This is the best thing they ever did, isn't it? I think it is. It is so tense, so perfectly paced, I swear everything is bubbling so violently under the surface that I always feel like it's going to explode towards the end, but it ever so perfectly does not. I actually really like the first half of S2, I think it was necessary and again, paced beautifully, all leading to this moment (I think this moment is way better/more important than the Spider-man kiss, which I totally love, but, yeah).

AND OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HIS REACTION??? I say this is the best thing they've done and I have half a mind to propose that those two seconds are the best in the entire series. LOOK AT HIM, HE IS GOING TO CRY HE IS SO FLABBERGASTED AND GRATEFUL. alskdjgalksdgjalk ADAM BRODY YOU SAINT. I will never, ever, ever get sick of that moment, it is truly a work of art. And also sidenote but I love these situations they do a few times with them where from a far it looks like total female objectification but the way Seth handles it it ends up being nothing but tender. I don't think this scene could be any less about her bangin bod, even when they get up close to it it's in the interest of the Seth/Summer tension dynamic and her efforts to help him. And the way Seth continues to react, it is with so much love...this is really just the sweetest, most innocent scene, which is ironic I guess.

UNGH okay and he does that thing right before he bends down where he looks up at her like "Okay?", and then he is so so careful, so careful. It's beautiful. Also, at that moment with his hands at her waist "Cartwheels" by The Reindeer Section starts and I remember distinctly the prick of tears when I first watched this. That song is spectacular, and spectacularly used. Absolutely delicate, like everything in this scene.

I'm pretty certain his reaction against the door is how 90% of people watching this reacted. Mind boggling scene, it knocks you out. Honestly, award worthy; their chemistry is incomprable. LEGENWAITFORITDARY.

two (season 2).



Summer: What do you want from me?

Seth: You. I just want you.
Summer: No, you don't! You had me. You had me at Chrismukkah in a freaking Wonder Woman costume, and you chose Anna. You had me three months ago and you left.
Seth: I want to make that up to you.
Summer: It has nothing to do with me. It is about you, and it is always about you. What you need, and what you want, you know, it seems that you only want me when you can't have me! You like the chase, and that's all.

Okay, well. Well actually first of all I love this scene for what it implies but ultimately what is said is spectacularly untrue as we know, but she has every reason to think that. Anyway, that is not why I like it.

HERE IS MY BIG POINT I WANT TO MAKE ABOUT WHY THESE CHARACTERS FASCINATE ME TO NO END, and this is the scene that demonstrates it so painfully and so PERFECTLY, sweet christ.

I don't know if the producers/writers intended for the characters to be interpreted this way or if Adam Brody was consciously doing this but it is how I see it, so. Seth is verbose to the point of insanity - he is always talking and there is always something for him to critique or worry about or joke about - things excite and frustrate him so intensely that it is almost as if there are too many words that apply to his thoughts and he is in a rush to get them out. I am pretty sure he's one of those people whose brains work so fast it's overwhelming (Kid Cudi: my mind runs, I can't even catch it even if I've got a head start). And if there are too many words in so many situations there is one thing in his life for which there are not enough. Not the idea of her, and not the discussion of her, but when he is confronted with a serious situation between the two of them he falters, and it is made all the more obvious due to its rarity. She stuns him, almost literally - it is a remarkable manifestation of the idea of the knowledge of love vs. the feeling of it:

But these moments in early season 2 are the best and the most important in this category because they are also the beginning of a new conception of identity for him (OH GOD THIS IS SO SERIOUS, are you reading this right now and thinking THIS IS TOO SERIOUS? sorry, except not). I think Seth leaving for Portland and what happened to him and Summer because of it is freaking brilliant. It demonstrates beautifully Seth's sense of himself and his relation to other people - which is essentially, outside of his parents, that no one is truly invested in him (and Ryan leaving just reinforced that belief that he had maybe come to think was not entirely true for a while). In the way he leaves things hanging with Summer it shows also that even after being with her it was hard for him to break out of his almost lifelong perception of her place in his life, which is that she is always - symbolically or tangibly - there. He is so used to living with her in mind that he in some sense of the word takes her for granted, just because he is so aware of his love and so used to it being an entity within himself that it is constant, unending, without responsibility. This scene above shocks him into acknowledging that someone else is invested in him in a way he's never had to understand before, and the look on Seth's face here, like he has absolutely no idea how to respond because the scenario is so foreign to him - it's unsettling, in a good way. He's lost, he has nothing to say partly because he is so thrown but also because he doesn't understand what she really means until (I assume) he eventually thinks about it. His conception of their relationship is that it is an always thing, because it has always been that way for him. Obviously shifting from an internal world that had been his for the past 17 years into this new outside land where he is responsible for his actions in a way that brings confusing consequences that have no place for the kind of lifestyle in which you leave because you think no one cares and you can't stop loving her anyway so what does it matter where you are - it's very difficult for him.

