Summer was kind of the opposite of the Marissa Cooper...

Summer was kind of the opposite of the Marissa Cooper character, who was the straight 'popular girl,' ... It was fun to be the humorous part of the Marissa-Summer team, just like Seth is the humor on the Ryan-Seth team. Josh has such a tremendous sense of humor, so humor and comic timing were important parts of what I guess you'd call the formula for the show.