I recently finished a re-watch of The O.C., a show I hadn't seen since it aired on TV, about twenty years ago. Even though I watched it in real time (from 2003-2007), I barely remembered anything about the last two seasons; hell, I barely remembered anything about the second season. The first season was the one I had the most memories of. I wanted to share some thoughts/bullet points with you about this show. Also, I'm writing this assuming you're already familiar with the show! And without further ado, California, Californiaaaaa, here we coooommmme!
1. Seth and Summer are almost two entirely different people in the first episode - The premiere of the entire series is good, but it's shocking to see how different Seth and Summer are, compared to what they eventually become. Seth just comes across socially awkward and not having any friends. Here, it seems like he has no friends because he's a shy, nerdy kid, but really, people don't like him because he's a bit of a douche. He becomes very confident and he's a proud nerd. You could chalk it up to him getting confident because of Ryan, but yeah, I don't think so. I think they just changed his character to fit in better with the series. By the next episode he becomes the "cool" Seth we all know and love...or love to hate. Summer is just awful in the premiere. I have no idea why Seth would even like her. Yes, she's pretty, okay (but we're talking about a place where everyone is attractive), but God, what a bitch! Granted, she is funny sometimes. ("Chino? Eww!") She's a total whoo girl, just "whooing" the entire time and being annoying and drunk. She literally leaves a drunk and passed out Marissa on her porch when she can't find the keys to get into her house. And yes, Summer is a bit superficial, but she is also a good person as the rest of the series goes on. In this episode, she's just a superficial bitch. I think they needed to change both their characters drastically for them to get together. If I was watching this for the first time and knew they ended up together, I would be very confused by the first episode!
Also, I have to give a shout out to Captain Oats and Princess Sparkles, Seth's plastic horse and Summer's My Little Pony, respectively. Princess Sparkles' name is actually Princess Sparkles; I looked this pony up to make sure. She's from the Princess Ponies set. I had Princess Pristina myself.
3. Anna had the worst fashion sense - Ugh, what was this girl thinking? LOL, I found a reddit thread with somebody asking, "Does anybody not really love Anna's fashion sense?" Uh, yep...me! Now some people do like her style (huh?), but I had to post some of the comments that made me chuckle:
She must have pissed off someone in wardrobe who did their best to punish her.
Her style gives me Disney channel vibes.
It's like they put all the leftover options on her and called it a style. (This person likes it, though.)
The girl likes lots of colors and newsboy hats (sometimes pink, fuzzy newsboy caps) and she believes in layering, but, not like in a good way. Here are a few examples of the atrocious outfits she has worn:Her style was over the top, way more than other kids.
-Black shirt with a sparkly pink tube top over it, olive green skirt with a chunky black belt and tan boots that go up to her knees. Just terrible.
-Fuzzy pink newsboy camp, black shirt with collar, purple top over the black shirt, white skirt, electric blue leggings, and a pale purple coat. Is she colorblind? This outfit was especially egregious. I could only find a picture of her wearing it when she's sitting down, but I wish you could see all of it in it fugly glory:
-A yellow t-shirt over a long-sleeved pink shirt with a blue knit scarf. Remember, this live in SoCal. Why the scarf? She's also wearing a blue bracelet or watch over the sleeve of the pink shirt. She looks like an absolute idiot.
-A shiny pink coat over a black top (you can't see too much of it because the coat is zipped up most of the way. This isn't too bad, but then they show a full body shot of her and we see she's also wearing a brown skirt with a black belt, purple tights, and pink shoes. Like, WTF? Unfortunately (fortunately?, you can't see the pink shoes in this pic:
-A silk pink camisole overalls white t-shirt. I guess this is supposed to be her sexy bedtime wear.
-A pink top with a sheer neckline and the rest of it looks like a cheap polyester material with a black floral skirt. And let's not forget the blue tights and gold strappy shoes. Again, I ask, if she colorblind?
-An ivory satiny short sleeved top that seems to tie and button down the front (question mark?) over a red and white striped long sleeved shirt. At least she paired this with black pants instead of some crazy color.
-Brown jacket with white polka dots over a white top with designs I cannot decipher, plus a blue tiered ruffled skirt and pink tights. Seriously, WTF?
4. There are plenty of meta jokes in the series, but one of my favorites is a reference to The Sixth Sense - Okay, so I can't quite remember the context, but I think Seth must have gotten really drunk and threw up and when Ryan brings it up to him the next day, Seth wants to know how much he vomited and asks if it was as much "as the little girl in The Sixth Sense." Mischa Barton, who plays Marissa Cooper in The O.C., played PukeGirl in The Sixth Sense. (Her character's name is Kyra Collins, but I've always called her PukeGirl...that scene was terrifying! And a bit gross with the vomit.)
