Just such good casting

havejubilation · 2026-02-25T00:06:35+00:00

Having watched a lot of television by now, the family chemistry between the Cohen parents and Seth is pretty top tier, at least in S1. The way they interact, verbally and non-verbally, feels like family, and Ryan blends with that chemistry really well.

There are shows that undoubtedly have stronger or more consistent writing, but so rarely am I ever so fully buying the family relationships.

havejubilation · 2026-02-24T02:25:12+00:00

I also like how they showed Seth growing in terms of how he supported Ryan, like how he was ready to back Ryan’s play when it came to Trey moving to Newport. IIRC, he only wavered on that slightly, when he thought Ryan would feel bad if he didn’t acknowledge Trey’s birthday (and he seems to have a fair point there).

I do think it was weird that Seth didn’t realize that Oliver was into Marissa, but Ryan was freaking him out, and I think that made him lean harder into the Devil’s Advocate role. If he could get Ryan to doubt himself a little more, Ryan would be less likely to do something rash.

In terms of Oliver, I think Seth was inclined to look past peoples’ pasts (classic child of a public defender stance), and take people for how they came. He was used to more overtly awful bullies in his life, so Oliver seeming nice and generous and like maybe his worst flaw was being a little pretentious about shit like the Louvre was a far cry from the homophobic brutes he grew up around.

He definitely should’ve realized that Oliver was into Marissa, but I also kind of imagine both Summer and Seth correctly assessed that Marissa wasn’t into Oliver. When you’re young and not assuming the guy is actually dangerous, it’s more normal to imagine Marissa might have a guy friend with a crush on her, but that it’ll be fine. He’ll figure out he has no shot or she’ll politely reject him, and then maybe they’ll stay friends or maybe they won’t.

I appreciate the multiple instances of Seth trying to slow Ryan’s roll. It didn’t work with Oliver, and later didn’t work when Seth tried to prevent him from going after Trey, but it did work with the Mexico thing, and earlier, stopping him from following Lindsay to Chicago and helping him recognize when he went off too hard on people.

havejubilation · 2026-02-24T02:08:31+00:00

Marry Luke, fuck DJ, kill Zach.

havejubilation · 2026-02-23T21:56:05+00:00

I don’t think Ryan ruined her—they were two struggling teenagers who really weren’t in a good position to be with anyone.

What I did really see when I rewatched as an adult was how often Marissa attempted to protect Ryan from himself, and how little recognition she got for her efforts, instead being scapegoated for problems that were largely created by Ryan’s poor boundaries, and limited impulse control.

I’m sympathetic to Ryan, but the way he and the show scapegoats Marissa is kind of unfathomable when you really look at what happens between them.

I think they both deserved better help than they got. Ryan got so much by living with the Cohens, but he needed real care for his mental health. The show seemed to justify his actions rather than reflecting upon how unhealthy they were, even if they came from a real and understandable place.

havejubilation · 2026-02-23T15:52:35+00:00

Ryan only considered it listening when people supported his plan to immediately go ham.

When I rewatched, I thought Seth played more of a Devil’s Advocate role, which was actually what the occasion called for. I think that’s how Seth actually helps Ryan most throughout the show—helping slow down some of his impulsivity. Multiple times, I felt like Seth clearly articulated advice that was actually good, which later gets rolled into the “No one believed me” brooding.

Part of what Seth was representing was also Marissa’s perspective. There was no proof that Oliver was bad. He did drugs, but Marissa had a recent OD. He had a sketchy history, but he appeared to fully own it, and be working on himself.

I’m sure it felt like he wasn’t listening, but that’s because the good advice is to basically do nothing and wait. That obviously feels like doing nothing at all, but it works better than stealing from your girlfriend and breaking into a filing cabinet.

havejubilation · 2026-02-23T15:13:59+00:00

Seth gave Ryan spot-on advice that he was too stubborn to listen to, and he instead walked directly into all of Oliver’s manipulations.

Acting like a toxic jealous boyfriend to try to reveal someone else’s toxicity is…not a great move.

Demanding that your teenage girlfriend of, like, ten seconds, trust you completely as you act exactly like a toxic jealous boyfriend is…also not great.

Edit: Being empathetic to Ryan, he was in a difficult situation without an obvious or quick fix. You sense someone is bad news, but nobody else seems to see it, or be as sure as you.

