that great.  We don't care about Ryan and Theresa II, at all, like less than we care about Ryan and Marissa.  It's possible we care less about Ryan and Theresa II than we did about Ryan and that girl who was really Caleb's daughter, even.  I'm sort of interested in both of Marissa's potential new love interests, because they're both kind of creepy.  I'm still really surprised that that Jeff Hephner guy is still on the show. 

Then there was that crazy bit, in which Marissa returned to the model home, freaked out and took a header down the stairs.  What the Hell was that?

What did you think?  Did I miss something about this episode that really worked?  Are you looking forward to next week?  The folks in Fox's ever-reliable promotions department are making it look like we're going to have a teen orgy.  Can't wait!

Love,

 

-- Pete

The Chastest Game of Strip Poker Ever

Hi Jenny --

So I remember enjoying last night's episode of The O.C. and thinking that it included a fair number of good lines, but I watched The Office right after and that pushed out of my mind anything funny that Seth, Taylor, Summer or Julie might have said.   (It was a really good repeat of The Office: the one with the diversity training.) 

I do remember being incredibly disappointed when I saw Sandy's assistant and the woman from Firefly in the previouslies.  I thought we resolved that subplot during the last episode, back in February?  Now I think the reason I thought that was I wasn't paying attention to it because it was so boring.  Can you tell me when it's really over?

I'm slightly more interested in Ryan's sudden relationship with Theresa II, although I didn't need their whole adventure this week.  We didn't care about Johnny when he was alive, why would we care about his relationship with his never-before-seen deadbeat dad?  The only redeeming feature of that whole story was getting to see how Rod Rowland (the really attractive guy whose tattoo, voiced by Jodie Foster, talked to him, on that one episode of The X-Files in which Scully actually gets some) has aged, except that he was on Veronica Mars earlier this season, so we already knew the answer to that one: rough. 

The only subplot I did enjoy was the one in which Summer, Seth and Taylor were spying on Summer's Dad and Julie and then, only because the three of them -- especially Autumn Reeser -- have such good timing that they were able to salvage a lot of mediocre lines and cliches. 

Is your memory any better?  Did I forget something really funny or good?

Love,

-- Pete

Surfin' to Heaven

Hi Pete.

Good heavens, it was awful. How could it be so bad? I just don't understand how an episode that features dialogue like "The kids are on their way to the bait shop for the funeral" and "If I'm going to swallow something that disgusting, there better be something in it for me" could be that unwatchable. Anyway.

1. Um, surf funeral. Insert Calhalla joke here and let's just move on to something more interesting. Oh! But I will say that I thought it was weird that Tiny Tim's mother marched down the aisle with a bouquet and an escort like she was going to marry her dead son.

2. We hate new people! Stop bringing in new people! 
a. I was thinking the exact same thing, about that Brady Bunch spin-off with the interracial adoptees. I was reading something about that recently and why it got canned -- it was a political decision if I remember correctly -- which is why it's ALL THE CRAZIER THAT THIRTY YEARS LATER THE OC DOES THE SAME THING AND THEY'RE ALL WHITE.

3. Something something emo music? I don't understand your language, but I think you're dropping hints about what you want for your birthday. Just send me the link to your Amazon wish list.

I'll just let the incestuous underwear mix-up pass without comment because I'm planning to block it from my memory entirely.

And finally: I'd just like to note the precedent Peter Gallagher's eyebrows are setting cast-wide. Did you notice that? It's like there was no wax in LA that week. I'm not sure if I'm for or against.

Have a good weekend,

Jenny

What Happened to the Crockpot?

Hi Jenny --

Yeah, that was a pretty awful O.C. last night.  It's still playing in super slo-mo in my head, like the time I drove my Mom's car off the road and snapped an axle.   Here's my list of problems:

1. So all along we were supposed to care about Tiny Tim and be sad that he died, but by the end of the episode, which took place over about 24 hours, nearly everyone in the show had moved on?  Kaitlin tells that kid from her school, "Oh, yeah.  The boy I liked just fell off a cliff and died.  See you at school," which leads said kid to do a jig in the parking lot outside her double-wide?  And by the end of the episode, Kaitlin has more or less eloped with this psycho, but is all, "Last night I dreamed I went to Manderlay . . ." about Newport Beach?   Have we stopped even pretending that these people are human? 

2. No, really.  Who the Hell are all of these people?  Matt,  his girlfriend, Kaitlin's dopey stalker, Johnny's freaking jeweler?  How come all of a sudden they're getting more screentime than the only character we still care about, Peter freaking Gallagher?  I have two theories:

a. This was actually the pilot for a spin-off called Matt Loves That Chick from Firefly.  Remember that one episode of The Brady Bunch that was all about some random kid and his adoptive parents or the Mork from Ork episode of Happy Days?  It's like that. 

b. Valentine's Day is the television equivalent of Halloween, only instead of ghosts and goblins, we're haunted by boring tertiary characters. 

3. Josh Schwartz is starting to freak out my mp3 player. The O.C. Mix has always been uncomfortably close to my tastes, but last night was unusually so.  "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," which played during Johnny's memorial service, is a personal favorite  (Note to self: learn to surf, so that you can have a bitchin' beach funeral.), and the Sun Kil Moon cover of Modest Mouse's "Neverending Math Equation" is exactly the song I've had on perpetual repeat for the last week or so.  If the next episode features "The Dark Don't Hide It" by Magnolia Electric Co., you're going to have to help me accessorize an aluminum foil beanie.   

4. Related: that meta-joke about Death Cab for Cutie showing up on The Valley was not acceptable.  Meta-humor is hard to pull off.  Stop trying!

Thoughts?  Should we make like our friends in Newport Beach and just try to move on?  Johnny would have liked that.

-- Pete

Willa Holland Saved Chrismukkah

Hi Pete --

This is late, and brief, because I was getting my hair cut and that took a long time. The stylist flat-ironed it and now I look like Laurie Partridge. Actually, a little more like Keith. On to your discussion points:

1. I for one could not be happier that they killed off Tiny Tim. The only thing less interesting than the Marissa-Ryan storyline is the Marissa-Johnny storyline. If he shows up next week paralyzed or something, I'm boycotting the show.

2. Willa Holland is a revelation who's making me question my entire philosophy of TV viewing. It's some weird new TV math where the jump-the-shark moment actually triggers an upswing in the show's quality. Willa Holland fun fact: she plays Milkshake in J.T. Leroy's The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things!

3. I'm finding the Stony McBigBong stuff really funny. Maybe I'm just high.

4. Most. Boring. Sandy. Subplot. EVER. Give the man something to do!

That's all for now. Have a good weekend,

-- Jenny

PS: Remember that time we'd both been drinking and I was complaining about my split ends and you offered to give me a trim? And then you ended up cutting off, like, seven inches without asking? That was a really good haircut, though.