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I was 14 years old in 2003, and back then, it wasn’t unusual for me to declare things life-changing.
The Nokia 7210 with a camera was life-changing. So was the SMP belt I wore daily and Lil Kim’s Magic Stick (life-changing and eye-opening).
But none of these things changed my life or the course of television, like the arrival of The O.C. Sadly, not everyone shared the same initial enthusiasm for the show that I did.
All of these people look the same age but half of the cast are playing high schoolers. The magic of The OC.
The O.C. first premiered in the US in 2003, with Fox trialling it as a summer series, originally ordering seven episodes which expanded to 27 when the series won most of its time slots. Here in Australia, Nine also trialled the series in our summer but pulled the pin after just three episodes.
Luckily, Ten, at the time known as the young person’s commercial network, stepped in and saved the day.
Even this very masthead was unimpressed, writing in a 2003 review: “It’s intensely insubstantial and fanciful, but also diverting and slick. And who knows: could it be silly enough to become the new Beverly Hills, 90210? No, probably not.”
Oh, how wrong we were. The O.C. would go on to outstrip Beverly Hills, 90210 in terms of cultural and social relevance, changing the TV landscape forever. Part teen drama, part social commentary and part playlist to base your entire personality on, The O.C. remains one of the all-time great series.
This August marks twenty years since the show first “Califooooornia’d” its way onto screens, and here’s why it defined a generation.
Welcome to The O.C., b–tch
The premise for the show was simple: a roughed-up kid from the wrong side of the tracks finds himself thrust into a shiny new world full of beautiful rich people.
Fish-out-of-water as a teen drama plot device is hardly a revelation, but The O.C. was able to blend multiple winning formulas to get us on the hook. We rooted for Ryan Atwood, the underdog and wanted to fix Marissa Cooper, the troubled rich girl. A generation of nerds saw their struggles in Seth Cohen, while Summer Roberts reminded us never to judge an It Girl by Its cover.
Together, this foursome formed an unlikely prism through which many of us could view ourselves while serving a constant stream of will-they won’t-they, love triangle storylines.
Add a healthy dose of high school politics, hard-partying teens, house fires, and one memorable trip to Tijuana, and The O.C. captured the moment and bottled it up.
A teen drama with space for adults
By its very definition, a teen drama should be about teens causing drama, but the beauty of The O.C. was that the adults in the series were fully formed characters who existed in tandem with their kids, not just in addition to them. Between Kirsten’s burgeoning alcoholism and Sandy’s working-class turmoil over selling out, showrunner Josh Schwartz gave us meaty storylines to bite into. Not to mention blessing us with Daddy Cohen’s eyebrows.
Califoooooornia, here we come.
Also, shout out to Julie Cooper, who began life as a soap-style villain but ended up becoming one of the most likeable characters on the show while also fitting in an affair with an older man, Caleb (played by Neighbours alumni Alan Dale), as well as a short-lived fling with her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Luke.
Seth Cohen and the soundtrack to the 2000s
Arguably the most incredible legacy of The O.C. is catapulting indie music into the mainstream with Seth Cohen playing tastemaker for a generation. Playing at the fictional Bait Shop was almost a guarantee of real-life success, with bands like The Killers, Rooney, The Walkmen, The Thrills, and Rachael Yamagata piggybacking off their exposure.
No one fared better than Cohen’s beloved Death Cab for Cutie, though. The group signed a deal with Atlantic Records in November 2004 after tracks from their latest album, Transatlanticism, were featured on season one of the show.
At the peak of its powers, The O.C. wielded such cultural influence that artists were desperate to debut their tracks on the show, aware that their target audience was most likely watching.
Imogen Heaps’s Hide and Seek (AKA the ‘mmmmwhatchasay’ song) famously debuted during the season two finale when Marissa shoots Trey to save Ryan’s life. The track and the scene became inseparable, with Hide and Seek becoming certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Postmodern but pre-Laguna Beach
Safe to say, if it weren’t for The O.C., we never would’ve had Laguna Beach, The Hills, The Real Housewives franchise or any other series that package up the real lives of the rich and famous.
The O.C. paved the way for these shows by lampooning our obsession with celebrity culture within its universe. Summer’s favourite series on the show was called The Valley, a meta-equivalent to The O.C.
The OC paved the way for reality shows based on beautiful young rich people.
Josh Schwartz took this self-awareness even further by having the characters also reference a reality show called Sherman Oaks: The Real Valley, which was a real-life version of The Valley and a play on Laguna Beach, MTV’s unscripted answer to the teen drama set in the same county.
Stacked seasons, so many episodes
Streaming has been the death knell for 20 episode seasons, with most shows lucky to hit double digits, but The O.C. proved that sometimes more is more.
The first three seasons boasted 27, 24 and 25 episodes, respectively, allowing audiences to become properly invested in the drama of their day-to-day lives.
From household names to where are they now?
A sign of a great TV series is its ability to turn virtual unknowns into household names. When The O.C. began, the most famous person on the show was probably Tate Donovan, who played Marissa’s dad Jimmy Cooper.
Fast-forward to the final season, and Benjamin McKenzie, Mischa Barton, Adam Brody, and Rachel Bilson were all stars in their own right. The main four leads went on to have varying levels of mild success, but each struggled to escape the enormity of The O.C.
Barton bounced around Hollywood in minor roles before being placed on a psychiatric hold in 2009. She would go on to appear in the reality series Dancing With The Stars in 2016 and a reboot of The Hills in 2019 before landing – bizarrely – in Erinsborough.
Earlier this year, the actress confirmed she was joining the Neighbours reboot for an extended guest role, proving that all roads lead to Ramsay Street.
Rachel Bilson quickly transitioned to network TV star, fronting The Hart of Dixie, between 2011 and 2015. More recently, she has hosted an O.C. rewatch podcast alongside Melinda Clarke, who played Julie Cooper.
Meanwhile, Adam Brody is a mainstay in TV and film though it’s hard to see him as anyone other than Seth. It didn’t help that his most high-profile role to date was the 2022 series Fleishman Is In Trouble, where he played a neurotic guy called… Seth.
And as for Benjamin McKenzie? Well, he did his fair share of acting, most notably playing a young James Gordon on the crime drama Gotham (2014–2019). But he’s now best known for being an outspoken critic of cryptocurrency (yes, you read that right).
It turns out McKenzie has an undergraduate degree in economics and has since become one of the most prominent figures in the crypto debate – he even testified at the United States Senate Committee.
McKenzie’s debut book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, was released in July of this year. Not bad for a kid from Chino.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
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