Examined now, years after its 92-episode run, “The O.C.” stands as a time capsule glimpse at the second half of the second Bush Administration, a snapshot of an artificially inflated real estate boom and the fruits of an economy on the brink of collapse. Down on the ground, we might have had a sense of the growing unrest, of the increased frustrations of the lower classes, or the near-depression to come. But up in the hills of Orange County, we rooted for Seth and Summer, we pined over and then mourned for Marissa, booed Julie Cooper and gradually learned to love her, we went to concerts at the Bait Shop for a little while and then entirely forgot it existed, we celebrated Chrismukkah multiple times. Maybe society was teetering on the edge of an abyss, but we were driving over that edge, singing Phantom Planet’s “California” as we fell.
Maybe we could have learned from Jimmy Cooper’s corruption? Maybe we could have seen some of our own high profile CEOs in Caleb Nichol? Maybe when Marissa a shot Trey to the halting strains of Imogen Heap’s “Hide & Seek,” that was the slo-motion death of our collective innocence? Maybe when Taylor Townsend donned a groundhog costume to woo Ryan Atwood, that was all of us descending into furry perversity?
Daniel Fienberg
is kidding, sort of — did the final sentence give it away? — but I like what he’s saying anyway. Check the whole thing out; it’s a great analysis/remembrance of one of television’s finest programs this decade.
Among the many errors that the TV series makes, perhaps the most glaring is its promotion of the books’ parents from their status as emblems of parental inadequacy to that of characters in their own right. In the TV version, we are asked to follow the stories of the parents in tandem with the stories of their children: Lillian van der Woodsen and Rufus Humphrey, for one particularly unfortunate example, are thrust into a trite romance. What makes classic children’s literature so appealing (to all ages) is its undeviating loyalty to the world of the child. In the best children’s books, parents never share the limelight with their children; if they are not killed off on page 1, they are cast in the pitifully minor roles that actual parents play in their children’s imaginative lives. That von Ziegesar’s parent characters are ridiculous as well as insignificant in the eyes of their children only adds to the sly truthfulness of her comic fairy tale.
Ibid.
This, however, is not an error confined to “Gossip Girl.” I do not understand why television producers think parents are interesting. If the life dramas of forty and fifty year olds are interesting, make a separate series concerned with them. Teen dramas should be about teenagers, and shouldn’t be pretending even in the slightest that adults are interesting. And they really shouldn’t be pretending parents’ sex lives are appropriate plot topics (looking at you here, O.C.). I mean, god, even if they are doing that sort of thing, it’s still gross! As if you’d even want to be thinking about that!
![fuckyeahschwartzverse:
[door knocking] SUMMER: I’m busy! Studying. Naked. SETH: Is that supposed to keep me away? SUMMER: Cohen? You’re at my house. SETH: And you’re dressed. I wonder who’s more disappointed.
The O.C., 1x19 The Heartbreak
This is totally up there among the best scenes on television this decade.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ku76it0GJh1qzm2pho1_500.png)
