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Goodbye To The O.C. — Feb 22nd 2007

By Karina Longworth



When the final episode of the Fox drama The O.C. airs tonight, it'll mark the end of an era. There will be distraught fans, such as 19-year-old Coleeeee, who informs the world via one the show's many MySpace groups that her "life is over when The O.C. is." Cast and crew will have to find new jobs, and moving on may be tough for some -- as star Benjamin McKenzie put it in a statement released by the show's publicist, "I'll probably miss working with everyone." But the loss will also be felt by indie rock bands and fans, by fashion designers and young style mavens, and by comic book producers and consumers. For though The O.C. 's ratings were at best average (and sometimes totally abysmal), the show served as a remarkably effective clearinghouse for totems of teenage cool.

The show was created in 2003 by television novice Josh Schwartz who, at age 27, was the youngest person to develop and produce his own one-hour drama in the history of network television. In a 2004 interview with the New York Times, Schwartz admitted to using a "Trojan Horse strategy" to get his foot in the door. Knowing that FOX was looking for a prime-time soap to replicate the success of Aaron Spelling's just-retired dinosaur Beverly Hills 90210, Schwartz crafted a pilot script that self-consciously hit all the high notes of the Spelling drama genre: pool parties, massive mansions, diva rivalries, cocaine. Then, as he later put it, Schwartz inserted "characters that were a little bit funnier and more soulful and different and specific than the kinds you usually see in that genre."

Much of the story of life in the luxurious (and fictional) Southern California suburb of Newport was seen through the eyes of Seth Cohen (played by Adam Brody), a friendless ninth grader obsessed with comic books and emo bands. In the series pilot, Seth's public defender father brings home Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), a juvenile offender from less-than-desirable Chino, who has returned from a night in jail to find that his mom has skipped town without leaving so much as a note.

Soon this miscreant was installed in the Cohen family pool house. Ryan and Seth quickly formed a bond as outsiders, simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the glamour and excess of the Newport lifestyle. And the show's creator got to have it both ways. Schwartz gave Fox their shiny, highly-marketable soap sensation, all the while building a one-hour prime time drama about a friendship formed by two teenage boys, each of whom, though undeniably telegenic, fell somewhere outside the mold.

If you've spent any time on MySpace or iTunes over the last four years, you know that The O.C. was a triumph of music merchandising. Straight from the gate, the show earned coolness points with young viewers for expertly matching the drama in Newport to selections from up-and-coming indie artists. "The O.C. introduced a ton of great indie bands to viewers," says Tina Smithers, an editor at "teen/tween entertainment" magazine M. "Bands like Modest Mouse and Death Cab For Cutie might not be as popular as they are today if not for the coverage they got on the show." Indeed, for some viewers, music became a reason to tune in. "The music on the show never disappointed," Smithers says. "It was always good."

Good or bad, notes Jonathan Toomey, who has written about The O.C. for TV Squad.com, the music always felt authentic. "What else would a bunch of angst-ridden rich kids do in their free time but listen to a bunch of angst-ridden indie pop bands?" he asks. "No other show that I can think of incorporates a band so that it feels like it's part of the episode, and not an advertisement for the performer."

Though other indie stalwarts such as Love as Laughter and Spoon all saw profile increases as a result of placement in the show, the big O.C. soundtrack success story seems to be Modest Mouse. The band, a scrappy trio from the Pacific Northwest, had been a fixture on the college radio scene since the mid-90s. Yet their major-label debut, released in 2000 on Epic Records, was considered something of a failure. Their second Epic release, Good News For People Who Love Bad News, came out in the summer of 2004 without making a major splash. Six months later, the band appeared an episode of The O.C. as themselves, and played the lead single from that album, "Float On." By June 2005, Good News had sold almost 700,000 copies--more than every previous Modest Mouse release combined. It's since been certified platinum.

The O.C. had the ability to create a major sales boost for the groups it featured. But as Toomey points out, the association with what was often perceived as a cheesy mainstream soap could actually damage a given band's indie credibility. "The show emphasized the fact that it's cool to like a band that no one has heard of," Toomey says. "But while the show created a whole army of new fans for Band X, it was alienating the current fan base who thought they were in the minority."

Other cultural references woven into the show failed to resonate as strongly as the soundtracks. "Seth's constant ruminations on all things anime, comics, and graphic novels went over a lot of people's heads," says Toomey. "The fans adored Seth, but they generally had no idea what he was talking about when he quoted a line from Princess Mononoke or made reference to a Frank Miller graphic novel."

According to Tina Smithers, the show's influence on fashion has been similarly spotty. Most of it, she argues, can be chalked up to actress Mischa Barton, who played Marissa on The O.C. until her character was killed off at the end of the third season. "Mischa has become a style icon," says Smithers. "I think that fans [look to] 'Mischa,' rather than 'Marissa.'"

What's undeniable in any case is that The O.C. managed to lock onto a cultural moment. The fact that it then killed that moment by projecting it onto the culture at large may not matter in the end. As Toomey puts it, "It's like a time-capsule. It's cool now, but in ten years, who knows what will be in style? Will people still talk about it ten years from now? Yeah, I think they will."


Tags: fox, indie rock, IndieRock, modest mouse, ModestMouse, netscape reports, NetscapeReports, pop culture, PopCulture, teenagers, the o.c., the o.c. series finale, TheO.c., TheO.c.SeriesFinale

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