(S03E21) So much happened on last night's episode, I just don't know where to start. I'll just jump to the part that shocked me most -- the attempted rape of that poor girl at Volchok's party. Marissa sees one of Volchok's slimy friends slip a questionable liquid into the beer of an already wasted girl. Him and some of his buddies then take the passed-out girl outside to a van to tag team her. For a few minutes, I actually didn't think that Marissa was going to do anything other than remain her passive aggressive self. Luckily(!), Marissa follows them outside and claims that she needed to get into the van because she left her sweatshirt in there (passive aggressive!). If I saw some guys doing that to a girl at a party, it'd be hard to tell me apart from the Incredible Hulk because I'd rip the doors off that van. In fact, it wouldn't even get that far because I would have ninja-kicked that beer out of the dude's hand before he could even think about giving it to her. Marissa didn't do any of those things, but she did (thankfully) stop the rape, so I won't criticize.

In last night's episode, Julie became more vocal in Marissa's life. In fact, it's the first time in a while that she actually acted like a mom by putting her foot down, and demanded that Marissa stayed away from Volchok. But in classic Julie Cooper-form, she admitted that she understood the attraction -- "He's got nice abs, the bad boy thing. I get it." I thought that it was plain awesome that Julie abruptly showed up at Volchok's crash pad when she realized that Marissa was skipping school. I'm not sure how she knew where he lived, but whatever. In the end, Marissa turned to her mom for help, and that's all that matters.

With graduation on the horizon, Ryan headed for Albuquerque (man, that's a hard city to spell), to invite his mom to the big day. He finds her working at a diner and she looks good, but he's upset that she's taken up with yet another man. This one a biker with a penchant for chili cheese fries. Before he gets up the nerve to ask his mom to graduation, he has a few beers with her hot co-worker and beds her within the hour. Leave it to a stud like Ryan to meet a girl and sleep with her before happy hour is over. The kid's not even out of high school yet! Throughout the episode, Ryan flip flops as to whether or not he should ask his mom to graduation. In a not-so nice move, Ryan lies to his mom and tells her that he's thinking of skipping graduation all together because he doesn't want to tell her that she embarrasses him. Why would he be embarrassed? Because she's planning on wearing a sequenced evening gown that looks like it's on loan from the Star Search wardrobe department circa 1987. His mom, not a fan of rejection, tearfully storms out. But Ryan makes nice before the episode is over when he realizes that his mom has changed her ways. She's now sober and her biker boyfriend is really an upstanding guy. Ahhhh, sobriety works so well on TV.

Meanwhile (I told you a lot happened in this episode), Summer tries to get back with Seth by plotting an elaborate romantic spectacle with Taylor at her side. They decorate the school lounge with balloons and hearts and those giant 10-pound Hershey kisses. Summer jumps on the coffee cart (ala Seth two years ago) and professes her love for Seth and promises that she will leave him alone if he says he doesn't love her anymore. He lies and tells her that he doesn't. Summer tearfully slumps to the ground and screams at him to leave. This was a weird scene for me because knowing that Adam and Rachel are a real-life couple, I would have thought that there would be more emotion between them. Even when it's pretend, it's hard to hear your boyfriend say that he doesn't love you anymore. I guess I expected more from Rachel's performance. In the end, Seth realizes that he's made a mistake and asks Ryan to help him get back with Summer and get into Brown. Ahhh, the teen drama hi-jinx begins!

Finally, Sandy has found himself steadily slipping into the evilness that is the corporate world. I don't want to get into it because it both confuses me and bores me. But let's just say that it almost drove Kirsten to take another drink ... of Chardonnay. Uh oh, sobriety doesn't work so well on TV.

Next week's episode looks amazing. Anna (yup, Anna!) is back in town, and so is Theresa and she has a kid ... that looks a lot like Ryan.