Friday, March 29, 2024

'OC' needs better plot, has become mundane, repetetive

It had all of the elements of a wonderfully addicting guilty pleasure: hot, rugged boy from the wrong side of the tracks is adopted by wealthy, beautiful family and falls in love with glamorous girl next door.

The first season of "The OC" followed Ryan Atwood's struggle to fit into this posh, rich California town and start a new life. The series was filled with drugs, scandal, death and endless amounts of drama, but the cute, dorky and sarcastic Seth Cohen and his idealistic lawyer father Sandy Cohen provided witty humor when the plot became too intense. Except, now Sandy is no longer funny and Seth has become a caricature of himself. Though only in the middle of its third season, "The OC" has lost its "je ne sais quoi" and is quickly resembling the tired and stale "7th Heaven."

Ryan fits in

Ryan has now assimilated into the pampered Newport Beach lifestyle and is no longer a fish out of water. I will give Ryan this: He has finally learned to talk through his problems instead of punching principals and bullies. But his on again/off again relationship with girlfriend Marissa Cooper is getting old, and they have little chemistry to make their tumultuous relationship believable. While Ryan's character has developed and matured from season one, we still see the insipid, doe-eyed Marissa every week, contorting her face into the same, confused expression over and over again. Someone please give Mischa Barton acting lessons.

Marissa perseveres

Unbelievably, Marissa is the same, stoic character from the first episode, despite life-changing hardships she has endured (attempting suicide, her parents' divorce, her mother sleeping with one of her ex-boyfriends, experimenting with lesbianism, shooting Ryan's low-down brother, getting kicked out of the elite Harbor High School, her weasel father embezzling money and abandoning her and oh, so much more.)

Seth and Summer

The relationship between Seth and his confident, materialistic girlfriend has also come to a standstill. Before Ryan came to Newport Beach, Seth was a comic book-loving loner with a life-long crush on the popular Summer Roberts. In the middle of the first season, Seth finally got the girl after publicly proclaiming his undying love for her while standing in a kissing booth at school. But since then, their exciting relationship has reached a plateau. Seth and Summer have broken up and made up, broken up and made up ? again and again and again. While they are "on" as of now, it seems as though Seth has lost interest in Summer and is becoming more self-absorbed by the episode. Their small, minor plots, which include getting in trouble for stealing scenery from their school's musical, have little importance to the overall show. It is obvious that the writers have already run out of ideas.

The grown-ups

Now we come to the adults. In the first season, when each and every genetically blessed resident of Newport Beach was shallow and corrupt, Sandy Cohen and his wife Kirsten embodied benevolence and stability. Their solid relationship seemed destined to survive anything. But by the second season — and out of nowhere, might I add — Kirsten decided to become an alcoholic and their relationship developed into the rockiest one of all. Sandy lost his clever persona and it has still not returned.

External characters

By far, the most annoying problem with "The OC" is its horrible misuse and underdevelopment of external characters. Whenever troubles involving the main characters are solved, the writers bring in random, outside characters that invade Newport Beach for about five episodes, and then leave the bubble never to be seen again. Sandy supposedly had a lifelong romance with a woman named Rebecca, which was never discussed until Rebecca was introduced to create a rift between Sandy and Kirsten in the second season. After generating enough chaos, Rebecca disappeared into the black hole.

A girl named Lindsay also entered the story and turned out to be Kirsten's father's illegitimate love child from 16 years ago. You can imagine the turmoil that this situation induced. Lindsay randomly decided that she wanted to move to Chicago with her mother and also vanished into "The OC" black hole. She did not even attend her father's funeral at the end of the second season.

When Kirsten entered rehab for her sudden case of alcoholism, a con artist named Charlotte tried to obtain Kirsten's money by posing as an alcoholic and befriending her. After about six episodes, Charlotte was also a goner. This quick entrance and disappearance of external characters is unfortunately a favorite drama-creating technique in "The OC."

College bound

Three seasons into the show, teenagers Ryan, Marissa, Seth and Summer have reached their senior year of high school and will be starting college next year. Because the whole premise of "The OC" is about the rich and messy life in "The OC," I do not see how the show can continue if Seth and Summer go to college at Brown University and Ryan and Marissa go to Berkeley. They might as well change the title of the show, because it doesn't seem like too much is going to happen in Orange County next year.

It might appear as though I have totally given up on "The OC." But I still tune in every week, with a glimmer of hope that Sandy will be funny again, that something new will happen between Seth and Summer, and that Barton will magically learn how to act. Until then, at least I have the fashion-forward outfits of Marissa and Summer to emulate. And the background music isn't bad either.

Elizabeth Swanson is a State News staff writer. Reach her at swans130@msu.edu to talk to her about "The OC's" other downfalls.

Discussion

Share and discuss “'OC' needs better plot, has become mundane, repetetive” on social media.