5. The Spider-Man kiss was one of the most contrived scenes - This kiss between Seth and Summer happens in a season 2 episode from 2005; the movie it was inspired by came out in 2002. I feel like by that time it was old news. Yeah, I guess you could say it's an iconic scene in the movie, but the way it happens on The O.C. just, ugh, I'm sorry, I hate it. It didn't come organically at all and I think that's why it irritated me. It was like they (the writers) wanted Seth and Summer to recreate the famous kiss between Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in Spider-Man because Seth is a comic book nerd, but the way they got there, :::rolls eyes::: (Oh, wait I just realized I could have just used this emoji: 🙄, but there's something so nostalgic and familiar about the first way I wrote it. I think I learned it from TWoP; iykyk.) They had broken up at the beginning of season 2 and Summer has been dating Zach. She's supposed to be going to Italy with Zach and his family for his sister's wedding.
7. Seth lying to Summer about not getting into Brown infuriated me - So Seth's dream school is Brown and Summer decides she's going to apply too because maybe they'll both get in. Seth reminds her that usually only one person from Harbor gets in (which is insane they have a representative from Brown if only one person is going to get in...). Well, Summer gets in and Seth does not. Seth lies and tells everyone he did get in. He thinks he can just convince the dean orsomeone to let him in. (That does not work.) Instead of admitting to Summer he didn't get in, he keeps up the charade that he did. He does this because he's worried that Summer won't go so she can be closer to him, but let's be honest, while he may think that, he's just embarrassed that she got in and he didn't. He tells her that he decides he doesn't want to go and breaks up with her. Poor Summer was so devastated and wondered what she did wrong when he couldn't admit the truth. Terrible play on Seth's part.
8. Julie Cooper needs to branch out her dating circle - I get that this is a TV show, but what is up with Julie only dating (or marrying) people who are related to her friends of her daughter's friends? After she divorced Jimmy she married Caleb, Kirsten's father. Then after he died, she dated Neil Roberts, Summer's dad and they got engaged rather quickly. Let's be honest: we love Julie, but the woman is a gold digger. Even though she liked Neil well enough, I never believed she loved him, she rather just loved his money and his huge mansion. That relationship didn't last and then she started dating the Bullitt, the only person who wasn't related to someone she knew. Even though Bullitt was a billionaire, she broke off her romance with him to be with (and this came out of left field) Frank Atwood, Ryan's father, who was recently released from jail. (Ryan sure has a lot of family members who have been in jail!) This relationship just happened and it made no sense...it really didn't have time to cook. They have a baby together, but they're not together romantically at the end of the series, just friends. That relationship was a real WTF moment...like Julie, I love you, but maybe let's not get involved with your dead daughter's ex-boyfriend's absentee con father. Also I know people change and blah, blah, blah, but wasn't he in jail for beating his then wife? Julia, you can do so much better.
10. I preferred Kaitlin over Marissa (and I preferred Willa Holland's Kaitlin over Shailene Woodley's) - Even though we see a very young Kaitlin in season 1 (hi, Shailene Woodley!), she doesn't come back as a series regular until the last season (and we do see her in a couple episodes in season 3). She goes off to boarding school in season 2, hence why we never see her. She went as Shailene Woodley and came back as Willa Holland, ha! (Though Shailene Woodley got a pretty decent acting career, so I'm sure she got over the fact that she wasn't re-cast.) While I knew Kaitlin would return to the show, I forgot what her character is like. She's pretty much non-existent in the first season, just Marissa's little sister. I think they just sent her off to boarding school because they didn't know what to do with her. Really, Marissa would probably be better off at boarding school! I thought when Kaitlin returned, she would be a Mean Girl type - very exclusive who she was friends with, looked down her nose at other people, flaunted her wealth, but I must have misremembered because she wasn't like that at all. She doesn't really care about being friends with all the popular kids; her only friends seem to be Luke's younger twin brothers who follow her around like puppies. She makes them do her homework. Unlike Marissa, who liked to be involved in school and was a pretty good student, Kaitlin could care less about that. There's a scene where a true Mean Girl (played by Ashley Benson; you may remember her as Hanna in Pretty Little Liars) is having a party at her house, but she's only inviting certain people. She actually hands out invitations to a group of eager girls, leaving several out who are disappointed they didn't get an invitation. Kaitlin is in the background when this is going on and she pipes up and tells everyone she's having a party the same night and that EVERYONE is invited. Of course, everyone ends up at her house (including Mean Girl's super hot (and super gay, heh (and yes, Mean Girl definitely knew he was gay)) boyfriend. Anyway, I think I just preferred Kaitlin's casual (sometimes she was too casual!) vibe over Marissa. Marissa was just SO DRAMATIC! I get it; it's a teen soap. It wouldn't be very exciting if she was a stable person, but seriously, that girl just exhausted me!
