BRING BACK LUKE!

What did I accomplish this Thanksgiving? A marathon viewing of The OC season 1, which tonight included the (in)famous "Oliver" episodes. I've heard so much about how awful Oliver was that it never occurred to me that the episodes could be good. They were. Most of all, Luke was GOLD. Definitely the best thing that that show did. If I think back to all his incarnations - the jealous boyfriend, the homophobic bully, the cheating boyfriend, the guy with a gay dad, the motherfucker - there wasn't a single one I didn't like; but never did he play the buffoon so exquisitely as he did in the "Oliver" episodes, particularly the one with Rooney. I've been told that the Rooney episode stunk, because all they did the whole time was talk about what a great band Rooney was (an apt critique, no doubt), but those critics forgot to mention that this episode also happened to be Luke's golden moment.

It was a philosophical query of mine whether it was possible for a good-looking person to be truly and convincingly funny. I remember when I first started watching The OC, I used to complain that it didn't have any good-looking people on it (this was when Ryan and Marissa were my samples), and my friends would then say, half-apologetically, "Well, there's Luke." I never imagined that Luke would be the answer to my philosophical query, the pudding-proof that a good-looking person could also be hilarious.

The interesting thing, however, is that once Luke won my heart as the bag o' laughs, he kind of stopped being good-looking. Isn't that interesting?