Disclaimer: Josh Schwartz is the man. I own nothing. I'm coping, please don't rub it in.
Everything I own is crap.
As Seth thinks it, he knows it's bullshit. He's wearing clothes his mother bought him, a thirty dollar t-shirt, seventy dollar jeans. The shoes are cheap, but only because Seth refuses to wear anything but Converse All-Stars.
So Seth doesn't own crap, just feels like it.
He feels like one of those cars you see sometimes, not in Newport but in other places, parked outside auto-dealerships. "DON'T BUY FROM DAVID WYATT DEALS," They proclaim in soap, "THIS CAR IS A LEMON!"
His mother can package him in all the Diesel jeans and brand name t-shirts she wants to, Seth will always be defective. Before Ryan he wore his flaws like badges of pride. When Ryan was around they didn't much matter anyway. Now that Ryan's gone, Seth finally thinks he sees himself for what he is. Flawed, imperfect, damaged goods, a lemon.
Seth is not good enough for Newport. Seth is, apparently, too good for Chino and by default Ryan.
Which is crap on so many levels.
Ryan rejected him like a sub-standard car, and that rejection stings.
Seth calls The Nana from the payphone on a San Diego dock. He tells himself he's just checking to make sure she's still alive, but mostly he wants to hear her call him her Setheleh.
"I am a lemon," he announces when his grandmother picks up the phone.
"Yes you are," The Nana agrees without waiting for an explanation.
"Nana!" Seth's indignant. He was looking for some sympathy, not another person to rag on him.
"Setheleh, tatteleh," The Nana says gently, "Don't you remember any of your mitzvah training?"
"Not really, no," Seth admits. "What does that have to do with me being a sub-standard automobile?"
"Seth," The Nana sounds more patient that Seth has ever heard her, and only slightly exasperated, "in Jewish tradition the lemon symbolizes the heart. You my child are definitely a lemon."
"Um."
"You are," The Nana insists. "You're the heart of your family. Your dad's the soul, your mother's the mind, Ryan's the muscle, and you hold them all together."
"I always knew Ryan was the brawn."
"Yes dear," now The Nana was just being patronizing.
"So I'm a lemon, huh?"
"You are."
"Thanks Nana."
"Anytime darling. Oh, and Seth?"
"Yes Nana?"
"Go home."