Neel Shah's Articles

Granted, I haven't exactly been plum pudding with the course that the S.S. OC has taken thus far in Season Two, but one email I received among the rest gave me hope that everything shall soon be, in the parlance of the day, aight: "Don't worry about it, dude," wrote Inappropriate Dude X from Middlebury College. "It's just like a girlfriend that puts on ten pounds, and now we're waiting around for a bit to see if she'll go rexi and lose the weight." Nicely put, X.

But agreed. Tonight's episode was make or break. To advance X's analogy, either the O.C. would get off the IV and start eating some solid food, or end up in the toilet along with this morning's breakfast (Yes, I know I'm going to hell. But eating disorders are still kind of funny). Rather than wait till the end of the show to write an analysis, I decided to change things up a bit this time and write a stream-of-conscious running diary. Kind of like Jack Kerouac and his "spontaneous prose,"� sans the whole talent thing. In any event, here we go:

8:01: 1) It's"”gasp!"”raining in OC land! 2) Blind Melon's "No Rain"� is playing in the background. 3) This is very cute. Especially the playful bickering between Seth and Ryan over whether they should rendezvous in the pool house or the real house. Could these guys have a gayer dynamic? The writers really missed the boat on picking the right gays for the show.

8:03: "Maybe it will all work out," says Seth. Cue lightening, ominous glances, and discussion of fate/divine intervention. Alas, if God were actually watching the show, he would have knocked off Lindsay and Zach long ago.

8:08: Sandy: "As long as you stay, Rebecca, we have a shot at getting you off, blah, blah, bliggity blah, I want to touch you with my pee-pee." A girl friend of mine just threw a half-empty carton of white rice at the TV in disgust. Sike! I only watch the O.C. in an ice-cream and sushi-fueled homoerotic orgy of boyz.

8:10: Marissa and Alex kiss. Tongue sightings to date: 0. Marissa just drops the "Alex is my girlfriend"¦no, not girl friend, grrrlfriend"� bomb to her mother. Over-under on how much longer this gig lasts: 2 episodes.

8:10: Idiot Lindsay plays a "sad song"� on the oboe, arguably the most idiotic instrument of all time. Too bad it's not for her funeral.

8:12: "I might be thinking of going to Chicago," she says. Stop thinking, bitch. Go! Do it now!

8:13: Ryan, you inarticulate, Neanderthal meatstick, shut the hell up and stop convincing her otherwise. You're ruining EVERYTHING. When are you gonna find out you have a little bundle of joy waiting for you in Chino, anyway?

8:14: "Seth,"� groans Summer, "are we really gonna to do this again, or did you come here to advance the plot."� Man, these writers really love knocking down the proverbial 4th wall between audience and performer. They are so clever it's adorable.

8:20: "Let's get you out of these wet clothes,"� Alex tells a drenched Marissa. Cut to next scene. Damn you, FCC.

8:24: Sandy and Rebecca get stopped en route to Newport Beach by a "road flood." What a convenient test of morality. I love the artificial constructs of television. PS, there is absolutely no way that he'll cheat.

8:28: Seth walks in on Marissa and Alex, they who have just gotten freaky off camera. Hilarity ensues. This 3-minute scene is easily the best payoff of this lesbian debacle to date. By the way, if this was premium cable, a threesome defiantly would have broken out. Seth would have been the one that got eaten out, too. I mean Boyz-to-Men? You've gotta be kidding me.

8:30-8:37: My laptop froze and had to be re-booted. Too lazy to write by hand. Sue me.

8:38: Summer calls Seth out for being a gay ("Whatever we had clearly wasn't as good as what you and Ryan had."�)

8:39: Houston, we have a Caleb-Lindsay paternity match. Absolutely devastating.

8:42: Sandy regains both his conscience and his eyesight; tells Rebecca he's gotta get back home to be with Kirsten and company ASAP. He then drives into a ditch. Police are on the way. So is a commercial. Finally, the slightest hint of drama up in this piece.

8:43: Is anyone else considering watching "Stars Without Makeup" next? Man, I love Fox.

8:47: Just like that, Rachel Bloom vanishes into the ether. And with her the only fat, unattractive woman on the O.C. Good eff-ing riddance.

8:49: This whole moving-in-with-the-girlfriend thing is getting way too real for Marissa. Paying rent? Ewww. That's, like, for poor people. Evidently, so is lesbianism. She'll be straight and back in her old house in 2 weeks, tops.

8:50: Hey, God? Remember me? It's Neel. Long time no see. I don't ask you for many favors, but you could really help me out of a bind here by getting Lindsay out of my hair. Hope it's not too much to ask"¦

8:51: Thanks, big guy. I owe you one. See you in Hell, Lindsay.

