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While Summer Roberts may have began The O.C. as a ditzy mean girl, she quickly became a beloved fan favorite (and even found the smart girl persona she had been forced to hide for so long!)...
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00:00The O.C.'s Summer Roberts began the show as a stereotypical
00:03mean rich girl ditz. She wasn't even a part of the main cast,
00:07but instead just intended to be a glorified extra,
00:10a friend of Marissa Cooper's with minimal impact,
00:12to be essentially forgotten after the pilot.
00:15Chino? Ew!
00:16But even with the minimal screen time she got in the beginning,
00:19she quickly became a fan favorite and an integral part of the show.
00:22And over time, as her character was given room to grow,
00:25she broke free from those mean girl confines and ended up getting
00:28one of the best arcs of the show.
00:30Apparently I have a lot of what they call aptitude.
00:34Really?
00:35Summer is the perfect showcase of what can happen when a smart girl
00:38doesn't have that side of herself fostered by her environment,
00:41but is instead pushed in the total opposite direction.
00:44She's also a very underrated example of how we don't have to be trapped
00:48in the boxes we're put in as kids forever,
00:50and how learning to embrace our full selves can help us build a life
00:54even better than we could have ever dreamed of.
00:56You're a great girl, and the world deserves to know you.
01:01You deserve it too.
01:02So let's take a closer look at how Summer evolved from a miserable
01:05mean girl into a successful smart girl.
01:08When we're first introduced to Summer,
01:10she seems in essentially every way to be the archetypal,
01:13spoiled, superficial rich girl.
01:15What? Ew, who are you?
01:18She doesn't seem that bright or kind,
01:20and her only concerns revolve around boys, clothes, and partying.
01:24She sees herself as above nerds like Seth and not rich people like Ryan,
01:28and she doesn't even seem to be a great friend to the people who are in her circle.
01:32Near the end of the pilot, we see her drop a blacked out Marissa off in her driveway.
01:37But even in the few lines she did get,
01:38actress Rachel Bilson really hit the comedic notes in a way that drew people
01:42into this character they might otherwise hate.
01:45Over the first few episodes of season one, Summer was slowly given more to do,
01:48and we got to see more facets of her personality begin to shine through.
01:52But Rachel, I feel like you brought your personality to the character.
01:58Shut up.
02:00Importantly, however, once they decided to bring Summer into the main cast,
02:03they didn't erase all of her more negative traits to try to make her immediately more likable.
02:08Thanks for almost getting my bathing suit wet, Cohen.
02:11My pleasure, Cohen.
02:14I can't believe that you knew that, Cohen.
02:17Instead, in tandem with showing us her softer side in smaller moments,
02:21the show also began to do the work of digging into why Summer behaved the way she did.
02:26Next to Marissa's myriad of issues, Summer's problems might seem to pale in comparison,
02:30but she actually has a lot going on underneath the surface.
02:33Her mean girl behavior does stem from some deep inner rage a la Regina George,
02:38though Summer isn't without her own anger issues, of course.
02:41I suffer from rage workouts.
02:42Instead, Summer's main issue stems from a fracture of her sense of self brought on by the world around
02:47her, constantly pushing her away from the direction in which she's naturally inclined.
02:52Instead of following her own interests and desires, she instead was made to feel that she had to work
02:57to carve out a very specific niche within the high school hierarchy, where she could keep herself safe
03:02and feeling like she had some level of control over her life and surroundings.
03:06Leaning into this also meant that she wouldn't have to let people in behind the walls she built up,
03:11because no one expects too much from the mean popular girl.
03:14The break between Summer's inner smart girl and outward mean hottie persona
03:19certainly caused her a lot of problems.
03:21Many of the more annoying aspects of her personality were also, however,
03:25also a result of the fact that she's a teenager.
03:28As we discussed in our video on Seth Cohen, the fact that these characters are played by grown adults
03:32can make it easy to forget that they are in fact supposed to be teens,
03:36young people who are trying to figure out themselves and the world for the first time.
03:40This is a nightmare. I'm sweating to death driving 10 miles an hour.
03:44I'm like a rickshaw listening to this music.
03:47Hey, do not insult death cat.
03:49While she wasn't initially meant to stick around,
03:52in the end Summer brought some very important balance to the core four.
03:56She evened out the main group so that there could be genuine platonic friendships,
04:00Seth and Marissa and Summer and Ryan,
04:02instead of the core group always being stuck in some sort of love triangle.
04:06Ryan, come on, take a deep breath. Just let me do what I do best.
04:09Which is what?
04:10Giving orders.
04:11She was also, despite what her behavior in the pilot might suggest,
04:14a good friend and a nice leveler for Marissa's more intense, dramatic nature.
04:19What about my best friend?
04:20Princess Sparkle is freaking out.
04:22Marissa, dumbass.
04:23Oh, I always get those too confused. They have really shiny hair.
04:27Summer was always there as a shoulder to cry on,
04:29but she was also willing and able to dole out some tough love when needed.