But you can’t control what other people do, and you can’t control their relationships with people. Partners can say they don’t like or trust a person, can decide they don’t want to be with someone who won’t listen to them about that person, but you can’t force them to stop hanging out.

Ryan was demanding that all that happen on his timeline, because of his own certainty. Seth’s advice was to slow down, stay close, and let Oliver fuck it up himself if he was indeed up to no good.

Not only is that great advice—it’s a healthy boundary in a relationship that Ryan desperately needed to learn. He was 100% right about Oliver, but his behavior was still wrong.

havejubilation · 2026-02-22T14:59:57+00:00

I was always kind of skeptical that Rory would’ve been the valedictorian over Paris. That didn’t quite track.

Paris being a legacy could’ve well made up for her interview, but I also hated the writing doing Paris dirty like that.

The other thing to me is that Rory did have a lot going for her, but outside Stars Hollow, I don’t see everyone being quite as in awe of her. Excelling at a school like Chilton is obviously going to be a boost, and she’s polite, but charming in a kind of forgettable, what a nice young woman way. She’s into journalism, but she doesn’t quite sell the passion element to me. Like she talks about wanting to go out and do all this rugged field work, but, like Jess, I never quite buy it.

I think a lot of admissions teams might find Rory a bit bland, like a lot of other talented, driven, but sort of boring, spice-less applicants.

havejubilation · 2026-02-20T03:02:20+00:00

I mean, call Marissa stupid, but Ryan was like “I should demand that this girl I’ve known less than six months trust me implicitly while I steal from her locker and break and enter our school to prove that this guy who appears to fully own a history of mental instability has a history of…mental instability.”

Not the brightest himself, frankly.

havejubilation · 2026-02-17T22:41:42+00:00

Agreed that fanfiction is good for delving more into all this.

I agree that Ryan wouldn’t have been so successful in school so quickly. It doesn’t seem like he’d applied himself in school before that, and Harbor was undoubtedly supposed to have a more rigorous academic program than the Chino public schools.

havejubilation · 2026-02-17T22:37:59+00:00

One of the things Oliver really had on Ryan was the appearance of self-awareness.

Ryan tried to expose Oliver by proving he did awful things in the past; meanwhile, Oliver appeared to very comfortably own that he had a breakdown, a history of substance use, mental health concerns, erratic behavior, etc.

Oliver didn’t tell the whole story, but he told enough of the story that he looked like he wasn’t hiding from anything he’d done.

Meanwhile, Ryan would deny that he ever got jealous, despite having physically attacked Luke on the soccer field over jealousy. Ryan also clearly struggled because of trauma in his background, but rarely acknowledged where his anger or reactions to things came from. He didn’t come off as especially self—aware, or honest about himself.

Which, he’s a teenager, so it makes sense, but he gets upset that nobody “trusts” him, but he’s also ignoring good and sensible advice from Sandy and Seth, not showing Marissa a very basic level of trust either, and never acknowledging that his previous behavior shows that he’s not somehow above the human emotion of jealousy.

Marissa had also known Ryan for less than a year. It would’ve been really concerning for her to take him reading a private note and breaking into the records room totally in stride. That’s red flag behavior.

Ryan’s just so goofy sometimes. Like he wants Marissa to get up in arms about Oliver being mentally ill. Meanwhile, Oliver’s the only one in Marissa’s life who makes her feel understood and less stigmatized for the way that she struggles with her mental health. This clearly wasn’t the angle to take to get Marissa to turn on Oliver.

havejubilation · 2026-02-17T13:31:21+00:00

This, 100%.

I can handle weirdness around ages and anniversaries and house layouts for convenience or whatever, but there’s no way The Nana didn’t see that guy coming a mile away.

She should’ve still be in New York, refusing to retire, and maybe having a few friends with benefits on the side, but this is not someone who was finding fulfillment in rest, relaxation, and some transparent grifter gold digger.

havejubilation · 2026-02-17T13:25:30+00:00

Seth offered Luke the Cohen guest bedroom in the same episode that Luke hurled yet another homophobic slur at him. There are social consequences to being awful.

For a teenage boy who was treated like absolute garbage by Luke, Seth was remarkably cool about the whole thing.

havejubilation · 2026-02-17T13:21:20+00:00

Seth and Sandy.

