Tuesday, April 5, 2016

The O.C. Mystery: How many friends came to beat up Ryan at the model home?


Exhibit A. After listening to Luke and his posse go on and on about how much they are going to beat Ryan up, Marissa can't take it anymore and storms out of Holly's party aka "thing". Marissa then drives straight to the model home mansion where Ryan is camping out (literally tent and all) and confronts him.


Marissa really wants to stay the night at the model home with Ryan but he knows that he has to jet in the morning and doesn't want to let it complicate things, thus making it harder to leave. So Ryan painfully denies her and tells her to go.


Marissa storms out in a frustrated and rejected sob. She then drives home in her Jeep.


Little does she know that there is a can of O.C beat-down lurking in the shadows in a pimped out GMC truck! Luke and his water polo companion goons (a few from the Pilot episode) tailed Marissa to the model home to sniff out what she's been up to. So as you see in the above close-up photo evidence Luke, Nordlund and Chip Saunders are the only ones in the truck.


Rewind! Did you catch it? Before they zoom into the cab of Luke's truck the camera shows a wider angle of the truck. Look there in the orange circle, in the back near the tailgate. It's someone else! By golly what is going on here! A 4th person? They brought four people? Luke knew Chino was tough but that's just excessive!


The guys then walk into the mansion to find Ryan packing up his things and preparing to leave. Here we still only see Luke, Nordlund and Chip. They ambush Ryan and ruff him up pretty good. To make matters worse someone kicks over the candles in the room and a fire starts roaring uncontrollably.


As the flames reach higher and Ryan approaching unconsciousness the three guys attempt to run out of the place before the whole home goes up in flames. Just before Luke reaches the staircase to leave his guilty conscience hits him and he goes back to carry Ryan out of the burning inferno.


Luke lays Ryan on the ground outside of the home and tells him to "Run!". Luke then hops in the back of his truck as Nordlund or Chip drives away to head back to Holly's. As you see Luke is now the only one in the back tailgate area of the truck. Where did the 4th man boy go?

ETOC theory: Luke asked another unknown friend to come ride in the back to keep lookout. As the flames start erupting the mystery 4th guy starts Luke's truck and prepares to pick up the rest of the dudes to get out of there. Other more likely possibilities could be blamed on a continuity error. In the full truck photo above, it could be that Nordlund or Chip was to sit in the back of the truck to give the idea that there is a whole gang of people ready to fight. Alternatively the editors perhaps noticed you can barely see someone in the back of the truck therefor having the inside truck shot of all three friends together necessary. Meanwhile they then forgot to erase the guy in the back. It also could have been a film crew member caught on camera. Alternatively and just as likely it could be the ghost haunting the supposed cursed unfinished model home.

Final verdict, this one stays a mystery..Whatever the case, we'll leave it up to you to decide!


Where to find:

Season 1 Episode 2 "The Model Home"

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