The OC Season 4 discs 4 and 5
Jan. 25th, 2019 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessSuitably, the finale edged it of the four episodes on the fourth disc.
‘The Case of the Franks’ has a bad case of the flashbacks. Valentine’s Day is approaching (this show and its holidays). Ryan wants to keep it low-key, and is fortunate Taylor is distracted by trying to reunite him and his father. Meanwhile Kirsten is feeling nostalgic, just as a fortune teller (aka means for the show to be all meta) causes Summer and Seth to doubt that they are each other’s destiny. So, we have a flashback to the famous mermaid poem, and learn Summer nicked it off Taylor (I always remembered that bit). Kirsten isn’t so sad about her flashback!perm, or breaking up with Jimmy (which is definitely teased), but that she aborted his baby, went to uni, met Sandy and never really talked about it.
Melinda Clarke plays a blinder as Julie tries hard to make things work with a chivalrous (for him) Bullet, simply because Kaitlyn loves the father figure she’s settled on, while she cares more for Frank. OF COURSE Kaitlyn and Taylor (with Ryan’s help) turn into warring teams, battling for Julie’s Valentine attentions by proxy. It’s best just to go along with all this, obviously, because then you’ll laugh.
It was noticeable that they used the device of a flashforward and then returning us back in time AGAIN in ‘The Shake Up’. Taylor is now obsessed, for reasons that make sense to her, with getting Ryan to say he loves her. Instead of giving her sensible advice, Summer enables her crazy antics, while Seth gives Ryan bad advice (not that Frank has a great track record either, so I’d say listen to Sandy on this one) lead to Ryan hurting Taylor badly on her birthday.
Don’t hurt Taylor on her birthday, Ryan.
But Summer is capable of giving Seth good advice on not being so jaded. In a plotline that gave us clown porn (thanks, show) Kaitlyn is acting out over Julie/Frank, but reaches a heartfelt point with her mother. Meanwhile, Kirsten has JUST REALISED how awful Newport is. I mean, she could and should have ignored the young mothers-to-be (or ratted them out to social services), but Mrs Spitzy was ghastly. But she’s been living there for most of Seth’s life.
After all the portents that the big one is coming, the big one (an earthquake) doth come with the main characters split up in couples/dyads.
‘The Night Moves’, which deals with the after-effects of the earthquake, is tonally uneven. Our initial belief that everyone is fine is shaken (how probable was it that Seth pulled Summer to safety?) I got het up at the girls’ capability in a crisis being undermined by Ryan’s sexist gallantry/the show’s need for Seth and Ryan time. Basically, this episode wanted Seth to have his moment and be the one rescuing Ryan and I didn’t buy it. Sure, have Ryan hide his injury from Taylor because of the blood phobia, but why not tell Summer who would have got things sorted with much less extra blood loss?
They could have played up the belief in zombies as a coping mechanism more, and the joke about Ryan’s thing being to punch people was funny, but (spoiler!) it’s brought up in the finale also. Summer and Taylor had Pancakes-related shenanigans, and there was finally a maternal instinct from Veronica – and if you wanted proof that Taylor was now firmly a member of the new core four, it was in Veronica hobbling along after the created family/regulars leaving the hospital in slo-mo.
Before that could happen, aftershocks and Kirsten’s pregnancy did not mix, leading to full-on Jewish father queue jumping from Sandy. And a boy we’d never met before lied to Julie and Kaitlyn to spend more time with the object of his crush – to clarify, that’s Kaitlyn, who ended up with a sweet deal of free ice-cream forever. Ryan seemed to be released incredibly quickly, and then we had an excellent close for the penultimate episode of the show, as Ryan and Cohens returned home…to find it wrecked.
‘The End’s Not Near…It’s Here’ is a laboured title, no?
Strictly speaking, this finale is a bit disjointed, but it’s a finale that was forced on them. So, we get fresh starts, a wedding that moves location and then doesn’t happen, another wedding we care about more to make up for it and more callbacks than I realised (the commentary is instructive on this front). There were nice nods to Marissa and her role in Ryan’s life and the show (see, I can be nice about her). It helps that Julie and Summer are played by actresses who continue to look good even when being dewy-eyed.
It starts off six months after the earthquake, and I felt cheated about not having seen the following play out: Ryan’s moustache and subsequent break-up with Taylor; the Cohens moving in with Julie; the drama between Julie and Frank. I was less bothered about missing out on Seth and Summer stagnate and Kirsten be pregnant.
We got caught up enough to understand the shocking twist that Julie was going to marry the Bullet after all. With the Newport house officially a write-off, ready-to-pop Kirsten was willing to buy any house, even if it made her sad, so the boys had a mission to get back the Berkley home, mainly achieved by commandeering the house for some The OC madness (a birth, a wedding-that-wasn’t and a ‘christening’).
We then fast-forwarded to Sethummer’s wedding, and I read the exchange of glances between Taylor and Ryan as affectionate, AT LEAST. So, yes, I took the liberty of reading into it as a shipper.
But I agree that the heart of the show was the family/home stuff, and ending on Ryan helping out a kid just like he’d once been was a lovely note. I listened to Josh Schwartz’s commentary where he admitted to the course correction that was season 4, which I, obviously, welcomed, being a fan of the rom com.
Disc 5 is a bonus disc of extras, which consists of an overindulgent feature about ‘Christmukkuh’, a better feature about the arc of Summer (though, to be honest, I’d have preferred it to be about Julie) and two bitty dropped scenes. What I did learn from all that was that Season 1!Seth’s hair looked better than Ryan’s, Kirsten’s and Sandy’s.
