This week's interlocking themes are drinking, crying, driving, drinking and crying, drinking and driving, drinking and crying while driving–and a Queer Eye for the Seth Guy. Even more allergy prone than Felix Unger, Seth weeps during chick flicks, walks in on Ryan dressing, knows of Care Bears but knows nothing of hardware stores. This latent fagginess is the only thing Marissa doesn't cry about. Indeed, so many tears flow out of the runway-modelesque teen that she loses the .275 pounds she gained from her last meal . . . months ago. She sobs over a sappy movie. She sobs over her friends secretly making over her messy room. She sobs over mom Julie's impending rise to top Newport Bitch after accepting mega-developer Caleb's hand in marriage. And Marissa sobs mostly over the sight of her ex-boyfriend Luke with Julie “because the guy I lost my virginity to had sex with my mom.” Okay, we'll give her that one. And though he's obviously still torn between his first love in Chino and his true but damaged love in NB, Ryan–who possesses the same variety of poses as Derek Zoolander–throws Marissa his Magnum to show that he has lips for her to lock onto and a shoulder for her to cry on (enough already!). Meanwhile, Jimmy's fraudulent past catches up with him as his new Lighthouse restaurant's liquor license is held up by a commissioner Jimmy previously ripped off. So he and non-silent partner Sandy reluctantly turn to their silent partner Caleb, who after first acting disinterested in the whole shebang now wants to buy them out. Speaking of she bangs, Julie beams as Caleb, on bended knee at the Lighthouse opening, offers up an engagement ring with an emerald as big as Bal Isle. Loaded Luke walks in on the spectacle, storms off to get loaded some more (to Bob Seger?), then wraps his cherry pickup around one of Newport's finer telephone pole. His face resembles an Ike Turner-era Tina as Marissa stands by his hospital bed, hears he's relocating to Portland–effectively being written off the show–and accepts his apology, which draws (drum roll, please . . .) even more tears.
LINE OF THE WEEK: “Welcome to Portland, bitch.” Luke, joking to Ryan about his impending move–and bringing his lunkheaded character full circle back to the show's first famous line.
LOCAL REFERENCE OF THE WEEK: “Without a liquor license this restaurant won't turn a profit. Everyone knows that. This is Newport Beach. Everyone here is borderline alcoholic.” Sandy to Jimmy.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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