Ryan, try not to punch Summer.
So one week removed from the Cohens unrealistic and yet successful attempts to get Ryan re-instated into Harbor private school despite his punching a school official in public earlier this year, Ryan is back to his old ways, needing to be bailed out of another half dozen potentially expellable offenses. You really gotta admire his stick-to-it-iveness. He keeps telling everybody that the "normal" Newport Beach lifestyle is not for him, and boy, does he know himself. And yes, he does fill his quota of punching someone out at least once a month. Although it is fortunately not Summer.
Seth fears for Summer's safety only because she is the bearer of bad news - that Marissa blew off a Cohen dinner invite to hang out with her new "pal" from the Newport Union public school, surfer boy Johnny. This occurs only a few days after Ryan backed out of plans to leave town on a fishing boat because Marissa begged him to stay. And yeah, she's already two-timing him. Bitch.
Well not really, but it certainly seems that way, as after Johnny shares a story of how he took a baseball bat to his father's head to protect his mother from being injured or killed, Marissa feels a close bond to him, especially since the person she saved by shooting another (Ryan) doesn't seem all that interested in discussing how she almost killed his brother. Of course, Ryan's never much for talking anyway, probably less so when it involves the near-death of himself and his only remaining family member. But he's selfish that way.
Anyway, this "drama" unites Marissa's new friends with her old friends, as Seth, Summer, and Ryan get to spend some "quality" time with the local surfer dudes - at least those not rich enough to go to private school, but still rich enough to have places on the beach in Orange County. And Johnny's friend is particularly smitten with Summer.
"I don't get it, why don't you like me?" he asks.
"I'm already dating a dork," Summer replies.
And while all this is going on in the bizarro world, ultra-annoying Taylor Townsend has co-opted the school gymnasium for some sort of student "lock-in", which is somehow mandatory for students to attend and basically involves all the kids being stuck at school on a Saturday night for some new age bonding exercises. This does not go well, as Taylor slowly becomes the most unpopular person on the planet (well, besides the idiot writer coming up with these storylines), until Seth decides to save her, having overheard an argument between Taylor and her mother that taught Seth where Taylor got her most endearing annoyances.
Of course in the meantime, Summer and Ryan are off trying to save Marissa from being seduced by Johnny, thereby jeopardizing Ryan's attendance at the mandatory function and putting his school future in doubt again, but he's saved by Seth's new friendship with Taylor, who succumbs to Seth's manly charms to write in his friends' names for them. And then begins planning a romance with him, which... ew. Can't wait for that storyline to develop. Ugh.
Anyway, back at Casa de Surf, Marissa and Johnny discover Johnny's girlfriend sleeping with Johnny's sworn enemy, at around the same time as Ryan shows up at the party and after a bunch of confusing events, Ryan ends up finding Johnny on the beach confronting his enemy, which prompts Ryan into executing his classic "one-punch knockout". Of the other guy. Not Johnny, the guy trying to hook up with his girlfriend. I said it was confusing.
And there was a whole other storyline involving Jeri Ryan, who is inexplicably still on this show without any good reason, and Julie "widowed, broke, and living out of motel" Cooper-Nichol involving a potential charity scam windfall that is going to be about as boring a storyline as the whole Seth/Summer/Taylor and Marissa/Ryan/Johnny "love triangle" plots the writers are setting up. I don't know if I'm just getting too old for this show or if it's just really starting to suck big time. Although I don't mind the new Johnny character so much. He's already a better actor than Ryan and Marissa, by basically being able to show more range than cardboard. So there's that.
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