Neel Shah's Articles

I never really had the quantitative mind required to be a math or science major (ahh, the liberal arts: every idiot's best friend), but while watching yesterday's episode, I somehow managed to derive an "OC Mathematical Formula for Success."� Even Descartes would be proud:

[Beach Party Coefficient (calculated by dividing the number of grinding bikini-clad teenagers by the number of references to cocaine and/or Candy Flipping) * (# of punches thrown by the Atwoods)^2 * log(probability that Julie Coopers or Jess Sathers will slut out)] / (Kirsten ruining my "perfect wife"� fantasy) MINUS (the exponentially increasing annoyingness of the Seth/Summer saga) EQUALS, well, nothing, because this formula doesn't make any sense.

But if this formula actually did yield some sort of quantifiable result, yesterday's show would have scored pretty highly. Not Jess Sathers on X high (is she not the perfect typecast character for a show like this? Hot, morally unburdened, and sexually further unburdened. Gotta love it), but high nonetheless. Sure, the sting operation went off a little too cleanly, and Summer is quickly becoming downright intolerable (your boyfriend is about to publish a comic"”err, "graphic novel"�"”and you're complaining about being at some party for an hour or so? Shut up), but some interesting setup for the remainder of the season. Namely:

1) The photographs of Julie Cooper "kissing"� Lance, presumably taken by private investigators hired by Caleb: Awesome, especially in light of Julie's continual vacillation between conniving gold-digger and, um, conniving gold-digger with a modicum of a conscience. I can't believe I actually feel sorry for her. Something tells me that Lance and the pills may just come back into play.

2) Marissa and Ryan: Have they or haven't they? Seriously. Does anyone know the answer to this question? I always assumed they had"”Ryan's already gotten one girl preggers, and Marissa's a drunken floozy. Then I got an email from Kathleen Dunphy of UCLA Law School arguing, quite persuasively, that they hadn't (Ryan brushing Marissa off after the whole Oliver thing, despite her claim that they'd "waited so long"¦"�). And then there was yesterday's episode, in which Marissa declines the invitation to fog up the car windows for the more comfortable confines of the pool house. Ostensibly to have sex, but how do we know? Why are the show's writers so vague about this? Why can't we see some goddamn Ryan-on-Marissa action? And who in high school says no to car sex? Someone please explain these things, for I have nothing to offer.

Other random comments from the show, without particular attention to order, relevance, or import: Why was Damon the "marketing genius"� dressed like a gay Nazi? Hipsters dress like homeless people, not homosexuals. The answer, in keeping with today's scholastic theme, can be stated as an 8th grade English lesson plan: "How to Construct Dramatic Irony in Two Easy Steps,"� by the writers of the OC: 1) Have a character (Summer) point out her disdain for hipsters (to paraphrase, "I'm sick of all the people at this party with their intentionally messed up hair and intentionally dirty clothes"�). 2) Put a Bloc Party song in the next scene. Well done"”ridiculing your target demographic always makes for good television. On that note, I'm late for class. Till next week.

Send all Ryan/Marissa sexual conspiracy theories to neel.shah@dartmouth.edu

And on this, episode 19 of Season Two, God"”err, Josh Schwartz said, "Ye faithful, loyal, but hereto disappointed followers of OC scripture. Fret not further: I'm about to throw you a motherfucking bone."� Amen. Has any episode gone so quickly from being groan-inducingly silly (Julie Cooper's bullet-less gun) to groan-inducingly orgasmic as this one? (I think I ejaculated in my pants from the sheer awesomeness of the show's final 15 minutes.) From drugs to sex to underdog pornographers, this puppy had it all. In a reverse example of the meta self-awareness that usually permeates the show, it even had a reference to my own beloved fraternity, the Delta house (an alumnus of our upstanding organization wrote "Animal House"� based on his experience here. All the steak-face rugby players in my house said I'd have to do the Elephant Walk all over again if I didn't highlight this in my column. Of course, the irony of steak-face rugby players getting all uppity over a teen soap opera is duly noted).

