The eerie premonition of the Passover episode on 'The O.C.'
May Linda Lavin's memory be for a blessing.
On Passover, I like to revisit both the Exodus story and the Passover TV episodes of yore. But this year, while watching “The O.C.”’s Passover episode titled “The Nana,” I gasped. It had an eerie detail that took on a whole new meaning after the 2024 death of “Alice” star Linda Lavin, who plays the episode’s titular grandmother.
If you didn’t grow up to the sound of Phantom Planet’s “California” (the band of future movie cantor Jason Schwartzman) blaring over cinematic shots of the Golden State, let me brief the concept of the show for you. “The O.C.” centers an interfaith Jewish family — public defender turned corporate lawyer Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher), his wife Kristen (Kelly Rowan) and son Seth Cohen (Adam Brody before he was the Hot Rabbi) — that takes in Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie), a troubled teen from Chino.
In episode 23 of the show’s first season, we get to meet Sandy’s Jewish mother Sophie, referred to, with great trepidation, as “The Nana.” Sandy is trying to kosherize the house for Passover, Kristin is terrified of his mother taking over everything and also making snide comments about the fact that she’s not Jewish (some “Nobody Wants This” foreshadowing). Seth is trying to get his non-Jewish girlfriend Summer (Rachel Bilson) to steer clear, and her enthusiasm for learning about the Jewish holiday is one of the highlights of the episode. (Bilson, whose father is Jewish and mother comes from a Catholic Italian American family has called her family a “Chrismukkah situation,” referring to the portmanteau for Christmas-Hanukkah popularized by Seth Cohen himself.)
But when Nana comes in, she’s all mellow kindness. She doesn’t kvetch at Sandy for not picking her up from the airport, she compliments Kristen for her grace and classic features (yikes), she even (GASP!) admires the California beach-side views out of the Cohen’s home (Nana is known for her disdain of the Golden State).
After a tour of restaurants yields not a single criticism of the food, service or ambiance, Sandy confronts his mother.
“This Jewish Mary Poppins act, I’m not buying it,” he tells his mother, and when the aggression and guilt finally comes out, she tells him that he’ll see how funny he is when she’s dead, which will be sooner rather than later, since she’s been diagnosed with lung cancer and her doctor has given her just four to six months to live.
That was when I gasped, because, well, a little over two decades later, Lavin herself would die from complications related to lung cancer. Her husband, Steve Bakunas, would go on to share a very detailed and very loving retelling of her last moments on earth — she died from complications relating to the cancer on the way to the hospital. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer less than two months earlier. Her last words to her husband were a reminder of the great love she felt for him.
In the episode, Sandy and Seth convince Nana to fight the cancer instead of giving in. When she talks to her grandson about his father, she tells him, “Your father doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does.”
“Well you're the one who doesn't want to stick around, so whose fault is that,” Seth replies.
We meet Sophie again in season two’s “The Return of the Nana,” and in this episode she shows us even more of the softer, feeling side of The Nana. But we’ve already seen her deeply feeling tender underbelly in the Passover episode of season one. Her eyes tear up subtly, she’s full of emotion, she is a woman who is finding a way to take off the decades of armor she’s built around herself to survive and thrive as a successful lawyer.
The makings of the pop culture Jewish mom are known to all of us. She’s overbearing, controlling, meddling, she’s got no boundaries and no filter — she’s not someone you want as a mom. It’s a stereotype that I, as a Jewish mom, would love to see passed over. But nobody played it with such complexity, such tenderness, such fierceness on screen and stage as Linda Lavin, and she has the accolades and awards to show for it. Her Jewish moms are almost always full characters with their own fascinating stories — stories that we want to focus on — not just two-dimensional stereotypes that are the comic relief or the cartoon villain. That’s the thing about Sophie Cohen. We get a glimpse of her and we want more.
In Lavin’s last TV role before she died, Sybill Schneiderman in “Mid-Century Modern,” she turns the Sophie Cohen character into a butterfly. She plays that same tough-as-nails mom but one that can and does tell her children how much she loves them. One that has a rich life, filled with loves and enemies and also the most fabulous wardrobe. That heart of hers — “so big,” as Bakunas describes in that video — shines so bright in the show.
In “The Nana,” Sandy Cohen describes the seder as “a celebration of rebirth, of new beginnings and of freedom, freedom to take responsibilities for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, for the world.”
As Jewish mothers, we often carry so much of the responsibility of making Passover happen (my back is currently experiencing the aftermath). When Sophie walks in to her son’s California home, Sandy expects her to cook the Passover meal. And it’s hard sometimes to feel like we’re channeling those stereotypes, even when we fight them, in real life. But Linda Lavin also reminded us how much heart we as Jewish mothers have too — in her career, and in her life, she fought for women to be seen, for women to fight for themselves — and that is something I’m grateful for this Passover.
May her memory be for a blessing.
What’s your favorite Linda Lavin role? Let me know in the comments!