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The O.C.
Say what you will about
FOX. Their reality TV may be frequently immoral (come on: Bachelorettes
in Alaska...?), and their sitcoms touch and go, but man, do they
know their teen dramas. Much like 90210 and Melrose Place,
this series may need to wait until season two in order to get all the
bumps in the carpet out; it's still a finely crafted drama, however, and
the latest guilty pleasure for its fans.
This is a drama set in The
O.C., otherwise known as Orange County, in California. The story
begins when a wayward teen, Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) is about to be
sent to jail. Ryan is one of those otherwise nice boys who is a "bad
boy" only because his troubled upbringing forces him to be. Enter his
lawyer, Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher): one of those types who would be a
big time millionaire lawyer if not for a desire to handle the
"little" cases like this one, that remind him of his own
(apparently) troubled youth. Sandy not only reduces Ryan's sentence to a
mere probation; he sees a kindred spirit in the boy, and decides to take
him in, with Ryan having nowhere to go. This leads to polarized first
impressions in the Cohen house; Sandy's wife Kirsten (Kelly Rowan)
sees Ryan as a bad influence, while son Seth (Adam Brody) always wanted a
brother, and quite frankly, could use a friend.
I think what I like about
this drama is how it is not a teen drama, yet maintains a teen drama's
appeal. One of the worst plot contrivances in 90210 was how
suddenly the parents of Brenda and Brandon moved out of the house and left
their two young kids in charge of the house while they were away.
Um...why?!? Because in the real world the writers had no more plot
possibilities for the parents, and wrote them off the show any way they
could. Compare that to the adults in The O.C. who are given a
broader sense of three-dimensionality and therefore, offer the drama more
plot twists to work off of. Most episodes are almost right down the
middle, with one half of the plots involving the parents and adults in The
O.C., with the other half being the teens. I've seen other dramas attempt
this yet never with as much success as this show has had so far. The mesh
of adolescent and mature drama is perfect.
Since this is a review
post-season-one, let's summarize the cool plot twists so far. We had Ryan
meet Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), who has led to many a nighttime soap
element on the series, from her bout with alcohol to her quickly deciding
to lose her innocence to her original boyfriend, Luke, only to find out
he's cheating on her with other girls. Meanwhile, Marissa's best friend
Summer (Rachel Bilson) is Seth's childhood crush, leading to Seth slowly
getting her to melt down and date him, thanks to Seth's growing
confidence, thanks to Ryan's influence as his new "brother," of
sorts. Meanwhile, Marissa's father Jimmy (Tate Donovan) had a bout with
possible jail time when he mishandled money as an accountant and nearly
sent all his clients to bankruptcy right along with him. As for Marissa's
mom, Julie (Melinda Clarke), she's the sort of "bad girl" of
this drama, leading to her cooly divorcing Jimmy, only to marry Caleb, if
just to stay in the richer celebrity circles. The catch: Caleb is Kirsten
Cohen's father, making Kirsten's former classmate her new stepmother. This
is some of the sort of guilty pleasures this nighttime soap has delivered
so far, in just its first season.
Not that all plots were
golden. No less than two characters were written off the show, for no
reason other than the writers (or so one must presume) had nowhere to go
with them. Marissa began with a boyfriend, Luke Ward (Chris Carmack), who
begins as Ryan's nemesis, yet slowly they become friends, seeing that they
share many of the same problems. Yet the writers didn't have anywhere to
go with this character, leading to a plotline out from left field where he
has an affair with Marissa's mom (!), only to mercifully write his
character off the show, before they made poor Luke do anything worse than
that. This is a shame, because now the only two recurring male teen
characters are...Ryan and Seth?
Then there was Anna (Samaire Armstrong).
Anna began as the typical tale of a girl who likes Seth but he can't see
it so she tries to get closer to him by helping him get closer to the girl
he's pining for, Summer. Yeah this has "Some Kind of Wonderful"
written all over it; even more so, when Anna's character looks so much
like Mary Stuart Masterson it's uncanny. Yet
as adorable as Samaire Armstrong is, and as much as
fans loved the character, there wasn't much to do with
her when it came down to Seth choosing one or the other. Why did he
"have" to choose Summer? Because the actors were dating in real
life; that's why! So sorry Anna; your leaving the series was one of the
saddest parts of this first season.
Not that the same can be
said for the first season's worst plot contrivance, Oliver (Taylor
Handley). Here's how annoying this character was: the season was 27
episodes long, and Oliver guest starred in a mere 6 of them, yet it seemed
more like 28! I'm all for villains in a nighttime soap, but at least make them
interesting, entertaining, enjoyable to watch, or even palatable. This
character was not only obnoxious; the very fact that only Ryan could see
this character's obnoxiousness made the rest of the cast seem mentally
challenged. How annoying is "annoying"...? When Oliver's final
scene reaches fruition he aims a gun to his head and the entire viewing
public is screaming for him to pull the trigger. The original script
allegedly contained this final moment, yet someone felt he'd make a great
return villain, so he was dragged away by cops instead, for a likely
return someday. Noooo! I'd prefer Jar-Jar Binks guest starring as Ryan's
long lost father, before inviting Oliver back. I'm not joking.
There's also that
cliffhanger to consider. I don't mind spoiling it here since it's
important to know prior to season two, and what's more, you probably won't
get to see it in reruns stateside, anyway, with a slew of new TV shows
trying for some ratings on FOX during the summer. So let me summarize this
finale by saying: Ryan may be a dad to a very hard-to-appreciate guest
star, while Seth goes sailing to nobody-knows-where and...well, that's
about it really. Oh yeah; Marissa's Mom married Kirsten's dad, making
Seth's mom her stepsister and Marissa's Mom now Kirsten's Mom. Does that
make any sense? Yeah; this first season's finale was like that on people.
Let's hope the following season can straighten things out a little.
Oliver aside, this series'
first season was a smash hit. The only bad news was how the series began
in the middle of summer, which meant that this 27 episode season had a lot
of gaps between new episodes from time to time, in order to make these
episodes last from the premiere August 5th, all the way through to May.
Yet two minor faux pas hardly constitute a bad show. In fact the show has
the promise of lasting many more seasons to come. In a perfect world, the
three big name networks would have as much knowledge about good nighttime
soap writing these days as FOX does. At least one network knows how it's
done. That's all that truly matters.
---Techtite
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