After four seasons, Fox aired the final episode of The O.C. last Thursday. Unlike the monotonous, nine-lived "7th Heaven" with its last-minute series renewal, this teen California dream soap may have seen its final episode. Despite one's personal feelings about the sincerity and quality of a program like "The O.C.," the pop culture phenomenon has had undeniable influence.
From spawning reality programs like "The Real Housewives of Orange County" and "Laguna Beach" to launching Mischa Barton and Rachel Bilson's status as Hollywood It Girls, "The O.C." has given us what we never knew we needed. Sadly, we'll now have to get our fix somewhere else, as those infamous chords of Phantom Planet's "California" have played for the last time (unless of course, you buy the DVD set when it's released May 22).
Borrowing from the death of teen dramas like "Dawson's Creek" and "Beverly Hills: 90210" before it, "The O.C." commenced with a marriage, a birth and a brief look into the future. Skipping six months ahead from where the previous episode ended, we find out that Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie) and Taylor (Autumn Reeser) who had been strangely dating since the middle of the season, had broken up but were still (surprise, surprise) in love with each other.
The entire episode features awkward encounters between the two, with the brooding Ryan demonstrating his usual emotional detachment. Not surprisingly, their exchanges culminate with an intense make-out session because they could not control their feelings of lust (or love, depending on how you see it). Despite the peculiarity of Ryan and Taylor's relationship, due to Ryan's inability to cope with the horrific and traumatizing death of Marissa (Mischa Barton), the finale brought more strangeness with the relocation of "The O.C." to Northern California.
One of the main attractions of the show has always been its location. Watching beautiful people with beautiful surroundings living beautiful lives is irresistible. Since the Cohen house was destroyed in an earthquake in the previous episode, however, they were forced to reconsider this living arrangement. With Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Kelly Rowan) set to buy a pedestrian multi-million dollar mansion, Seth (Adam Brody) and Ryan hop on a plane and beg a comical gay couple in Berkeley to sell their apparently more suitable house. Interestingly, the abode turned out to be the house that Sandy and Kirsten originally lived in as a young couple. The current residents, of course, conveniently sell it, allowing for a Happily Ever After moment in the span of an hour.
Despite all of the warm fuzziness, there is no true happiness until we see Seth and Summer (Rachel Bilson) married in a flashforward, after Summer travels the world in order to single-handedly save the environment while Seth goes off to Rhode Island School of Design.
Though the ending to the series might have given fans closure, it did not successfully represent what "The O.C." was all about. Fans didn't tune in to "The O.C." to feel happy and fulfilled. The essence of "The O.C." was a mixture of tragedy and comedy, not predictability and cheesiness. Viewers watched "The O.C." for intense drama, to see impossibly rich, well-dressed people suffer due to their own stupidity.
All of those characteristics that originally drew viewers in by the millions were absent from the finale. (No one even died!) It is clear that the writers might have wanted to stay away from the killings after the huge blunder that was the axing of Barton at the end of the third season, but it seems that "The O.C." has gone too far in the other direction.
Despite the move from Newport, which represents ennui, to Berkeley, an epicenter of cultural change, the last episode of "The O.C." was not able to escape tedium.
