The OC Leaves Home
At the end of a recent episode of The O.C., Dr. Neil Roberts confides to his daughter Summer that he's tempted to skip town and take a job offer at a "wonderfully quirky" hospital called Seattle Grace. Most television viewers have already made the move: Seattle Grace, of course, is the name of the hospital on Grey's Anatomy, which this fall went head-to-head with The O.C in the prized Thursday 9 p.m. timeslot and came out on top. Grey's Anatomy had 21 million viewers last week; The O.C has been averaging about 3 million, prompting Fox to consider moving the show to Wednesday.
Whether Dr. Roberts's reference to the rival show was O.C. writer Josh Schwartz's admission of defeat or just a bit of inadvertently self-deprecating postmodern TV universe humor, if The O.C is going under it's no show's fault but its own. Reeling from the death last season of golden girl Marissa Cooper (the lanky and bland Mischa Barton), the series once known for maintaining its witty charm even while trading in drug binges, suicide attempts, and accidental shootings has devolved into an unfortunate blend of melodrama and tired campus humor.
A brief recap: now in its fourth season, The O.C follows the turbulent lives of a group of troubled teens, and their equally troubled parents, in the wealthy Southern California enclave of Newport Beach. At the end of last season, Marissa met a fiery end in a fatal car crash caused by an enraged ex-lover with the appropriately villainous moniker of Volchok.
Not surprisingly, season four has thus far revolved around the other characters' efforts to cope with this loss. Marissa's best friend, the ever-perky, ever-quirky Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson), has sublimated her grief in self-transformation, morphing almost overnight from a Prada-wearing princess into a hairy-legged tree-hugger. Literally: she's stopped shaving — much to the dismay of the well-groomed Taylor Townsend (Autumn Reeser), who has stepped somewhat awkwardly into the sidekick role in Marissa's absence — and started chaining herself to overgrown oaks so they can't be chopped down. She's a freshman at Brown this year; her endearingly nerdy boyfriend Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), stuck in Newport after his own college plans didn't work out, spends most of his time not-so-endearingly moping because she doesn't return his calls.
Meanwhile, Marissa's on-and-off boyfriend, Ryan Atwood (the brooding Benjamin McKenzie), has given up his spot at Berkeley, taken up cage fighting, and teamed up with Marissa's ice-queen mother to seek vengeance on Volchok, who has fled to Mexico. Their scheming is derailed when Seth's father learns about it. Sandy Cohen is an ex-hippie who now channels his idealism into his job as a public defender; he tracks down Volchok before Ryan can get to him and engineers a peaceful surrender to the Newport Beach police.
Oh — and then there's also a subplot about an accidental marriage to a French aristocrat and a Thanksgiving dinner to which the newly benevolent Summer invites a coterie of homeless men. You know a show's in trouble when it's bringing out the "very special holiday episode" three episodes into the season.
If this all sounds like more than one program, it feels like it, too. The O.C was always able to juggle multiple storylines with aplomb because no matter what story it was following it remained itself, a gleefully scandalous soap opera with a wink. Now it just doesn't hang together: here it's a college sitcom, there it's a vigilante drama, now it's a heartwarming family hour à la 7th Heaven.
Poor Kaitlin Cooper, Marissa's younger sister (played by the deliciously sardonic Willa Holland), is all alone keeping the flame of wit-and-scandal alive, and it's a pretty pathetic flame: she steals lingerie and tank tops from a clothing drive for exiles from Darfur. You can't really blame her; as she puts it, "Do you really think that Sudanese refugees have an overwhelming need for Paul Frank tops and last season's Manolo Blahniks?" Only in Newport.
Somewhere in the middle of last season The O.C lost its way, mired in hopelessly boring storylines about college admissions and hospital construction contracts, introducing sympathetic tertiary characters and then writing them off in almost comically undermotivated tragedies. (Remember the baby-faced surfer boy Johnny?) Getting rid of Marissa was, presumably, a last-ditch attempt to re-inject some narrative life into the show. Mischa Barton wanted to leave, and actually, it wasn't such a bad idea in theory; how many near homicides can one girl cause? With her gone, the show might have proceeded in any number of interesting directions.
But sending her off in a tragic accident wasn't the way to go about it. Marissa's death has thrown the show's dynamic untenably off-kilter, eliminating its center without giving it a new one; it's as if the show is trapped in some Freudian failure to mourn. The beauty of television is that it continues, week after week; there's no gap it can't fill. Look at 90210: after a year or two, who remembered Brenda? But you have to get rid of your star in a way that lets the other characters forget her, too.
The decision to kill Marissa is especially puzzling since the writers had already introduced an alternative and perfectly plausible way of dealing with her: after graduation, she was headed to Greece to work on her father's yacht. This could have worked out well; with Marissa on another continent, Summer, Seth, and Ryan could have navigated college while Kaitlin and the parents wreaked scandal at home.
All shows that begin in high school eventually face the challenge of college, which can make (90210) or break (Dawson's Creek) a series. The O.C attempted to transcend the challenge altogether with a risk that hasn't paid off. One wonders why they even bothered. These particular high schoolers never acted much like teenagers, not even like TV teenagers, whereas their parents often did — Marissa's mother has even been known to sleep with a teenager or two. High school graduation was just a formality for these kids, not an existential crisis; it hardly required so much melodrama.
Perhaps, like Summer herself, the show needs some time to adjust to life after Marissa, and will eventually settle into an identity that combines the best of old and new. But by the time that happens, will anyone be watching?
— Sara Mayeux (sara dot mayeux at gmail dot com)
