Summer: "You remember when the boys made us watch that movie about the gay guys on the mountain?"
Marissa: "Lord of the Rings?"
Summer: "Yeah."
Ok. That was pretty funny. In a somewhat redeeming episode of a series that I swore off two weeks ago yet continue to watch, Marissa recovers long enough from her latest drug and alcohol meltdown to get accepted into a prestigious university and reconnect with Summer after their longest feud since grade school. Yes the plot was ridiculous, as the writers seem completely willing to suspend all sense of reality while throwing plots and tertiary characters at us with lightning speed, but in the end, it focused mostly on Seth, Summer, Ryan, and Marissa, had enough witty repartee to remind us why we ever started watching the show in the first place, and didn't play any particularly crappy music in the process. So I guess it worked. And the kids are off to college!
On the realism scale, Marissa and Ryan - two students expelled from school, one for punching a teacher and the other for shooting someone - getting into Cal-Berkeley despite never being seen studying (at least in Marissa's case), never playing any sports, and hardly doing any extracurricular activities, is only slightly more realistic than Summer getting into the Ivy League while her straight-A boyfriend Seth did not get accepted. Of course, if they'd both gotten into school, there would be no reason for the episode's plot and their subsequent big breakup, which had the added side effect of getting Summer and Marissa to reconcile. So in the end, Summer's going to be going to Brown to hook up with a bunch of brainy frat guys, while Seth is stuck in Casa Cohen and the Newport he hates for the rest of his life. Maybe if he didn't stop whining so much karma would give him a break.
In the meantime, Marissa is doubting whether she even wants to go to college, ready to throw her life away because Ryan dumped her ass and is all over his new chick Sadie while she's stuck slumming with Volchok. And this results in another episode with way too much Volchok for my pleasure. Even though we still don't find out what exactly he does in life or who the fuck he is. What does he do for a living anyway? Surf badly and grunt a lot? How much does that pay these days? But seriously, who pays his rent? And how can he afford to go to Baja? And why am I supposed to give a shit about this tertiary character? And why am I still watching this show???
Deep breath. Ok. But no, I was talking about what a good episode it was. Let's continue. Ok well the kids were expecting their college acceptance letters. All on the same day. Yes apparently Brown (in Rhode Island) and Berkeley (in California) coordinated with each other and every other school in the country to make sure their letters to prospective students all arrived on the same day. Now I'm guessing that this is a new invention because I don't remember this from when I was in high school, or maybe only the kids in Orange County get their mail coordinated in this way, but in any event, the news is good for Summer and Ryan and Marissa and not so good for Seth. Well it isn't so good for Marissa as she dumps her letter in the trash to go drinking with Volchok, but she later reconsiders after a heart-to-heart with her mother, which has to be the first time anyone's actually taken what Julie has to say seriously but at least it works. Seth's really the only one who gets screwed and he decides to lie to Summer about getting in, even though he can't fake enthusiasm for it and eventually gets all mopey to the point where they break up.
In the dramatic end scene at the "college sweatshirt party", Seth finally tells her the truth and admits that he wants her to go to Brown without him. She says she can't but he insists, pretty much telling her that he wouldn't choose her over his future and won't let her do the same. She's crushed, but recovers enough to basically tell him to go fuck himself and storms away from the party. And we'll have to wait all the way until next week to see if they get back together again. The bigger question is what was up with the sweatshirt party? Yale. Princeton. UCLA. The Sorbonnes (what is that, in France?) These Harbor kids sure got into some good fucking schools. If my high school had a sweatshirt party, there'd be 7 Rutgers sweatshirts, 14 Trenton State, and 72 from Gloucester County College. I'm not sure if there is a sweatshirt for "work at the movie theater for the next five years while living in my parent's basement" but there'd be a lot of those too.
In another subplot that I could care less about, Sandy confronts the doctor who ordered Matt to get beat up and none of it makes any sense, but it eventually leads to a big fight with Kirsten and she storms out of the house, continuing the theme of angry women storming off. Next week hopefully this plot will be resolved, although in the coming attractions, it appeared as if Marissa and Volchok were back together. Ugh. Oh and I didn't even mention how Ryan and Sadie went from their first date to moving in together to breaking up all in the span of a single episode. Tell me again - why am I still watching the show?
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