With that shameless bout of self-promotion out of the way, let's look at the pertinent plotlines of this week's episode, in no particular order:
1) Seth/Summer; Zach/Reed: This one's easy: Seth, you suck. Stop being such a goddamn bitch. You stole Summer from Zach, and then insist on salting his game with Reed? (Put aside for the moment that it is ludicrous that a hot-ass 23-year old professional would even consider dating a high-school junior, but whatevs). I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually rooting for Zach on this one. Previous comments on the quality of his acting still stand, though.
2) "The Rager:"� Threesomes? Check. Check. Ex-convicts as enforcers? Check. OD-ed girls face-down in the swimming pool? Check. Just like every party I went to in high school? Um, not so much, but here's to living vicariously. The two cliff-hangers (the non-kiss between Ryan and Marissa; Trey copping to the Ecstasy charge) both produced a lot of tension, and raise a lot of interesting possibilities for next week (Will they or won't they? Did he or didn't he? Will I actually write something intelligible or continue being vague out of sheer laziness?) Bonus: the OD-girl dropping one of the funniest lines in recent memory (rough paraphrase): "Check out my tattoo. Buddha's smoking a joint."� Into the pool you go, idiot.
3) The Kirsten/Sandy/Carter saga: Kirsten, Kirsten, Kirsten, what are you doing?? I said it before, and I shall say it again: there's no way she'll actually cheat on Sandy. But fucking up Carter's steez with that hottie orthopedist was totally out of character. I don't know what to make of this. Send me suggestions.
4) Julie/Lance vs. Caleb: Fuck Iran, Iraq, and North Korea"”this is what I call an Axis of Evil. What a fantastic alliance. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more loveable sleazebag porn-peddler than Lance. Turning down 8 grand for the tapes after being beaten to a pulp by Caleb's goons? What a guy! I admire his ability to think big: "Hmm. I live out of a dirty motel room. How do I change my predicament? Got it! Convince the woman I publicly humiliated to 1) come home with me from a biker bar, and 2) let me off her husband. Genius.

Till next week. Send all thoughts, calls, comments, critiques, and factual inaccuracies, as always, to Neel.shah@dartmouth.edu

Greetings, dear reader. Long time no see. Okay, enough with the idle chit-chat, let's get down to business. My mom always told me to save the dessert for last, but Indian people, as a cursory glance of my great subcontinent makes evident, don't know shit about nutrition. So we're starting this week's "Abridged Because I am a Lazy Graduating Senior"�* column in reverse order"”with the preview scenes of next week's OC: wild parties, excessive alcohol consumption, fist-fighting, and a gun-wielding, murderous Julie Cooper. It'll be nice to have you back, Season One"”your absence was sorely missed. First half of Season Two, I wish I could say it was fun while it lasted, but, well, it wasn't. Please see yourself out, and be sure to close the door behind you. But yeah, next week looks awesome"”the potential for more face explosions than your average afternoon in Fallujah, without all the beheadings and armor-less Humvees.

Alas, this column, at least ostensibly, is about this week's episode, which I liked and disliked in equal parts. Things I liked: Marissa and Ryan playing out George Dubbya's wet dream by choosing abstinence over the dirty dirty, thereby remaining in sexual limbo; the Risky Business soundtrack; the incipient stages of tension between Sandy, Carter and Kirsten; Marissa's surprisingly large breasts considering her diminutive (or, as those with a medical background prefer, "anorexic"�) frame; and the numerous slow motion action shots (psyche! Those were retarded). Things I disliked: kind of everything else. While I realize that the OC is *just* a TV show (sorry for the momentary blasphemy, Pope JP2. Oh wait"”you're dead), and can thus occasionally shed the yolk of realism, the whole caper heist plot was ludicrous: the half-brained attempt of Ryan and Seth to get the crystal back (not believable); Ryan's idiot brother even having a fence for the crystal in the first place (not believable, but I'm not an expert on the Chino underground crime world, so I'll give pass here); Ryan's throw and Seth's subsequent catch of said crystal (not believable, though somewhat fitting as a homosexual metaphor); Ryan and Seth driving from Chino to Newport Beach in under 4 minutes (um, not believable); the list goes on and on.

The best conclusion to draw, of course, is that this episode was intended simply as filler. No curveballs, no major plot advancements, and certainly no displays of anything even vaguely reminiscent of rational behavior. I mean Trey, if you're gonna go ahead and jack the damn thing, don't have a guilty conscience about it. And did you, Seth and Ryan, really just walk up to some Sketchy McSketcherton's house in Chino and try to steal it back with the old "I'll distract the target, you tip-toe in, grab the goods, and run"� plan? And am I really talking to these fictional characters as if they are real people? Perhaps. But in all serious (or at least with the marginal level of seriousness permissible in this idiotic column¬), it was like everyone on the show drank some sort of idiot serum, and had the discretional capabilities of someone who just drank some sort of idiot serum.

If next week turns out not to be a fiasco, thereby rendering my "filler"� argument null and void, well, then, preview editors, I salute you. Till then.

* I should probably not be so lazy because I do not yet have a job next year. But, as the old adage goes, this is easier said than done. If you have a job for me, please email neel.shah@dartmouth.edu. Seriously.