8:53: Oasis "Champaign Supernova"� cover. "You can't fight fate,"� says Zach. But you can fight effeminate skinny Jewish boys. Stand up for your woman, dammnit. I want to see a fist fight.

8:55: No such luck. Are they seriously parodying the upside-down Spider Man kiss, erect nipples and all, instead?

8:56: They are seriously parodying the upside-down Spider Man kiss, erect nipples and all, instead. I gotta admit: part of me is a little giddy. Part of me is also gay, which explains that. The alpha male frat boy part of me, though, is kind of nauseated. The cheeze factor just hit an all-time high.

8:57: Ryan and Marissa, together on the pier. Quality foreshadowing. The wheels are in motion for a return to the original fearsome foursome. Alex, it was nice knowin ya.

9:05 recap: Real mixed bag. On the plus side, we got rid of three hideously annoying (worse"”unattractive) characters in one swoop. On the negative side, though, it wasn't all that entertaining of an episode. This does not bode well for next week's"¦mall episode? What the fuck is that about? Honestly, when the coming attractions don't look promising, you're in some serious trouble. I think we may be in serious trouble.

Send your best shots to neel.shah@dartmouth.edu. I don't think there's a new episode next week, so maybe we'll run a mailbag or some crap.

First things first: I apologize for the lack of a column last week. Much thanks to all of you who wrote in and inquired as to its whereabouts. It was our annual Winter Carnival here at school, and, um, I was drunk. While I briefly entertained the idea of submitting a rambling, incoherent column as some sort of post-modern joke, I quickly remembered that all of my columns are in fact rambling and incoherent, and opted against it.

But I digress. Let's begin this week by getting the dumb lesbian shit out of the way ASAP so we can talk about the plot lines of actual import. Totally loved Marissa sitting on her bed, gazing longingly into the pages of "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk"� (nice product placement, by the way) as if it was a vagina. Yo, Marissa, not making out with your "girlfriend"� the week after you barely even made out with her isn't punk, it's f-ing gay. Oh wait, using "gay"� as a synonym for "lame"� doesn't actually work in that context. But you get the idea. I can't believe I'm actually writing this as a hetero frat boi (albeit one that is sexually ambiguous enough to pen an OC column), but this lesbo thing is really testing my patience. I don't think I've seen anything so hyped with such miniscule payoff since the Segway.

The real drama, of course, lies in 1) the Kirsten/Sandy/Rebecca love triangle, and 2) the "Seth and Summer, Make Out Already for Chrissake"� saga (and yes, I've purposely omitted the subject of Lindsay's paternity because I fucking hate her. The really sick part of me wishes that Caleb is in fact her dad. And that he gave her AIDS. Moving along). While plot lines #1 and #2 are essentially the only reasons to keep watching the show, both strain realistic social norms to such an aggravating degree that it boggles the mind. Let's begin with #1. While my grasp of the concept of holy matrimony is somewhat limited, my understanding is that marriages tend to fall apart for one of three reasons: A) money; B) your spouse gets fat and ugly; thus necessitating C) cheating with someone hotter. Sandy, my boy: have you looked at your wife lately? Bitch is straight dime piece. Hot like Tabasco. Have you looked at Rebecca lately? She looks like her face melted. Sandy has long shown himself to be the most stable character on the show, and he's willing to throw it all away over some pot-smoking fugitive with a few extra bagels in her belly? It just doesn't add up.

As for the Seth-Summer drama, does anyone else find it completely ludicrous that Seth and Zach are not mortal enemies at this point? How emasculated can two males possibly be? Let's recap: dude stands by and lets ex-boyfriend shamelessly game on girlfriend. Dude declares intention to wait for sex (hey Zach, were you asking yourself WWJD? Sorry man"”even Jesus thinks you're a homo). Ex-boyfriend then stands by as dude tells him, "Hey, I'm going to Tuscany to fuck the girl you love. Have fun obsessing about the exact moment of penetration."� Ex-boyfriend goes home to eat ice cream and watch VH- 1. Finally, ex-boyfriend tells girl he's 100% fine with how the situation has played out. The sheer pussiness of it all is almost unbearable.

I say "almost"� because next week's epi really, truly, may be the one to de-rut the OC train. Car crashes, dramatic storms, confessions of love, last-minute phone calls"¦if they mess this one up, I'm gonna start watching Point Pleasant and Jonny Zero instead.

Send the catcalls, insults, hate mail, and photos of eligible Indian women (dot not feather) to neel.shah@dartmouth.edu

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.