Keep in mind that it's raining quite hard during this episode and because Seth hates wearing hats, he's wears a Spider-Man mask (it's more of a head piece as it goes over the entire head) if he has to go outside which is the dumbest thing I've ever ever heard of. Seriously, he would rather wear that ridiculous Spider-man mask that just wear a hat? See, this is already stretching it.
He's watching TV when the cable goes out, so he decides to climb up to the roof to fix the satellite which just seems really stupid because 1) it's POURING and 2) does he even know what to do? Oh, and 3) he's also the only one home. What if something happens and he falls? Which is exactly what happens...he's tied a rope around his waist and after he ties the other end to the chimney, he slips off the roof...he's lucky he didn't break his neck. Meanwhile, Summer has left the airport because she's decided she wants to be with Seth and she finds him hanging upset down like an idiot (keep in mind he's wearing his Spider-Man mask...which would seem it would hinder his vision) and they recreate the Sam Raimi Spider-Man kiss. I literally groaned when I saw this. Instead of copying an iconic kiss, I'd rather them just create their own iconic kiss. Plus, it's just so unrealistic that Seth would do this on a sunny day, let alone when it's pouring outside. Please.
6. Marissa shouldn't have been expelled from Harbor for shooting Trey - She shot him in self-defense, okay? And it's not like he died. In case you need refreshing, Trey is Ryan's older brother (the one who stole the car in the first episode) and he's recently been released from jail. Because he's her boyfriend's brother, Marissa has been really nice to him, helping him find a place to live and look for a job. Unfortunately, Trey takes this niceness as a sign that Marissa is into him, but that isn't the case. He gets very aggressive and starts to assault her when they're alone at a beach, but she's able to hit him with some object (maybe a stick; I don't remember) and runs away. For some reason, she doesn't tell Ryan about this. I guess she doesn't want him to know that his brother tried to rape her. Of course (a few episodes down the line), Ryan does find out and he goes to Trey's place to beat the sh*t out of him. Marissa finds out and follows Ryan and arrives at Trey's place to see the two brothers going at it. She's afraid that Trey is going to kill Ryan because he has him pinned down and is strangling him so she grabs a gun and shoots Trey. Like I said, he doesn't even die so it's not like she's some stone-cold killer. She was just trying to get Trey to stop hurting (or possibly worse) Ryan.
Actually, both she and Ryan were expelled from Harbor, but Sandy was able to get Ryan back into Harbor. But I thought it was ridiculous that Marissa was kicked out. They really only did this for the storyline.
9. I predicted one of the storylines before they revealed it to us - Okay, so I probably shouldn't brag about this, because I'm sure many viewers saw this coming as well as it was really obvious (at least to me!). In season 2, we find out that Caleb (Kirsten's father; Seth's grandfather) had an affair, oh, like sixteen years ago when he was married and that resulted in a child. He's been paying the woman child support (and also paying her to keep this quiet).
Meanwhile...a new student named Lindsay starts at Harbor. At first, she and Ryan don't get on the right foot, but soon they start dating. (This happens during one of the 925 times when Ryan and Marissa are broken up.) One day she comes over to his house and the woman that Caleb had a child with also is over to talk to Caleb about something...I don't really remember, but the point is that I knew that the woman was the mother of Lindsay! And I was right! That means Lindsay is Kristen's half-sister, which means Ryan is dating his adoptive half-aunt (is that right?), bwah! Okay, I'm not sure if by that point in the series if Sandy and Kirsten have officially adopted him (according to a quick search on Google, I guess they never do, but they are his legal guardians? :::shrug::: (or I guess I can just type this: 🤷) but still, that's a little too incestuous for me. I know Ryan and Kirsten aren't really related, but it's still a little weird. Oh, well, by the end of the season Lindsay will move to Chicago and will never be brought up again.
BONUS - If you ever watch (or re-watch) this show, I would recommend listening to the podcast Keeping Up with the Cohens. Yes, there is the podcast that Melinda Clarke and Rachel Bilson did and that's a good one too. I've only listened to select episodes of their podcasts, mostly when they have someone else who was on the show or show runners. Keeping Up with the Cohens is hosted by three friends who loved this show when it aired when they were teens. They do pretty in-depth reviews and also have a segment where they choose the song of the episode (because there were so many songs that played in one episode!) and an outfit of the episode. The first season they would do four episodes (they were watching the DVD boxed set and so were going by how many episodes were on one disc), but then they did two episodes per podcast episode and I preferred that. They're just a lot of fun to listen to. The O.C. is a great show to do a recap review on because it's only four seasons (and the last season is shortened). I find a lot of television show recap reviews will eventually fade away over time before they finish the series after the first three or so seasons.
