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.