Season 1, Episode 3
Date of airing: August 19, 2003 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.96 million viewers, 5.3/9 in Households, 3.5/10 with Adults 18-49
written by: Jane Espenson
directed by: Ian Toynton
There was something highly emotional about this episode when it came to Kirsten’s transformation from being a “Ryan denier” to becoming his official guardian. This change happened in the span of 44 minutes (although if we're honest here, it happened over the course of all of the first three episodes) and it was quite an impressive change – so much that I was somewhat emotionally affected by the end when she and Ryan walked into the kitchen and she said “Ryan’s staying with us now,” giving the episode something of a happy end although Ryan’s mother just walked out on him. It’s like Kirsten has come to realize that this troubled boy is more than that, that he needs all the help he can get, and that she might be the only one able to get him that help. It’s also a realization that Kirsten has been wrong about her assumption that Ryan only brings trouble to her family and the community of Newport Beach. Granted, Ryan technically brought trouble into the Cohen family on his first day in the neighborhood, but it’s not like it was Ryan who caused all the trouble. Yes, he was the first to punch the hell out of Douche-Luke at Holly’s party in the pilot episode, and then he did the same the following episode in the diner and he was involved in burning down Kirsten’s model home, but Ryan was a troubled-enough soul ready for redemption for Kirsten to take him under her wings. To become a mother. Or at least a proper mother figure, which she may have never been for Seth before.
Before Ryan would become part of the Cohen family though, he was smelling some of that jail smell again. Again, arrested after something he did with the majority of the blame to be put on someone else, and again, fearing that he will be left behind once more when everybody realizes that no one cares for him. But Kirsten cared for him and so she got him out of jail after a little incident with VERONICA MARS’s Eli Navarro (is this typecasting?). What follows is an attempt Sandy’s to get Ryan’s mother Dawn back into his life. Things seem to be going pretty well at first, but alcohol destroys everything as everybody knows, and so Dawn falls down and walks away, saying goodbye to her son with a quick wave of her hand, never to be seen again. Hopefully. For Ryan’s sake.
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| Everybody is looking for some luck while gambling. |
I do hope though that between Dawn leaving Ryan behind and Kirsten and Ryan walking into the kitchen, a lot of time has passed between those two moments. Because between Ryan pretty much losing his mother on the spot and Ryan being so happy that he will be unpacking later, now that he is staying with the Cohens, there’s a huge difference in emotions for Ryan, yet both scenes happened back to back and both scenes had emotional punches set at opposite ends of the spectrum. I was a little bit weirded out by that unfolding of events, especially since I was expecting a huge emotional and melodramatic goodbye between mother and son, but I guess Ryan’s distance from his mother (which was established when the two had a talk in the pool house) was large enough for him to get over his mother’s failure quickly. And who knows, maybe he liked it a lot in Newport Beach at this point that he was celebrating in his mind that he was staying and wouldn’t have to deal with the drama of his mother any longer. No more boozed-out Dawn, no more drugs in the house that come from her abusive boyfriends. Dealing with the jealous boyfriend of the girl next door may be the way to go for Ryan now.
It was a very solid episode, and I consider this the third and final act of the three-hour pilot. The third act of a movie maybe, which had a few conflicts here and there, and some of them are resolved. Jimmy’s financial problems were solved, even if it meant that his marriage with Julie is strained now, so you could basically cut the first three episodes together and show them as a feature film if you so desire. The only thing I didn’t like about this episode was the back and forth between the love triangle here. Ryan, for some reason, seemed able to talk to Marissa, while Luke was trying his best to stay away from the girl he supposedly loved. Marissa on the other hand decided to hang out with Ryan a couple of times, knowing that it will make Luke crazy. She might have done that part on purpose, but I also saw that she was trying to resolve that conflict with her boyfriend, and she kind of made it worse by continuing to talk to Ryan and looking at him like she was undressing him in her mind. That almost made Luke and Marissa’s final moment – holding hands – kind of ridiculous because it came out of nowhere in the middle of what was supposed to be a fight. Then again, isn’t this what THE O.C. was supposed to be about this early in the show? Create love triangles left and right and make it as complex as possible with the help of sped-up plot developments?
Meanwhile, I really cannot stand Julie, but there is something else that makes the show fascinating, which I noticed thanks to my hatred for Julie: Sandy and Kirsten have chemistry together, I can buy their marriage and their love. Which I can’t do when it comes to Jimmy and Julie who feel like they aren’t married and instead roommates who just started to argue over who is paying this month’s rent. This could be an intended factor in the narrative for the early episodes (especially to give rise to thoughts of Kirsten and Jimmy getting together and cheating on their spouses), but that still doesn’t help the fact that Julie could be the Kimberly Shaw of THE O.C., about to collect the materials she needs to blow up a building in this neighborhood. While that would be a great twist for the future of the show, dealing the audience a villainous character from the beginning was not really a good thing to do.
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| The goodbye mother shows her goodbye wave. |
And then there was Seth, who was sort of happy that he got to blow
into Summer’s hands on a regular basis. It was obviously a nice attempt
at introducing the two and creating a storyline from here that involves
the two hanging out more and becoming interested in one another, because
when you look at it from the version of Summer from the pilot episode,
you would think she wouldn’t be interested at all in having someone like
Seth around, let alone using him for blowing her into her hands and
dice. It turns out her superstition brought him the greatest evening he
ever had. One might think that Summer is not that kind of character, but
in this case, convenient storytelling is convenient, and Seth has
something to dream about for a few episodes. Seth is lucky that Summer doesn't seem to have any friends to call upon when it comes to being her "Rabbit's foot."