Eventually though he figures it out. And this is why a lot of the execution of their plot in season 3 bothered me. I think it could have been handled so much better, and most of the problems were because they didn't adhere to what I took to be their earlier conception of the characters and their relationship. It is also more simply that they didnt' let Seth and Summer talk, really talk, to each other enough. There are too many abbreviated, interrputed, or dramatically-huffing-out conversations that are beneath them. In the beginning of S3 there's that episode where they discover they're not applying to any of the same schools and Summer asks Seth why he didn't consider it (when earlier in the episode it is revealed when Taylor asks that Summer herself didn't consider it, and she shrugs her shoulders and says "different tastes" when asked why not, which I thought was in character) - he doesn't reply with anything remotely related to the question, and I was so bothered by that missed opportunity, in which he could have said because distance sucks but it's college and we have to choose places that suit our tastes, and we can be away from each other and it's okay, and it shouldn't be a deciding factor for either of us because we're stronger than that. SO MANY PEOPLE DO IT, it's part of why you go to college. But I guess it's TV so whatever. Anyway there were so many frustrating moments in that season due to lack of communication that I thought was totally not them, because you know by that point they tell each other everything, they are BFF and basically only hang out with each other because everyone else is lame, they realized, once they formed their unbreakable stealth team.

Anyway. That's what this scene makes me think about and why it is my second favorite. So, so well executed, and driven home again by this scene in the next episode, in which he yells for the first and only time at her:


How Ryan has to practically hold him up afterwards. And oh, her face and her words here, and how she is telling him what he did wrong but also saying you left you left you left you left and why did you do this to me and I love you and I don't know what to do, help me - oh my heart. The unfolding of Summer's compassion over the first and second seasons is a small miracle if I do say so myself. We are treated so often to her girlyness but her most moving scenes are when she is most simply a girl. WHICH LEADS ME TO:


I always, always cry over this. This is one of the best episodes, and the room redecorating is one of the kindest things I've ever seen done on television - it's also just such a freaking GREAT plot, the kind Seth and Summer deserve and post-S1 rarely get, the kind that showcases their teamwork and hilarity and innate thoughtfulness (which I sometimes feel like they're not even aware of - it's like by both being the same way they don't realize how special it is that they're so good to their friends). I know the focus in this scene is on how lonely Seth used to be but oh my god every second of this is about Summer for me, and the series of emotions she runs through while looking at him. I am in deep love with the evolution of her character over the season - I started out not liking her but by this episode she was just breaking my heart with wonder, and I loveloveLOVE that that evolution is prompted by the final straw of her previous social circle proving themselves to be terrible friends. Because really it's Holly and Luke hooking up that does it, right? It's just like, that happens and Summer checks out. She is a wonderful, unquestionably loyal friend, and that this theme is pivotal and mentioned with such reverence by numerous characters over the seasons is just...!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, OC, for valuing this. Thank you thank you thank you. You did teen girls and the portrayal of friendship a massive service.

Anywayyyy, in that moment when she asks if she was mean to him - it is an awakening, an apology, a plea, and an expression of her evolving identity and self awareness that is just completely unmatched by anything I'd seen on a show before, and it's always been my favorite moment and the one that makes me most emotional. She is a remarkable character, Seth's equal in every way, and in this moment when she is most vulnerable she is also her best self, and it is a self that combines with her quirky snark and irreverence to form A GODDAMN SUPERHERO from that moment on. It is for reasons like this that I think I (and most people) had such trouble with the bad parts of the later seasons - the characters were so, so wonderful and complex and fully realized, only to be thrown to the terribly plotted wolves, and that was the last thing they deserved. It is a shame that they didn't get better writing the whole way through, because the actors were more than capable and the characters so entitled.

WOW THAT JUST TOOK LIKE FIVE HOURS TO TYPE, WHERE DID THE TIME GO. Anyway I have more.



text in the intro image is from Nicole Krauss's awesome History of Love, and it was an association first made at the slaughterhouse90210 tumblr.

P.S. Part 2 of this is their real life counterparts.