The O.C./The Avengers

The Avengers
Season 4, Episode 1
Airdate	November 2, 2006
Written by
Directed by
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The O.C. — Season Four

The Avengers is the first episode of the fourth season of The O.C., and the seventy-seventh episode overall. Five months after Marissa's death in an automobile accident, the Cohens attempt to reach out to a despondent Ryan, who has taken up bare-knuckle boxing at a seedy bar.

Guest Stars:

Plot Overview

Since Marissa's death five months ago, Ryan has moved into a seedy part of town in a room at the back of a bar. He has cut off almost all contact with the Cohens, but that doesn't stop Sandy from trying to reach him at the bar. When Sandy appears at his door, Ryan escapes out a window and goes to a motel room where Julie Cooper is waiting for him.

Meanwhile, the others have gravely changed over the summer. Summer is at Brown and has transformed into a pseudo-intellectual hippie, Julie has taken up random tasks around the house like gardening in order to keep her mind off Marissa, Seth is working at a comic book shop while waiting for the spring semester to start and Taylor never made it to France.

The Cohens seem to be the only ones left in roughly a better state than before. Although they've been attempting to reach out to Ryan, he has been pushing them away in favor of fighting in an illegal bare-knuckle boxing ring. When he doesn't show up one more time, Seth goes looking for him and finds him in the middle of getting trounced by a much bigger boxer.

While Kaitlin is out at the mall making the Ward twins do her homework for her and smoking pot, she spies Dr. Roberts with his ex-wife across the boardwalk. Back at home, she questions why he wasn't around to help Julie move furniture (knowing full well why) and he makes an excuse that he was in surgery. She later confronts him about it and decides that, instead of telling her mother she'd rather use the information to blackmail Dr. Roberts into buying her expensive stuff.

Back at the Cohens' house, Seth is interrogated by his parents about Ryan's condition. He dodges all of their questions and heads to work where he finds Summer. Naturally, she has a plan. She tells him to "rally his geek army" and goes off to eat with her father. Before they're given a table, she sees Taylor who is quite obviously not in Europe.

Rejoining the events of the episode that occurred in the teaser, Julie attempts to give Ryan a file on Volchok that she compiled through a private investigator. Instead of turning it over to the police, she hoped that he would track down and kill Volchek. He refuses and throws it in the dumpster.

Where everyone else has failed, Summer succeeds in dragging Ryan out of his hole and into the comic book store where Seth works. There, Seth presents a comic book of how he managed to save the lives of the Cohens. It graphically recaps several events that occurred in the first several seasons including, among other things, Chrismukkah. The stunt succeeds and brings Ryan back into the Cohen pool house.

But, before he makes it to the Cohens' house, Ryan gets in one more fight with the guy who wiped the floor with him the night before and accepts the dossier of information on Volchok.

Notes

Music

• Placebo - Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush cover)
• Keane - A Bad Dream

Trivia

The Show

• First Appearance: This episode marks the first appearances of the Ward twins, brothers of Luke Ward.

Allusions and References

• Fight Club: Fight Club is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk about an insomniac who meets an anarchist named Tyler Durden and starts a series of "fight clubs" which eventually turn into an attempt to destroy corporate society. The novel was later adapted into a feature film by David Fincher starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt.

Seth: Except, at the end of that it turns out Edward Norton is insane.

• Heather Mills McCartney: Lady Heather McCartney is the estranged wife of Paul McCartney and a long-time political and environmental activist. She has notably worked for the safety of seals in Newfoundland where they've been heavily hunted and against the fur industry. She was divorced from Paul McCartney in May 2006, which Summer briefly referred to.

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