So, I am now rereading Taylor/Ryan fics and about to move on to watching Burn Notice season 3 on DVD.
‘The Case of the Franks’ has a bad case of the flashbacks. Valentine’s Day is approaching (this show and its holidays). Ryan wants to keep it low-key, and is fortunate Taylor is distracted by trying to reunite him and his father. Meanwhile Kirsten is feeling nostalgic, just as a fortune teller (aka means for the show to be all meta) causes Summer and Seth to doubt that they are each other’s destiny. So, we have a flashback to the famous mermaid poem, and learn Summer nicked it off Taylor (I always remembered that bit). Kirsten isn’t so sad about her flashback!perm, or breaking up with Jimmy (which is definitely teased), but that she aborted his baby, went to uni, met Sandy and never really talked about it.
Melinda Clarke plays a blinder as Julie tries hard to make things work with a chivalrous (for him) Bullet, simply because Kaitlyn loves the father figure she’s settled on, while she cares more for Frank. OF COURSE Kaitlyn and Taylor (with Ryan’s help) turn into warring teams, battling for Julie’s Valentine attentions by proxy. It’s best just to go along with all this, obviously, because then you’ll laugh.
It was noticeable that they used the device of a flashforward and then returning us back in time AGAIN in ‘The Shake Up’. Taylor is now obsessed, for reasons that make sense to her, with getting Ryan to say he loves her. Instead of giving her sensible advice, Summer enables her crazy antics, while Seth gives Ryan bad advice (not that Frank has a great track record either, so I’d say listen to Sandy on this one) lead to Ryan hurting Taylor badly on her birthday.
Don’t hurt Taylor on her birthday, Ryan.
But Summer is capable of giving Seth good advice on not being so jaded. In a plotline that gave us clown porn (thanks, show) Kaitlyn is acting out over Julie/Frank, but reaches a heartfelt point with her mother. Meanwhile, Kirsten has JUST REALISED how awful Newport is. I mean, she could and should have ignored the young mothers-to-be (or ratted them out to social services), but Mrs Spitzy was ghastly. But she’s been living there for most of Seth’s life.
After all the portents that the big one is coming, the big one (an earthquake) doth come with the main characters split up in couples/dyads.
‘The Night Moves’, which deals with the after-effects of the earthquake, is tonally uneven. Our initial belief that everyone is fine is shaken (how probable was it that Seth pulled Summer to safety?) I got het up at the girls’ capability in a crisis being undermined by Ryan’s sexist gallantry/the show’s need for Seth and Ryan time. Basically, this episode wanted Seth to have his moment and be the one rescuing Ryan and I didn’t buy it. Sure, have Ryan hide his injury from Taylor because of the blood phobia, but why not tell Summer who would have got things sorted with much less extra blood loss?
They could have played up the belief in zombies as a coping mechanism more, and the joke about Ryan’s thing being to punch people was funny, but (spoiler!) it’s brought up in the finale also. Summer and Taylor had Pancakes-related shenanigans, and there was finally a maternal instinct from Veronica – and if you wanted proof that Taylor was now firmly a member of the new core four, it was in Veronica hobbling along after the created family/regulars leaving the hospital in slo-mo.
Before that could happen, aftershocks and Kirsten’s pregnancy did not mix, leading to full-on Jewish father queue jumping from Sandy. And a boy we’d never met before lied to Julie and Kaitlyn to spend more time with the object of his crush – to clarify, that’s Kaitlyn, who ended up with a sweet deal of free ice-cream forever. Ryan seemed to be released incredibly quickly, and then we had an excellent close for the penultimate episode of the show, as Ryan and Cohens returned home…to find it wrecked.
‘The End’s Not Near…It’s Here’ is a laboured title, no?
Strictly speaking, this finale is a bit disjointed, but it’s a finale that was forced on them. So, we get fresh starts, a wedding that moves location and then doesn’t happen, another wedding we care about more to make up for it and more callbacks than I realised (the commentary is instructive on this front). There were nice nods to Marissa and her role in Ryan’s life and the show (see, I can be nice about her). It helps that Julie and Summer are played by actresses who continue to look good even when being dewy-eyed.
It starts off six months after the earthquake, and I felt cheated about not having seen the following play out: Ryan’s moustache and subsequent break-up with Taylor; the Cohens moving in with Julie; the drama between Julie and Frank. I was less bothered about missing out on Seth and Summer stagnate and Kirsten be pregnant.
We got caught up enough to understand the shocking twist that Julie was going to marry the Bullet after all. With the Newport house officially a write-off, ready-to-pop Kirsten was willing to buy any house, even if it made her sad, so the boys had a mission to get back the Berkley home, mainly achieved by commandeering the house for some The OC madness (a birth, a wedding-that-wasn’t and a ‘christening’).
We then fast-forwarded to Sethummer’s wedding, and I read the exchange of glances between Taylor and Ryan as affectionate, AT LEAST. So, yes, I took the liberty of reading into it as a shipper.
But I agree that the heart of the show was the family/home stuff, and ending on Ryan helping out a kid just like he’d once been was a lovely note. I listened to Josh Schwartz’s commentary where he admitted to the course correction that was season 4, which I, obviously, welcomed, being a fan of the rom com.
Disc 5 is a bonus disc of extras, which consists of an overindulgent feature about ‘Christmukkuh’, a better feature about the arc of Summer (though, to be honest, I’d have preferred it to be about Julie) and two bitty dropped scenes. What I did learn from all that was that Season 1!Seth’s hair looked better than Ryan’s, Kirsten’s and Sandy’s.
So, I am now rereading Taylor/Ryan fics and about to move on to watching Burn Notice season 3 on DVD.