04:33Well, if you can't go to the bonfire with Ryan, then go home to Alex.
04:38You can't ride two horses with one S. It's a proverb.
04:43She's also always willing to stand up for herself,
04:45and she fiercely defends her friends.
04:47Though instead of taking a page out of the
04:49Ryan Atwood School of Punching Everyone playbook,
04:51Summer usually opts for verbal sparring.
04:54Just because you're saying really mean things in, like,
04:56a really nice voice doesn't mean that we don't realize
04:58that you're just some stupid little skank.
05:00But of course, it's Summer's relationship with Seth that throws her for a loop,
05:04shaking up her idea of who she is and who she can be.
05:07Initially, Seth and Summer essentially represent everything the other claims to hate.
05:12Seth, the sarcastic, nerdy loser.
05:15Summer, the stuck-up, materialistic, popular girl.
05:18But the fact that these opposites are so attracted to each other
05:20is an early signifier that they both have more going on
05:23than might initially meet the eye, for better and worse.
05:27Their on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again relationship
05:31is pretty par for the course for teen dramas,
05:33but the show allows it to reveal deeper aspects of the characters as well.
05:37Seth comes from a household with loving and mostly stable parents.
05:41Though he certainly has his own plethora of insecurities,
05:44he's always deep down felt secure in the fact that the people around him
05:48will love him despite his faults and mistakes, because his family always has.
05:52Summer, on the other hand, never had that level of familial stability.
05:56Her mother is gone, and while she and her father were quite close,
05:59he was often more interested in his work and his new wife.
06:02Summer had come to feel that relationships were transactional,
06:05and destined to fail.
06:07She goes into them assuming there's already a timer ticking down to their end.
06:11You're just gonna get bored with me, because pretty much all boys do.
06:14All of this, combined with Seth and Summer's other insecurities
06:18and peculiarities, lead to a lot of strife within their relationship.
06:22They are two teens who don't yet know quite who they are,
06:25or what they want, out of their lives, a relationship, or anything else.
06:28Oh my god.
06:30Okay, we cannot be more annoying than Ryan and Marissa.
06:33We're monsters.
06:35Seth's self-centeredness and belief that while Summer might be above him
06:39in the high school hierarchy, he was in some innate way better than her,
06:43and Summer's feeling that a girl like her should never want to date a guy like him
06:47leads to a constant background noise within their relationship,
06:50so it never feels truly steady.
06:52You know, it seems that you only want me when you can't have me.
06:56You like the chase, and that's all.
06:58So you know what?
07:00You can have it.
07:01But as much as they might bicker and break up,
07:03it's clear that they do have a deeper connection,
07:05that they both feel driven to hold onto.
07:07Because the whole reason that we broke up is because for me,
07:12it's always been you, Summer.
07:15It's always been you.
07:17While they may be different in many superficial ways,
07:19they come to find they are actually more on the same page
07:22than they ever would have imagined.
07:23Though Summer keeps up her cool popular girl facade,
07:26she, like Seth, hasn't yet given up all of her youth and whimsy.
07:31Who is this?
07:32No one.
07:33I meant no one.
07:34Princess Sparkle, what do you want?
07:35I think she's just Captain Oats Types.
07:36She also isn't as grown as she puts on.
07:39When the pair first sleep together,
07:41it's an all-around terrible experience.
07:43Seth is insecure that he won't live up to all the guys
07:45she's been with before.
07:47But she's insecure because she feels like she has to live up to a lie.
07:51It turns out that Summer and Seth had one major milestone
07:54in common after all.
07:55You weren't the only virgin in the room.
07:58There's someone else in the room?
07:59Like filming us?
08:00Me? Jackass?
08:02In a lesson they both learn again and again,
08:04they're both happier in their relationship when they stop trying
08:07to live up to the ideas they have about who they're supposed to be,
08:11and instead are just honest with each other.
08:13Hey, you just punched me.
08:17My baby's back.
08:19While Summer might have started out as the show's dits,
08:21as she's given room to grow and tackle her insecurities,
08:24she comes to a surprising realization.
08:26It turns out that I am totally smart.
08:29Yeah, you are in your own way.
08:31Not in my own way, in your way too.
08:33With the help of a counselor, she comes to realize that she
08:36isn't actually dumb at all.
08:37That ditzy persona was just the result of a number of external pressures.
08:41She wasn't playing dumb, that is deliberately pretending to be
08:45less intelligent, but instead had genuinely come to believe that she was dumb,
08:49because everyone around her had told her she was for so long that she internalized it.
08:53Girls' intelligence has long been downplayed,
08:56and in this early 2000s era, the idea of types was particularly rife.
09:01The smart girl versus hot girl dichotomy was very rigid,
09:04as we can see when Summer in more stereotypical smart girls like Anna
09:08and Taylor feel immediately at odds with one another.
09:11Are you even making fun of me because I can't tell?
09:13Aw, most of the time, Summer, you do my job for me.
