Posts
Eulogy for the OC
By Izzy Grinspan / January 4, 2007
Fox just pulled the plug on the OC. Nobody should be too devastated by that news. It was time. If we’re going to mourn anything now, it should not be the show that ended today, but the show that could have been.
Go back and watch the OC pilot next time it’s on TV. Everyone remembers the classic moment when water polo hunk Luke schools new-kid-in-town Ryan on how it’s done in Orange County. But my favorite line occurs earlier in the episode. At this point in the show, all we know about Ryan is that he’s a thug from working-class Chino who stole a car and wound up temporarily adopted by his attorney’s rich family, the Cohens. He’s loitering at the end of the Cohens’ long driveway when Marissa, the beautiful problem child next door, comes out to smoke a cigarette. She stares at him disdainfully and says, “Who are you?”
He replies: “Whoever you want me to be.”
It’s such a terrifically soapy response—sexy, yet utterly ridiculous. And it presents all of the show’s potential in less than five seconds. Here’s the smoldering bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, facing the vodka-swilling daughter of the guy who just embezzled half the town’s funds in order to keep his wife in Gucci. The possibilities are endless: Who does Marissa want Ryan to be?
Unfortunately, it turned out that Marissa just wanted Ryan to be a nice guy. It also turned out that he fit into Orange County just fine once Luke stopped punching him in the face. By the end of the second season, the James Dean had been leeched right out of him, leaving behind just a nice adopted Jewish boy who got good grades and wanted to be an architect. To create drama, the writers had to bring in temporary hooligans like Oliver (the unstable rich kid) and Trey (Ryan’s unstable brother), who wreaked havoc for a couple episodes and then were killed off or relegated forever to Pittsburgh or Portland.
Like most of the first season audience, I gave up on the show a while ago, and I won’t miss it. But I will miss that brief period, early on, when Ryan Atwood seemed like he might be more than just a pretty, oft-punched face.
POST A COMMENT
In Palm Springs? Really? I like all you West Coast types, but California deranged rich boys are never nearly as entertaining as the kind of lunatic scions we get in the Boston-New York-DC region. (See Igby Goes Down, or the "My name is Diiiiiiiiiiick" scene from The Rules of Attraction.) Â
…which is when Hidden Palms premiers, starring the kid who played Oliver, Taylor Handley, as an angry teen in Palm Springs (except that it's being shot in Phoenix) and is from Kevin Williamson, the man who single handedly made that Paula Cole song "I Don't Wanna Wait…" the soundtrack of me flipping past the WB.Â
Mischa sells Keds on top of cars like nobody's business. Onwards and upwards!
Wanna post your own comments? Gotta log in first!