Date of airing: January 14, 2004 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 8.57 million viewers, 5.4/8 in Households, 3.8/9 with Adults 18-49
I’m surprised that Ryan wasn’t punching the wall at the very end, putting a bunch of holes in it like my father used to do with the door he hit after his daughters were a little unruly and didn’t listen to him. That hole in the door remained there until we moved out of the flat, always reminding us all of the potential abuse we could have gotten if things had gone horribly wrong. Ryan needed to put his anger and frustration somewhere and he definitely couldn’t do that straight into Oliver’s face, even if he absolutely wanted to. Even if Luke wanted him to, as well as the entire audience in front of their television screens. Yet the boy was just standing there. He closed the door behind him, made a weird facial expression, hard rock music was playing, and Ryan didn’t do anything except be angry in his head.
Ryan Atwood, you are the weakest boy in town, although maybe that is exactly who the character is supposed to be in this moment – the one who doesn’t start fights in the hopes of not disappointing Kirsten and Sandy, to not risk his current situation that brought some kind of normalcy into his crappy life, to want to stay out of juvenile detention and another home for troubled youths. Ryan had reason to speak up here, but consider me shocked that he wasn’t able to form his suspicions into words and let at least Marissa know that something is mentally wrong with Oliver, and that Marissa definitely shouldn’t stay overnight or just let her know that something is seriously wrong with Oliver. Ryan just walked away.
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| The poor kid from Chino tries his hand at rich-people sport. |
Meanwhile, Oliver has become a supervillain in this episode, beginning with his fine moment of hiding the photo of Marissa and Ryan behind a photo of Marissa and her father, going over to manipulating events that lead him to some alone time with Marissa, and ending with his fake suicide attempt that also could have been an actual suicide attempt (considering how crazy this kid seems to be). The only thing that was missing in this entire scenario was Oliver’s Trump-like thumbs up to Ryan at the end, suggesting that his plan of removing Marissa from Ryan is working. Marissa is his now, and Ryan can either piss off and cry in a back alley or start trading fists and lose Marissa for good (as well as all of Newport Beach, because it would break his parole and he’s back in detention). Of course, Oliver has some kind of fascination with Marissa, but I was wondering if he tried to stir up Ryan into beating him up so he would get arrested and had to leave town again, or if Oliver is just nuts in general and all he wants is to take the girl away from a boy because it’s what he does best. It would surely be a great master plan.
The threesome storyline with Seth, Anna, and Summer bored me this time around, and I grew quickly annoyed with it. And not just that, Seth and Anna together were actually annoying as well. Their banter in the bedroom during Summer’s TV zapping was worthy of many eyerolls, and I connected with Summer during that moment – all I wanted was to get the hell out of that bedroom and go cry in a back alley because I had to be forced to go through this nightmare of banter of a couple romantically involved and I couldn’t escape from it. I’m starting to think that Seth and Anna couldn’t be less perfect for each other. I’m also starting to think the writers stopped giving Anna character depth, which means she has become a plot device for Seth and Summer and stopped being her own character (which she barely was in the first place, but I always had hoped she would when she and Summer were simultaneously vying for Seth’s affection). She had some depth when her story was all about getting together with the kid and getting Summer out of her way, but now that the story has concluded, she has become quite boring. I almost cannot believe that I’m praying for a quick break-up, so we can move on from this romance and let Summer have her chance with Seth.
And the story of the adults? Well, it turns out that Hailey had no business being in the series, since her story did not affect anyone. Sure, there was some drama here and there, she flirted with Ryan a little bit, she gave Kirsten a few moments of desperation and character depth that she wasn’t able to use, and I don’t think that recent events have changed their relationship, let alone Kirsten’s relationship with her father. Why waste a character like that for three episodes when there is no outcome or aftermath to it all? Or was it just a way to get Kirsten and Julie to bond over something, even if it’s weird to see them bond over something? Hailey came and left town, and she had nothing to show for it, as everything is still where it was when she arrived.
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| For once, a man is definitely not thinking about porn right now. |
But I did like Sandy and Jimmy’s story a little. Even though I’m laughing a bit that Sandy is going from one job to another ((first a public defender, then a hired gun at a fancy law firm, and now potential business partners with Jimmy?), the premise of Jimmy and Sandy doing a restaurant kind of intrigues me, and not just because the two men have turned from sort-of-adversaries to sort-of-best friends, with the option of becoming adversaries again if the restaurant idea is not going to pan out, or Jimmy and Kirsten are going to hang out again (I am surprised that Sandy just forgot all about that incident and considered Jimmy his best friend now). Yes, running a restaurant is a boring story for a soap opera, but who knows if the premise can lead to something good, despite a nice plot device to keep Jimmy in Newport Beach logically and not have him go through financial rock bottom and force him out of town with no story left for him. He already went crying in a back alley, so it’s time for him to dry up those tears and get a move on to save what is left of his reputation.
