Season 1, Episode 2
Date of airing: August 12, 2003 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.86 million viewers, 5.3/9 in Households, 3.5/10 with Adults 18-49
Teleplay by: Josh Schwartz
Story by: Allan Heinberg, Josh Schwartz
directed by: Doug Liman
Since the premiere episode of this glamorous primetime teen soap opera was so nicely focused on Ryan Atwood, the outsider of and newcomer to Newport Beach, it was time to start focusing on the other characters in this more important follow-up to the pilot, as Marissa and Luke’s relationship got to cram around in the treasure box of teenage relationship TV tropes, and the relationship between Kirsten and Jimmy took the spotlight for a hot minute or two, bringing the audience to believe that there might be an affair on the horizon. Sandy seems to be the perfect, loving, and caring husband, yet his wife Kirsten is the one who shares an intimate past with the neighbor, creating a lot of opportunities to fill upcoming episodes with storylines. Even Seth got a little bit of character depth during this hour, as he established himself as the other outsider of Newport Beach, although he has been living here for forever and just didn’t bother being “part of the community.” Teenagers were placed in various corners of life in this episode, and it turns out they weren’t the only ones occupying those corners, since their parents have somewhat joined them – it’s quite a chess move after two episodes, and the “pilot episode” of THE O.C. isn’t even over yet. One might wonder how changed the characters will be by the end of the season, compared to a few minutes before the series began: Seth, the shut-in who rather surfed and sailed a boat by himself and played computer games; Marissa, who rather hung out with the same people day in and night out and drinking herself into the night and oblivion; Sandy, who would still work his butt off as a public defender, with no better future for him in store; Jimmy, in the middle of a literally criminal midlife crisis...
And that is just the partial list of things that happened in this episode. It ended with a fire, and with Ryan almost having made his way to the morgue as a crispy corpse after that terribly egoistic macho fight between him and water polo team captain Luke (who may or may not shave his chest), proving that the kids in this Newport Beach bubble have nothing else to do than being constant hotheads. It's a good thig though that Ryan didn't become a victim for a CBS crime procedural though and this continues to be a primetime teen soap opera, with all the tension and drama and relationship hijinks you can imagine or remember from way back when in BEVERLY HILLS, 90210.
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| Welcome to your new home: an empty house with an empty pool. |
This was a solid episode, looking like the second part of a long series pilot, especially since the pilot and this episode ended in a very similar fashion. Ryan was walking (or driving) into an uncertain immediate future (in the pilot he was walking into an empty home, in this episode he was walking himself into handcuffs after walking out of a burning empty house), and then he was assisted to the place he would land shortly after the end of the episode (in the pilot, back to the Cohen mansion; in this episode, back to jail), because he couldn’t make the decision by himself whether to go or what to do. Those similarities might be coincidental and maybe it’s just me seeing them, but THE O.C., as far as I can remember, was actually known for rounding things up and looping certain moments of style and execution in a circle. There are moments in the season finale that come back to moments in the series premiere, and two moments of dialogue exchanges were notions of earlier moments in the episode (the “bad joke” thing during the Cohen dinner scene; the “I can keep a secret” promise between Ryan and Marissa). Fact is, the writers immediately knew what they wanted to do with the show, and they didn’t just want to write down a story involving teenagers in a cliched world. THE O.C. was supposed to have something special, to make it a noteworthy show, and to make the interested viewers analyze it a little bit.
But the fact that this episode is just another chapter of the three-hour-long pilot shows itself with the fact that Ryan’s future is still uncertain and that things have actually worsened for him. Granted, it’s what was supposed to happen to him in this soap opera, but the first story arc of his character should be all about finding a place in Newport Beach, and calling this place home, yet he was a drifter in this episode, unsure whether he would stay at the spot he currently is the next morning or if he will be on a bus driving towards a new life, which might be worse than the current life he has now. Things are currently super hard for Ryan right now, so you better shed a tear for this boy, and it means that Ryan’s first story in Newport Beach wasn’t just a one-and-done deal. It takes time to get settled, it can’t just be concluded in the very first episode. It’s one of the things I must have immediately liked about the show or I wouldn’t have run home from a day-long school trip one day, just to make sure I wouldn’t miss the next episode of THE O.C., and yes, this really is a thing that happened. A school trip and I only made it home with minutes to spare...
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| ESPN Classics for the ratings win! |
Relationship things were going on in this episode. I was a bit fascinated by the fact that Marissa was interested in spending the night with Ryan, even though she had only known him for two or three days. I was also interested in Jimmy’s little dilemma and how he decided he would beg for money, considering the viewers had only known him for two episodes. Introducing a character like him in that way might backfire in the long run, because how are you going to be able to see Jimmy in a different light when the first thing he did in the show was to lose money and ask his neighbor for $100k? Especially when the trouble of money was also risking his marriage and relationship with his family (Marissa’s “Do we?”, after Jimmy’s “We talk to each other” was poignant in that regard). Even the father/son relationship between Seth and Sandy had meaning, especially when you compare it to Jimmy and Marissa’s father/daughter relationship. Sandy said he would join Seth in running away, but Jimmy on the other hand didn’t even know what was emotionally going on in Marissa’s life to even think about joining her in her escape. One pair of parent/child know each other and are close, the other pair don’t and are extremely distant.
That’s kind of major after only two episodes and it makes for a great TV drama, and serves as a nice way to put a mirror between the characters and the audience, and have them ask themselves if they have similar relationships with their parents at home. The show wouldn’t have turned into a cultural phenomenon during the summer of 2003 if the audience would not have connected to it like this.