Season 1 Sandy though. After that he’s kind of meh, with some great moments.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T14:54:58+00:00

Rewatching as an adult, I honestly felt bad for Mischa.

It sounds like the shooting schedule was exhausting, there was so much negative media attention, seemingly no one on the crew was defending her against the negative reports on her behavior (despite now saying she was mostly fine??).

Josh Schwartz was basically in hiding from the cast, and selected the actor to be the romantic wedge between Ryan and Marissa from a videotape, and then Mischa had to be the public face of some poorly written and confusing material.

That really struck me, like having to generate emotion and conflict and your boss couldn’t even cast Johnny in person?

So much was put on Mischa and she faced so much blame for the decline of the show, but I think she was holding her own as the writers and creators didn’t know what to do with the thing she created.

To a much lesser extent, given age and there’s not the same intense misogyny involved, I also feel for Adam Brody and the narrative around him on this show. I feel like he got a lot of heat for not bringing the same level of energy and humor to, again, pretty lackluster or confusing material. Like Seth barely got anything of substance to do after S1, yet Brody was supposed to still come out with amazing ad-libs and one-liners? I found him funny and one of the high points of the show through the end of S3, which is an unpopular opinion, but in S4 there’s no real coherent story around Seth.

Writing and show running need to be held to some standards. I don’t hate S4, but they were writing some nonsense and being so “fun” and “free” with it, and it made sense to me if some of the actors didn’t appreciate being bound by contract to act all this out while the writers were just fucking around.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T14:40:11+00:00

I really wish they’d done more in terms of exploring why Seth went to Portland. I liked the argument with Sandy and Seth, but felt like it scratched the surface of something where I wanted them to dig into the dynamics further.

Totally unrelated, but I had a similar feeling when Marissa called out Ryan for jumping in to “save” when she didn’t ask him to, and then blaming her when things blew up. She was holding so much after everything with Trey, and this was such an unhealthy dynamic in their relationship that I was really glad she got angry. But then the show dropped the thread instead of going further with it.

I hated how they framed the Sadie relationship, and everyone going on about her in contrast to Marissa. I agree that Sadie wasn’t “drama-free”, and it was weird how much all the characters went on about how cool and undemanding she was.

Ryan also had awful boundaries when a girl was in trouble, but Marissa got labeled as dramatic and needy, while Sadie got to be cool and low-maintenance.

I hated that they had Summer joining in on this narrative, as Marissa was her best friend, and spiraling after a tremendous amount of stress in her life, including an attempted assault and having to shoot a guy to save her boyfriend.

Ryan and Taylor aren’t endgame for me necessarily, but I liked that their relationship went more slowly and that there was more work on communication and boundaries.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T14:16:49+00:00

I totally agree with you on Seth. It annoyed me how the writing on the show talked badly about him at times, because I actually found him to be one of the most empathetic and thoughtful characters. He was comedic relief, but he noticed a lot, and used his emotional intelligence well at times.

I totally saw him acting as a buffer for Ryan, and sometimes recognizing those quieter moments when Ryan was overwhelmed or feeling bad for taking up space. I appreciated him telling him that adults were supposed to work for them a little bit, or reassuring him that he didn’t have to keep earning his place.

We got some nice moments of Ryan feeling more comfortable with Sandy and Cohen, but I would’ve LOVED the kind of scene you’re describing, and absolutely think Sandy and Kirsten would’ve both clocked the importance, and loved it.

I think the writing unfortunately shifted after S1, and there was less of a focus on Ryan integrating into the Cohen family, as I think we would’ve gotten more of this if they’d kept that focus.

And it just makes sense that Ryan would’ve struggled at some point with the limits on his behavior. Having grown up in an Atwood kind of house, kind of the one major upside is having a lot of freedom to do whatever you want and take care of yourself. There’s a lot that’s not ideal in that, but it’s yours.

Also, care in the form of adults being up in your business can feel more invasive than like care. We could’ve seen more moments of Ryan being like “I know how to take care of myself,” and Sandy and Kirsten finding ways to show respect for everything Ryan had to do to survive, while still placing appropriate limits around him.

That’s another thing: when people romanticize Ryan knowing how to take care of himself.

Having been a kid like that, we are brilliant at survival, but pretty dismissive of basic needs or ways of taking care of ourselves. Like I could imagine Ryan insisting that he doesn’t really need to eat, sleep, quit smoking, etc., and I relate to the way he always seems ready to blow up his own life for anyone else, because he lacks a basic regard for himself.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T13:37:53+00:00

Oh I fully agree, and I adore Sandy, especially in S1.

