The O.C. is O.K.

The first question a guy has to ask himself before watching a teen prime-time drama is, "Should I be embarrassed that I'm watching this?" And, generally, the answer is yes, yes you should. Very much so. Tell no one.

That's the lesson we learned after Beverly Hills 90210, which eventually got so bad that even some girls deny having watched it. But there's hope for TV addicts and potential addicts. It comes in the form of FOX's popular Wednesday night prime-time drama, The O.C.

The O.C. centers on the misunderstood bad-boy Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) who has come to live with a new family, the Cohens, in idyllic Newport Beach, California --Orange County. Ryan doesn't talk much, and it hurts his face to smile. When he talks, it's a hoarse whisper (maybe he's saving his voice for chorus). But despite the appeal of Ryan Atwood, which is carefully crafted by the show's producers, the real reasons to watch The O.C. are Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) and Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), the father and son of Atwood's host family.

Peter Gallagher steals the show. Standing next to the perfectly tanned faces of his co-stars, his bushy eyebrows do nothing less than command your attention. This guy was in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and American Beauty, and the fact that he stars in a teen, prime-time drama is probably so outrageous to the other actors (on and off the screen) and even to him that it makes everyone dizzy. This, in turn, makes it great. Who is more surprised that this journeyman actor ended up on The O.C., us or his agent?

Seth, originally a nervous, comic-book-reading side man, has turned himself into the comedic core of the show. Good writing and the show's funny creator Josh Schwartz are responsible for some of this, but Brody is no slouch. In fact, according to the actor, he has fun with a lot of his lines, and as a result induces genuine comic reactions in his costars.

You can also include Seth on the short list of TV characters that have made a sex scene funny, with lines like, "But hey, you know what, it was my first time, she was a more experienced woman. That's to be expected. And I did, uh, make some faces in the middle that I wish that I, uh, could take back. But I can't. ... I was like a fish flopping around on dry land. Ryan, I was Nemo, and I just wanted to go home."

There are some other characters on the show, however, who can't quite pull it all together -- the clunkers, the acting equivalent of running with weights on your ankles and wrists. You can tell they're in their dressing rooms every week, minutes before taping, desperately practicing their lines in front of the mirror.

One example of this is Luke, or if you prefer, "Steve Sanders II." Luke's hair, a vintage nineties cut -- ear length on the sides, a part down the middle, longer in back, falling in a horseshoe shape on his forehead -- is turning out to be a character in itself. It's dynamic, you can't deny him that. Hey, Steve Sanders didn't even have hair by the second season, (though in Steve's defense, he was thirty when Beverly Hills began taping).

To be fair, it's not entirely Luke's fault that his character is a little flat. It feels like the writers forgot about Luke for a couple of weeks, and then remembered him at a lunch meeting, freaked out, and decided he should make out with somebody's mom.

The other clunkers suffer from the acting disease that ravaged Hollywood in the early nineties, Melrose-Place-itis, where their characters are always angry and hunt down the rest of the cast like hyenas. The O.C.'s version of this is Oliver Trask, the psychotic and deceitful rich boy, and the result is painful to watch. In a recent episode, there was even some gun-wielding and a hostage situation.

In spite of the clunkers, The O.C. comes out on top, no question. The nice thing about The O.C. is the fact that the characters usually catch who's lying, avoiding the agony of soap opera dramatic irony.

Melodramas hinge on situations like each character potentially dying from a drug overdose at any minute, but after a decade of such prime-time dramas, The O.C. brings back the crucial missing element: humor. It feels like water in the desert. So go ahead and watch it, and tell people...cautiously. With Peter Gallagher at the helm, you know you're in good hands.