The ##

In the second episode of the second season of The O.C., Kirsten Cohen, the shiksa matriarch of the Cohen family, walks into the kitchen, where she finds Sandy, her very Jewish husband who has a very un-Jewish head of thick hair and a very un-Jewish hobby of surfing. He is a lawyer, but he spurned a corporate job to work pro-bono, and he went to Berkeley. Kirsten is the daughter of Newport Beach’s biggest, baddest businessman, Caleb Nichol, who is also not Jewish and who probably made anti-semitic comments when Sandy wooed Kirsten. He was not a nice man; he died when he had a heart attack and sank to the bottom of an infinity pool, which was ironic and all, because his second wife, the gold-digger with a pure heart, Julie Cooper-Nichol, was planning to kill him that very night.

“Sandy?”

“Honey,” he says. “I’m mid-schmear.”

In any Jewish household, bagels are that essential. Growing up, every Sunday, we had bagels for brunch. I also ate a bagel every morning for breakfast, and some afternoons for lunch, but on Sundays, it wasn’t just a bagel with cream cheese with a glass of orange juice; there was lox, tomatoes, cheese, marble cake. My father went to the bagel store in his pajamas and waited for 30 minutes with every other dad in town sporting the same casual garb. Weekends are for sports, and they are for food. Couples enjoy date nights on Saturday nights, and families bring in bagels on Sunday morning.

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Go to the bagel store. Frozen bagels suffice about as well as insta-coffee passes for a mug of the real stuff. Choose a bagel flavor depending on the mood. I usually go with sesame for taste, and also because as the seeds slip off the bagel, it’s satisfying to wipe the plate and collect the fallen, like sprinkles on soft-serve. On occasion, I’ve also been prone to fads of everything and cinnamon-raisin, and a plain bagel is always a surefire option.

Go home.

Take the bagel from the brown bag — it must be a brown bag — and, with the biggest knife in the kitchen, fracture it through its side, holding it vertically. Slicers are for cheaters. Place the bagel in the toaster, open side up. Twist the heating knob about 75 percent to the right. The toast is done when the bagel’s edges are somewhere between tan and black. Burnt bagels are not good, and cold bagels are not as good as warm bagels.

As the toaster begins to glow, walk to the refrigerator and grab the tub of Philly’s or the clear container of store-bought cream cheese, which always tastes better and spreads smoother. Do not take a stick of butter or vat of margarine. I love bagels with butter, especially when the melted butter oozes. But butter is not schmear. Also, use plain cream cheese. None of that vegetable cream cheese. None of that strawberry cream cheese. And none of that shit with chives. Don’t be a yuppie.

The toaster will pop. Make sure the bagel is thoroughly toasted — brown and hot, not black and smoky. Flip the bagel onto the plate; if it’s an oven-style toaster, use the schmear knife as tongs.

With the knife, scoop a wad of cream cheese, moving the wrist from left to right. The last motion is upward. Spread the cream cheese on the bagel. There is a fine line between a coat and an excess; find it.

Bagels with butter are best open-faced, but the two sides of a bagel with schmear should be slapped together. There will be cream cheese in the hole. With a bigger knife — one that could chop a finger, if misused — cut down the middle, starting the knife at the top of the bagel and moving toward your stomach.

If it is Sunday, add lox and a tomato.

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Jimmy Cooper, Kirsten Cohen’s high school paramour and Julie Cooper-Nichol’s first husband, is also not a Jew. He sails. He lives on a yacht. He fathered Marissa Cooper. In the first season of The O.C., he is investigated by the SEC and ultimately arrested by the FBI for stealing money from his clients. In the second season, after a failed relationship with Kirsten’s sister, Hailey Nichol, he rekindles something between love and lust with Julie Cooper-Nichol, who, again, is married to Caleb Nichol, Kirsten and Hailey’s father. Soon, the Newport Beach community — or at least, the Nichols and Cohens — find out about the affair, and Jimmy is shamed into sailing off to Maui, all to avoid messing up the status quo.

He spends his last night in California with Marissa on the beach, huddled on a pier, and the next morning, having stayed up all night, she walks next door to the Cohen household. Presumably, it’s Sunday.

“I’m sorry,” Sandy says, staring at Marissa, distraught in her oversized USC hoodie.

“I brought bagels,” she offers, reversing the mood.

“Well, that’s the secret password into the Cohen house,” he says. “Come on in.”

The Cohens already had bagels, because it’s Sunday. They see Marissa’s brown bag, and they throw their bagels in the trash.

Sandy pledges to teach Marissa how to shmear a bagel, and Kirsten endorses her husband’s shmearing, dubbing him an “artist with cream cheese,” emphasizing the second word instead of the first, just for Josh Schwartz to remind us that Kirsten is not, in fact, Jewish, just in case everything else about her wasn’t already a tip.

“You gonna be OK?” Seth asks Marissa.

“Of course,” Ryan says. “We have bagels.”