The O.C. Rebellion

The New York Observer, March 20th, 2005

"We didn't want to come back in the first episode of season two and have Ryan and Marissa together, and Ryan in a fistfight at a black-tie party," said Josh Schwartz, the 28-year old creator of The O.C. He was speaking from South Beach, where the show is currently on location for the first episode for May sweeps. (Miami? Dade County? The D.C.? More on that later!) "We wanted to pull apart a lot of the characters and have them have to earn it back. The second half of this season-for those people who love to see our core couples together, who want to see parties, who want to see fistfights and tequila shots-they're going to get plenty of that as we go into the second half of the year."Phew! After last Thursday's "Mallpisode," in which the four main characters on The O.C. were trapped in a department store for the night and left to stew in their dysfunction-a thin plot device used by every teen dramady in history-chat rooms around the world lit up with indignation. "Is anyone getting a Breakfast Club vibe from this episode?" one viewer sniped on tvtome.com. "Overall," another pronounced: "Weak." After all, The O.C. wasn't supposed to be like any of its teen-angst forebears. But Mr. Schwartz also left behind a tantalizing clue in that episode, one that suggested that the show had come full circle: Marissa and Ryan reprised their dramatic first conversation from the show's debut episode. The eagle-eyed O.C. fans took this as a sign that Mr. Schwartz was hearing their cries, and they were right.

"It was supposed to walk that same tightrope of being ironic, with a little bit of commentary and, hopefully, sweet," said Mr. Schwartz. "Because of the way the season has evolved, it's going to be really fun for the audience to see the show get back to its roots."

The explosion of fury after the Mallpisode is actually unsurprising; rage within the O.C. online community-where fans apply a Star Trek brand of nerdiness to the teeny-bopper drama genre-has been building all season. Viewership has also dropped off somewhat. At its peak, during the first half of the first season, The O.C. was drawing more than nine million viewers, according to Nielsen. These days, around seven million people are watching each episode-an eminently respectable showing, but is it the stuff of an enduring pop-cultural phenomenon?

"Nothing that [the fans] wanted to happen has happened thus far in the season," said Mr. Schwartz, who grew up on Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live. "They didn't have Ryan and Marissa together. They didn't have Seth and Summer together. And Sandy and Kirsten weren't happy. If we did everything that they said, there would be a different article about The O.C. that said it doesn't change it up. And people would get bored."

Mr. Schwartz is probably right that the show's maddening twists and turns kept his fans rapt. He explained that this season, the much-beloved Nana-who was diagnosed with cancer last season-tells the Cohens that she's getting married. Sandy, her son, gets suspicious and flies down to Miami Beach (hence, the call from South Beach). There, Seth meets a Southern belle played by Jaime King, loses a shuffleboard bet to her and ends up partaking in a whipped-cream-eating contest on a show produced by an MTVesque network called Music Video Nation. (Fans will get their first peek at MVN in the next episode.)

The Mallpisode!

For some fans, that will sound a lot better than the Mallpisode. It was the Mallpisode that angered fans like no other, at a time when they've already been wringing their hands over the differences between seasons one and two. In a forum at televisionwithoutpity.com, yet another betrayed fan whined into the ether: "Really, The Mallpisode?? And we get this midway through season number two? At this point, why not just take out an ad in the trade papers, admit you've run out of ideas for the show, have no clue how to develop the characters, and solicit some professional resuscitative help?"

On ocfiles.com-a site run by a C.E.O. and his former employee-one host of a post-show round-table discussion laid into Seth, played by the typically lovable Adam Brody, as the source of the show's recent troubles. Matt Richenthal, the site's 24-year-old Webmaster, also isn't happy with the turns the second season has taken.

"I've watched the show all along from the beginning, and the allure-at least the allure of season one-was that it was almost mocking the whole teen-drama thing," he said, still cooling down after the Mallpisode. "It was the most self-aware show I saw on TV-and I watch a lot of TV. They weren't trying too hard to send a message. Like on 90210, it felt like a constant P.S.A. First time a woman has sex, of course she has a pregnancy scare. First time someone drinks, of course they go to the hospital. The O.C. wasn't like that."

