Primetime dreams
No one had any idea what they were getting with The O.C.
Not viewers, not TV critics, not even executives at Fox. If the latter group had, they wouldn't have put it on the air. Really.
Fox wanted a primetime soap opera about young, rich people doing young, rich things. Immoral things. Things that make the Abercrombie & Fitch quarterly look like Martha Stewart Living. Escapism, where people could retire to the living room after a hard day of work and immerse themselves in lives they themselves could never live. And there had to be drugs. And booze. Lots of booze.
Number 5: The O.C.How about a tough outsider who breaks all the rules? We know he's tough because all he ever wears is a wifebeater. That means he's trash, and he won't be welcome in the lavish community that is Orange County. Welcome to The O.C., bitch, this is how we do it here - you're not welcome. Take your eyes off my girlfriend and go back to jacking cars in Chino. Leave the coke. Take the cannoli.
Fox wanted that. The opulence, the drugs, the sex, the drama. Fast cars, loose women, the rich and powerful hitting rock bottom and slap fights between beautiful and wealthy women. They wanted The Ryan Atwood Show.
Josh Schwartz gave them that for, oh, an episode or two. Then they got The Seth Cohen Show.
Though you'll never hear anyone at Fox say it, thank god for such trickery.
Credit Adam Brody, as many others have before, with carrying this show. Importing the same balance of hip and nerd that he infused into the third season of Gilmore Girls as Lane's bandmate Dave, Brody's Seth Cohen was one of the most fascinating characters on television this season as the rich loner geek who had a friend forced upon him and used that opportunity to properly join the community - without betraying his true self. It wasn't a transformation by Seth but a realization by those around him, particularly girl-of-his-dreams Summer, that they had never given him a chance. These weren't the evil, blackhearted bitches that Fox wanted for their new series, but real people that just happened to live unimaginable lives.
Helping make the character of Seth so realistic was his roots: father Sandy, played by Peter Gallagher's eyebrows, is a dead ringer for who we expect Seth to grow into; we see where the boy gets his optimistic sarcasm from. Mother Kirsten (Kelly Rowan) completes this perfect family as the beauty that is obviously more attracted to brains than brawn, and though she puts up with a morally shady father she would never herself be caught dead in a compromising situation. As the lead family of a primetime soap, it is fascinating that the Cohen family is more Everybody Loves Raymond than Dallas.
Then there are the supporting players. Much can be said for Mischa Barton's acting talent, or lack thereof, and the character is one of the more cliched of the program. Still, she and Benjamin McKenzie worked well as a couple, each with their own demons to battle, and as stupid as her midseason dalliance with Oliver was the flightiness that Barton infuses into her otherwise intelligent character helps make the situation seem feasible. At the same time, it is reasonable that she would allow Ryan to leave at the end of the season, understanding his reasons and able to put her own selfish motives aside even if it drives her back to that demon - alcohol.
I would be remiss not to mention the writing...oh, the writing. The O.C. could fail to return this November and still have an impact on popular culture: how many people will be celebrating Chrismukkah this year? Schwartz and his writers filled the show with amazing references to pop culture and society, becoming almost Gilmoresque in their ability to entertain with simple dialogue that had little to do with the plot (the show shared one writer/producer with Gilmore Girls, which explained Dave's absence by saying he was "in California.") The Cohens weren't just hip and rich but smart and I'll be damned if I wouldn't want to spend time with these people. That's not something you can say very often about TV characters; usually it's "a nice person to watch but you wouldn't want to live there."
In the end, The O.C. did give Fox execs most of what they wanted, but as a Trojan horse that delivered one of the best shows of the season. In between the fists and fights and drugs and rock and sex was a good, old-fashioned American family, their dysfunctional neighbors, and an outsider that helped these people unconsciously reexamine their lives. Fox wanted a show about people we could look down at living lives that we would kill to have, but instead we look up at the Cohens, and wish they could have better lives. The house is nice. Really nice. But you can't help but imagine that these three...four, if you want to include Ryan...could be so much happier outside the money and the temptation of Orange County. Ryan commented in the pilot that he could "get in less trouble where he's from." That boy know.