09:18Again, not tracking.
09:19There was an assumption that it was an either-or thing.
09:22You couldn't be hot and smart, even though they all were.
09:25Because of the world she was brought up in,
09:27and the society she was attempting to try to fit into,
09:30Summer's mind was filled with the idea that to be a successful girl
09:33meant to be beautiful and desired by boys,
09:36and so that's where she focused her attention.
09:38She worked to cover up her insecurities with clothes and makeup
09:41and a mean attitude, all in the hopes of carving out
09:43a sense of security for herself.
09:45Because everyone else around her told her that she wasn't a smart girl
09:49from such a young age, she never even really saw that as an option.
09:53The truth is that Summer always had many typical smart girl traits.
09:57She overthinks everything, is highly competitive,
10:00is often the one to come up with a plan while everyone else
10:02sits around wondering what to do, she goes after what she wants,
10:05and, even underneath all of those insecurities,
10:08Summer does have that very important foundation of belief in herself.
10:12And once she begins freeing herself from the cage of the popular girl,
10:15she realizes that she does in fact have those book smarts too.
10:19Coming to accept these sides of herself also allows her to connect with other women
10:24who have personalities that might lead them to not always be seen in the best light.
10:29While Summer and Taylor are initially enemies,
10:31they eventually both come to realize that much of their clashing
10:34comes from their attempts to hide their deepest insecurities
10:37and end up becoming best friends.
10:38When Marissa's mom, Julie Cooper, begins dating Summer's dad,
10:42Summer is unsurprisingly not at all happy about it.
10:45Julie is also someone who has had to do a lot of work to secure the life she has,
10:49and who hides her feelings of inadequacy and fear behind a biting personality.
10:53They eventually become very important pillars of support for one another,
10:57especially after Marissa's death.
10:58After opening herself up to the new possibilities of who she could be,
11:02Summer put in the work, got the grades, and got into Brown.
11:05Summer's burgeoning smart girl era was a simmering issue in her relationship with Seth,
11:10and her getting into Brown, when he did, causes things to boil over.
11:14Seth is on one level upset because deep down,
11:17he feels like he is supposed to be the smart one in the relationship.
11:20But once their paths look to be diverging,
11:22he also begins to worry that being with him might hold her back from her full potential.
11:26A big part of Summer's growth is learning to stand strong
11:29in this idea of herself as an intelligent, capable person,
11:32and a big part of Seth's is coming to accept this version of her.
11:36I just want to give you room to keep doing what you're doing,
11:38because I think it's pretty amazing.
11:40So if you don't hear from me for a while,
11:42it's not because I don't love you, it's because I do.
11:44Going to university on the other side of the country,
11:47and being totally removed from that world that had molded her
11:50into Mean Girl Summer from the pilot,
11:52allows Summer to tap into even more facets of herself
11:55that she had previously tried to smother.
11:57She lets go of her materialism,
11:58and becomes devoted to environmentalism and activism.
12:01She had always cared for animals.
12:02Every day of third grade, you shared your lunch with that little skinny squirrel
12:06who kept getting his nuts stolen by that fat squirrel.
12:08I hated that mean squirrel.
12:09But as she got older, she shifted her focus to things that would make her seem cooler,
12:13so that she could fit in.
12:15Being free from these confines of Newport society
12:18means that she's able to nurture these aspects of herself that she had hidden,
12:21and in the end, she realized that those are in fact
12:24the things she wants to orient her entire life around.
12:27This is confirmed for her during her brief stint back in the O.C.
12:30during a suspension from university,
12:32for freeing some rabbits.
12:33She realizes that she doesn't really fit into this world anymore,
12:37and decides she wants to go out and explore,
12:39and find where this new, secure summer does fit.
12:42While the show could have nerfed all of Summer's growth
12:45in order to return her to the old summer
12:47in order to keep OTP Seth and Summer together,
12:49thankfully they decided to go another way.
12:52She doesn't give up her dream to stay with Seth.
12:54She heads off to attend protests, do environmental work,
12:57and educate students with the Global Environmental Organization
13:00regarding greenhouse emissions.
13:02I've saved the world, Summer Roberts.
13:04And in the end, they do walk down the aisle,
13:06as the secure, caring people they've grown to be.
13:09While some at the time marked Summer's turn from O.C. Barbie
13:12to environmental warrior as either unrealistic or dumb,
13:15in reality she was a precursor to a trend that's much more generally accepted now,
13:19that you can care about the world and look cute doing it.
13:22It's also actually nice to see a character that grows and changes in the way
13:25people so often do in their teenage years.
13:27Most people aren't the same person when they graduate college
13:30as they were freshman year of high school.
13:32However much many teen shows might like to keep their characters trapped
13:35in whatever tropes they started in,
13:37Summer was always a kind, smart girl.
13:39She was just also a lost kid who had to work hard to find her way.
13:44We can accept the fact that we can't worry about what we can't control
13:47and just enjoy the time that we have.
13:49That's the take.
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