For a long time I thought watching the O.C. would be a lot like letting Josh Schwartz hand me a bag marked “Delicious” and tell me I should look inside.
ME: What’s this for?
JOSH: Just open it.
ME: Why does it say delicious?
JOSH: Because I wrote it on the side.
ME: Yeah. But why?
Josh: Because it is.
ME: I very much doubt that. I can smell from here that this bag is filled with burps.
My beliefs weren’t my fault. I blame a crisis of courage on the part of all who watched it, loved it, and then apologized for it, saying the show wasn’t that good and acting like they were somehow tricked into getting sucked in.
Then one day I was trying to get a hold of the Wire Season Three (which is apparently impossible to find) when I came across the first season of The O.C. for like twenty bucks. So, I bought it. And now that I have seen it, I want to tell everyone who will listen: I have looked inside Josh’s bag marked “Delicious” and it is not filled with anything gross or smelly but with something that is in fact delicious – maybe muffins filled with nuts.
It turns out, this is the show that gave birth to the tone and style that made the television savvy fall in love with Veronica Mars: the decadent rich kids, the super sharp dialogue, the indie music. It even has a kid living in the penthouse of a hotel. Now yes, it can be too meta for its own good sometimes and occasionally it makes inconsistent choices to forward storylines. But, what makes the show so good is the characters are so amazingly conceived, cast, and performed.
For those of you who don’t know, Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) is a tough kid from Chino brought to the OC by the rich but good-hearted Sandy Cohen (more on him in a minute). Awesomeness ensues. Atwood is a linear problem solver, a gladiator if you will, and I don’t just mean like Russell Crowe -- though he does bare a striking resemblance -- nor do I mean he solves all his problems with punches made of fists -- though he does do that a lot. Atwood is essentially a man with a turn of the century moral code who is struggling with the fact that society has a monopoly on violence that will allow people of action to take such only in limited doses. And Ben Mckenzie can flat out act. I’m talking I haven’t seen a young man playing a teenager this good since James Van Der Beek on Dawson’s Creek (if you are laughing, you shouldn’t be. I’m not kidding. Go back and watch a few episodes. The show isn’t very good but James is).
But the break out holy-crap-how-long-has-this-dude-been-this-amazing gem of the show is Peter Gallagher as Sandy Cohen. A brief aside, more of a warning, actually. You’re gonna watch this show, like I did, and, also like I did, your gonna want to fill your queue with Peter Gallagher movies. Don’t . Sometimes history gives no warning or hint of the greatness it has planned for a man. And so it is for Peter. Like an unremarkable carpenter (except for a few magic tricks in his youth) riding into Galilee to forever change the course of Western Civilization, Gallagher comes to the O.C. to change the course of awesome.
Other notables are Micha Barton, playing Marissa Cooper, who is almost too pretty to look at directly, and yet, so genuinely fragile and melancholy you almost don’t notice her acting isn’t so amazing. And of course the rank-and-file fan favorite Adam Brody, playing Seth Cohen – the perfectly drawn, clinically selfish, only child who is as charming and funny as you’ve heard.
In short watch the O.C. It is really, really good television.
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