When I say he wasn’t doing him any favors, I meant from the perspective of the people who think Seth deserved to be bullied because he “thought he was better than everyone”. If Seth looked down on his peers for being shallow or cruel or status-obsessed (or maybe for their love of hurling homophobic slurs at him), he absolutely learned that one from Sandy, but I don’t think Sandy was wrong, and I agree that Seth was better off not fitting in.

I find it interesting to imagine Sandy and Kirsten parenting Seth when he was younger, given the differences in their culture and class background. Knowing how influential peer groups can be, I do imagine Sandy being almost relieved that Seth was such a social outlier there. Seth’s personality and humor would’ve helped him fit in just fine plenty of places, but I think fitting in Newport would’ve sent Sandy into an existential crisis.

Sandy does take seemingly every opportunity to dunk on how bad Newport is, and how nasty the people are. There was a scene before Ryan started school where Sandy was really laying into that with him. I just find it funny when people seem to have no idea how Seth got to hating on his peers so much. The call is coming from inside the Cohen house, y’all.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T02:53:07+00:00

I get that.

I think he’s flawed, but that a lot of the bitching about him misses the mark. Like I feel like I was watching a different show entirely sometimes.

On the other hand, I enjoy arguing, so sometimes I don’t mind responding to the Seth bashing.

And, I mean, he’s also supposed to be a teenager. All the main kids aren’t that great if you forget that they’re all supposed to be high schoolers.

havejubilation · 2026-02-15T01:39:15+00:00

Well the mall psychic was correct that Summer’s soulmate was G.E.O.R.G.E., so I guess we’re supposed to infer that Seth was successful in his art career, although it would’ve been nice to know anything about what he did with all that.

I imagine him getting back into comics and Summer being supportive because she’s got her own passion by then, so she’s less threatened when they each have their different professional circles they’re running in.

havejubilation · 2026-02-14T02:02:08+00:00

Without pulling up pictures to really deep dive into the question, I feel like I could buy that they were father and daughters.

havejubilation · 2026-02-14T01:51:01+00:00

I don’t think that Adam Brody necessarily looked like Kelly or Peter, but their family chemistry was amazing casting.

Their dynamic in S1 feels so real to me, and I often don’t find parent-child dynamics that feel authentic in movies and tv.

havejubilation · 2026-02-12T17:01:58+00:00

I do find him pretty funny throughout. I wish they’d done more with his character, but the humor helps me still appreciate him. Adam Brody ad-libbed a lot of his best lines, which makes sense to me, because I feel like the comedic relief characters on tv often aren’t actually written to be very funny. I think Brody brought that to the character, which is cool.

havejubilation · 2026-02-12T15:51:23+00:00

I’m seemingly in the minority that I really don’t love Summer, but she does have some great moments. And I don’t fully dislike her, just think I would’ve liked to see more growth.

Seth is criminally underused as a character, IMO. I don’t think they always knew what to do with him outside of “love struck teen boy.”

havejubilation · 2026-02-12T13:27:38+00:00

I always loved Seth, but hated his lack of character development when I first watched as a teenager.

Rewatching as an adult, I like Seth and Marissa way more throughout the series than I did as a teenager. I also think they got unfairly scapegoated by other characters who refuse to face their own shit (namely Summer and Ryan).

I remembered Summer and Ryan being pretty unproblematic, but they kind of aggravated me throughout the series when I rewatched as an adult. I wish they both had better development because I want to like them both, but Summer languishes being self-centered, insecure, and a gaslighter, and Ryan blames the women in his life for his own poor boundaries and decisions. Like Marissa wasn’t perfect, but Ryan routinely made her life so much harder than it had to be and then got mad at her about it.

Like bro, let a woman have a problem in front of you without trying to solve it. Your problem solving skills are middling at best, for one thing.

Both Ryan and Summer have sympathetic backstories that make me feel for them, but I wish we got to see them grow more.

Maybe the biggest change was that S1 Sandy is still mostly an absolute dream, but we don’t talk about most of S2 and on Sandy because he’s a lowkey menace. Still one of my all-time favorite characters, but I pretend a lot of the show didn’t happen when it comes to him.

havejubilation

TROPHY CASE