Revisiting The O.C., Bitch

Almost a decade ago, I wrote on Puke on Your Birthday for the third time, and it was a "review" of the pilot episode of The O.C. I put "review" in quotes because, honestly, it's just a straight-up hit piece. I guess that was the whole point of me writing it. I tried more to be funny than to actually review the damn episode (titled "Premiere"). Which is fine. But also, it's cheap and it's easy to just slander something for laughs. It's harder to find the nuance in a piece of art, even if that art is an episode of a teenage soap opera television show.

I finally got my hands on a Hulu account password, and every fucking Buzzfeed-esque article about "Best Shows on Hulu" inevitably mentions The O.C. as a must-watch, so fuck it, I guess it's time to revisit this show, ten years later, with a fresh perspective (and far fewer readers, expecting a laugh).

I find it incredibly interesting that this show, which seemed so stupid when I was a teenager, has become somewhat critically acclaimed over time. This may be a matter of a show being deeper than its surface appearance, and it just took a decade for those depths to be discovered by critics and audiences. But honestly, it may have been good from the beginning, and I just didn't want to see it because of that embarrassing "need to look cool" or whatever. Like, it was easy to shit on The O.C. because it seemed corny and it featured a lot of elements of society that I thought I was "above" (fashion shows, preppy airheads, etc.).

With ten years of life experience under my belt, I'm happy to report that teenage Joe was, indeed, being a snobby teenager in hating this show for no reason. I mean, look, there are definitely parts of "Premiere" that made me laugh because they were so lame. But there are other parts that really stuck with me now that I'm 29 years old and in a completely different place in my life.

Let's go through the overall plot again first, like I did in 2008, except this time without the sarcasm. The basic premise here is that Ryan is a kid living in rough circumstances—deadbeat mom, abusive stepdad, a brother who is a terrible influence—and when the law finally catches up with him, he is hooked up with a public defender (Sandy) who sees something special in the kid. And so Sandy takes Ryan home, where we meet the rest of the cast: Seth, Sandy's teenage son who feels the same way about the O.C. (the town) as teenage Joe felt about The O.C. (the TV show); Sandy's wife, who is overall good but a little uptight and may have a mysterious past, who knows; Marissa, the girl next door who immediately make puppy dog eyes at the bad boy who is now living next to her; etc., etc.

Yes, of course, there are plenty of comical stereotypes here. Marissa's outwardly scummy boyfriend picks her up in an oversized truck with loud white boy rap playing, and he cheats on Marissa, and eventually beats up Ryan, because he's just another California dickweed who thinks he's better than everyone. Marissa is, of course, planning a fashion show, where overbearing mothers question why their daughters are wearing Klein and not Wang. The climactic party set piece borders on the fantastical, with teenagers (played by adults, clearly) blowing coke, dancing all scantily clad, nary an adult anywhere along the beach. These are parts that I rolled my eyes at.

And yet, something that I missed ten years ago is that (I think?!) the show itself is rolling its eyes at all these ridiculous moments too. There are parts, definitely, when the show says: "This is how this town operates, deal with it." There are other parts when the show says: "This is how this town operates, and yo, it's fucked up."

In that way, I still relate to Seth as strongly as I did in 2008. Except this time, it's because I see where the show is going with all this. Seth, during his very first scene, bitches about how shitty his town is, and how he doesn't fit in. It's not hard to read the writing on the wall here: Seth will eventually learn to appreciate the O.C., his town, even for all its faults. It's meta commentary on the fact that eventually, we, the audience, will grow to appreciate this show, even though we can't quite relate to its hot, rich, preppy characters quite just yet.

And there are faults in this episode of television, to be sure, but after watching about 10,000 hours of TV between 2008 and now, I can appreciate that the faults of this episode are the faults of ALL television pilots. It's usually unavoidable. When "Premiere" paints the overall world of The O.C., it has to use broad strokes, because it's trying to hook the audience as quickly as possible. Only then can we dive into the nuance. I assume the next 91 episodes will achieve this better than the pilot could. You can't really hold it against the show at this point.

So when tension is contrived through a misunderstanding (Seth thinks Ryan is hitting on Summer, the love of his life, and starts a drunken fight) or when past histories of drama are glossed over quickly (why is Marissa's dad crying in a bathroom stall, what's up with Marissa's mom being a passive-aggressive cunt to her, etc.), it doesn't really seem like something that I should be bitching about just yet, ya know?

And there's plenty of shit to really enjoy and relate to here too. First, something that I missed last time that really struck me this go around was the scene post-party, when Ryan and Seth get back to the house, and Seth is talking drunkenly about what a wild fucking night they just had. Hit me just right in the nostalgia bone, remember all those nights when I too couldn't believe how the night turned out.

Another part was the sympathy I had for Ryan's whole situation now that I didn't back then. Maybe it's the social work aspect, seeing in Ryan's Mom and Stepdad many and many of my past clients. When I was a nineteen-year-old shitbird, all I saw in Ryan was a sixteen-year-old punk ass kid who was running away to the better side of town. As a 29-year-old social worker, I see a sixteen-year-old kid who is in dire straits and needed rescuing from an awful home life. I felt for the kid, ya know? I can now relate to Sandy, an adult caretaker, way more than I ever thought possible when I was a kid who naturally mistrusted adult caretakers.

What I'm excited about with The O.C.—and yes, I do plan on continuing to watch this show—is that there's room for enjoyment here both sincerely and ironically. In that way, I'll probably keep comparing it to Degrassi, even though I can't imagine the The O.C. will be as bad at, well, everything in the way Degrassi was. But there's a comfort in watching a TV show and seriously enjoying the growth that the characters partake in, and the stakes that there are in certain plot scenarios, and celebrating when those characters overcome obstacles. And there's a comfort in watching certain things occur on screen and rolling your eyes and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Laughing at a show and laughing with a show are technically two different things, but at the end of the day, it's all laughter, and laughing is fun.

So, yeah, it's still horribly over-the-top, the way the aforementioned douchebag preppy bro announces, post-ass kicking, to Ryan: "Welcome to the O.C., bitch!" I laughed out loud at how stupid and silly that was. But goddamn if I don't want to keep watching and see what the O.C. really is all about, and why Ryan may or may not be welcome there. Bitch.