Beef stew is on the Cohen dinner menu. Seth groans that he misses the days when his parents got takeout all the time. Summer enters and informs them that Marissa won't be joining them tonight. Ryan stops setting the table to ask why, and Summer admits that Marissa is on the beach. With Johnny. I thought Summer wanted Ryan and Marissa to stay together, and yet, here she is, sucking out at coming up with an excuse for Marissa that won't make it look like she's cheating on Ryan. The air is thick with tension as everyone waits to see how Ryan will react to this. Seth breaks the silence with a request that Ryan not punch Summer. Hee. Ryan tries to blow it off, but he's not happy.

Fortunately, Johnny lends Marissa a sweatshirt so that she can actually experience what it's like to wear real clothes. She notes that the shirt is from his old school's baseball team. Johnny says that he quit baseball and all of his other activities when he moved to Newport: "New town, new sports." But Marissa didn't skip beef stew to stop there, and asks Johnny for details. Johnny says he had a fight with his dad a few years ago and hasn't seen him since. And now we're stuck in a scene with two people who can't deliver many lines convincingly -- let alone serious and emotional ones -- from which there is no escape. Johnny, his voice pausing with sadness but not really, says that his dad was an abusive drunk who beat up his mother. One day, he came home and found him strangling her. "I just...lost it," he says. "Lost it," Marissa parrots. I'm about to lose it. Johnny says he grabbed his baseball bat and beat the crap out of his dad. He blacked out during the actual violence, and came to to find himself covered with blood and his dad unconscious on the floor. Marissa totally feels his pain, since she shot that guy once. She puts an arm around Johnny, and he says that the craziest part of this whole story is that Marissa is the person he's told it to. I actually think the crazy part was when he couldn't remember almost killing his dad, but that's just me. Casey finally arrives just in time to see her boyfriend and Marissa looking very close. I'll bet she's really glad she befriended poor, friendless, bullied Marissa now!