His response has been to lash out. According to Mr. Richenthal, ocfiles.com gets around 50,000 hits a week, and those viewers now have the option of reading his passive-aggressive weekly invective ("for a more sophisticated audience") or playing one of the aggressive-aggressive games he created, including one called "Feed Marissa," where players do just that until Mischa Barton explodes.

That's strange, but not that strange in O.C. world. On other sites, compulsive fan artists spend their days mocking up digital collages of the characters and spraying them with quotes from Marissa and Ryan about friendship and love. In addition to the standard host of fan-fiction sites, there are a handful of O.C. role-playing sites. Teens can sign on as Seth, for example, and improvise scenes with another pimply teenager (or middle-ager) pretending to be Summer. Other sites keep "Gay Kiss Counts" for every episode; still more feature pop sociologists who extrapolate complicated political memes from each lesbian smooch.

Many others in the O.C. community have responded to the show's evolution with wistful calls for a return to the characters' origins. Seth's gotten obnoxious, they say, but his father Sandy's improbably corrupt. Summer's an idiot, Kirsten's a drone and Ryan's too talkative now-they liked his weary look and blank-billboard face of the first few episodes best. The implication seems to be that the first season was outlandish but good, and the second season is just, well, "nothing like the first," according Matt Rigney, another twentysomething Webmaster, who runs the fansite theocshow.com.

"The second season seems like you will get a good episode maybe every fourth episode," said Mr. Rigney, "whereas in the first season, every episode was action-packed."

Now that the show's writers have signaled that they're circling back to a newly cleaned slate, there has been some relief among fans. According to spoiler reports, even Seth opines in the next episode that they don't have fun like they used to.

Still, many viewers-particularly those in the braces-and-bar-mitzvahs set-are as thrilled with the show as ever. They're still happily dissecting every episode, carving "Marissa and Ryan" in hearts on their notebooks, and buying "Mrs. Seth Cohen" picture frames at the nit-pickiest of fansites, theocinsider.com.

"Oh, um, we don't call it a 'fansite,'" said publicist Katie Sanseverino. "We call it 'an exclusive pass to the O.C. lifestyle.'"

This is a lifestyle apparently characterized by slavish devotion to the show's every detail, from the music to the fashion to the make-up the actors endorse in their spare time. That level of fandom doesn't allow time for pesky questions like whither the plot, or whether Summer's character has gotten flatter than her hair. The site is run by Warner Bros. and has thousands of members paying $24.95 a year for a subscription. Here, there is no trouble in Orange County. Life buzzes along as amusingly as ever. Seth Cohen is still adorable. Every plot twist thrills.

Still, the typical hand-wringing over The O.C. will continue-perhaps mostly among its older viewers, who often unabashedly rely on the show for its weekly dose of transporting melodrama. Among them is Daniel Blau, a 29-year-old New York native and staff writer for televisionwithoutpity.com, who can pinpoint the moment the series went from boom to bust. It all began in the 22nd episode, he said, which featured a cameo by Paris Hilton and a scene where the characters watch an O.C.-like show within the show.

He said he wonders whether The O.C.'s particular brand of humor is sustainable-or, at this point, revivable. But Mr. Schwartz doesn't seem concerned.

"We either don't take ourselves too seriously, or we take ourselves too seriously, depending on who you ask," he said. "But for us-for myself, for the writers and the producers of the show-the only way we know to really do a show like this is to kind of occasionally poke fun at ourselves a little bit. And have the characters referencing the insanity that they are engaged in. It feels like the only way audiences can really watch a show like this, in this day and age. The young audiences that watch our show, they're a little too hip. They're going to need a little commentary to go with it, help it go down a little smoother. It makes the genre feel relatable to them. On the whole, I think it has the right balance."