First things first: the results of last week's "Who's the Butch, Who's the Bitch" Alex/Marissa survey are in. Much thanks to all seven of you out there who actually cared enough to respond. I normally wouldn't bore the rest of you with the details of something this trivial, but then I realized that I have nothing better to do with my time than to spend multiple hours each week dissecting a teen melodrama; and that, however sad and insignificant it may be, it is my job as columnist to facilitate discussion of all things of trivial import (not my life""the poll. Smartass.) Moving along. I thought Alex had that "butch" shit on lockdown, but your submissions were divided almost 50-50. Most interesting answer comes courtesy of Adam Cohen of Alabama A&M University (Alabama A&M? What the hell kind of school is that? They don't even have thefacebook.com there. Ewww): "Marissa, obviously, will be the bitch. After all, she's already been screwed over by everyone close to her. To continue the trend: handcuff Marissa, give Alex a 9-inch strap-on, and play Rammestein on repeat in the background." Interesting perspective, Mr. Cohen. Good to see that they have a nuanced grasp of the ins and outs (no pun intended) of the feminine mystique down there in Alabama. Stick with racism for the time being.



As for this week's offering: some people I watched it with totally loved it. These "people" tended to be girls. Some people I watched it with thought it the same old mediocre shlock that has come to define Season Two. These "people" tended to be boys. I'm skewing somewhere towards the first group, though I'm not exactly sure what that says about my sexuality. But that's another column for another time. Kirsten catching Sandy play "Hide the Jew Like She's Anne Frank" is easily the best subplot of the entire season. Earth to Sandy, you dumb idiot""did you really think you were gonna get away with harboring your fugitive ex-fiancé in your law office with Kiki around? I mean, have you ever even watched any of the past O.C. episodes? That type of shit always gets blown up. You just got served.



As for the rebirth of the Seth/Summer saga, as much as I wanted to see them make out, and as unrealistic it was that they didn't (who has that type of self-restraint in high school? Who has that type of self-restraint in college? For that matter, who has any self-restraint whatsoever? I'd like to meet you, person-with-self-restraint, if you exist in any capacity outside of a teen soap opera), the writers made the right call by holding off. Where the erred on the side of plausibility, though, was with the Caleb/Ryan showdown. Who wasn't rooting for a real fist fight there? It wouldn't have been that outside the norm of O.C.-land, and it sure as hell would have raised a whole slew of possible scenarios (Ryan flees to Chino, where he discovers he has a kid. Ryan actually gives Caleb a real heart attack instead of a lame-o "minor one," is hit with an involuntary manslaughter rap, and has to be defended by Sandy. Caleb takes the blow like a man, proceeds to beat the shit out of Ryan, and cracks some more awesome jokes about how poor Ryan is. The possibilities are mind-boggling.)



I purposely didn't discuss this lesbian nonsense until the very end because it's really starting to piss me off. I feel like I hopped in a time-machine and ended up at Season Ten, where they have to resort to retarded plot devices like lesbianism to sustain any sort of interest in the show. I hope they just make out already next week. And that Zach, easily the most obnoxious, imbecilic, clueless character in T.V. history, dies sometime before then.



As always, send thoughts, criticisms, observations, and drugs to neel.shah@dartmouth.edu. Especially drugs.