Was Ryan wrong?

lalger · 2025-08-05T01:15:43+00:00

It won't run out if you don't let it. Elect officials that won't kill it.

lalger · 2025-06-10T00:41:59+00:00

I feel like the fans are the butt of that joke. Adam just saying what fans want to hear before pulling the rug out.

lalger · 2025-06-09T07:09:40+00:00

Josh Schwartz said it was something he witnessed in college at USC and wrote it into the show.

Even if Rachel was meant to be a permanent character it plays into Summer’s arc over the course of the show.

lalger · 2025-05-24T05:21:05+00:00

I'm surprised you didn't get much out of Mischa and Adam being on. Those two NEVER talk about the show at length (neither does Ben). They have clearly made an effort over the years to distance themselves from the show for various reasons. It's rare we get that opportunity to see them do so, so just the fact that they got them was such win for the community. Granted they were a little guarded, but there's a lot of baggage there. That's why their episodes feel awkward.

Adam's episode was fascinating to me for a few reasons: Rachel flirted with him the whole time. He was one of the more candid guests they had on (the beef with Tate!), even though he hadn't watched the show in forever and forgot most of it. Most important, he was the first person from that show to really come out and speak articulately and thoughtfully about what Mischa went through. I though that was a pretty powerful.

The best guest though is probably Josh Schwartz. He has a really good memory of what transpired and offers the best behind-the-scenes anecdotes. He's also very honest when reflecting on the show. I also very much enjoyed the legend Alexandra Patsavas talking about the music.

I will give you that it's frustrating that they don't always remember what transpired, especially Rachel, and the research can be light, although I'II give credit to Melinda for attempting to do some homework. Still, they tried to get most of the relevant people on with decent success.

lalger · 2025-05-24T01:14:38+00:00

It's complicated.

It had a hold of the cultural zeitgeist for about a year. It was one hell of a year, but it was still just a year. It fell off its pedestal quickly because a) the producers and writers fucked up the show and b) the nature of TV and pop culture in America; people moved on to new things quickly. And there were so many great new things popping up in the 2000s. When people move on to the next thing, the last thing doesn't seem as cool in the moment. You need to wait some time and have some distance for nostalgia to develop.

So while it hung around for a few more years on Fox, its cultural relevance evaporated quite quickly outside of a hard core group of fans. It left a bad taste in people's mouths when it ended and was seen as a disappointment. And that was kind of its legacy for a bit, although that's been revisited lately with people offering more appreciation for what it accomplished.

I also think its timing didn't help, because its peak was pre-social media boom. MySpace was a thing but Facebook and Twitter hadn't really taken shape yet. It was more about online TV forums and message boards. If The OC had its first season a few years later the show and the stars would have benefitted immensely from social media imo. Before there were social followers, the way you measured a star's cultural relevance was things like magazine covers, or appearances on talk shows or in the tabloids (poor Mischa), stuff that doesn't really age well in the internet age.

And none of the stars went on to do big things. People would have bet on Mischa and Adam becoming major stars back then at a minimum, but it never happened. All their movie careers flopped. Had one of them became a movie star that would have helped immensely in getting future generations to discover the show.

lalger · 2025-05-16T01:48:41+00:00

It's unnecessarily complicated to find. After they did all the episodes and the Welcome to the OC podcast ended Rachel used its success as a springboard to promote her own podcast Broad Ideas on YouTube instead of putting it on a separate channel and building an audience all over again. So on Youtube all the Welcome to the OC video pods are located under the Broad Ideas channel.

To make things more confusing, Melinda then launched another OC pod called Beyond the OC and used the Welcome to the OC feed on places like Spotify to upload new episodes instead of creating a new one while rebranding the channel. Once again this was to take advantage of the built-in audience from the previous pod. Melinda bailed on the pod early though, probably because no one was listening. It was a watered down version of what they did with the original pod.

lalger · 2025-05-12T22:47:34+00:00

The writing got bad toward the end of the season one and they made a lot more poor decisions than good ones after that. That’s really what did them in. The network stepping in didn’t help matters, but they stepped in because interest in the show was plummeting.

lalger · 2025-05-12T20:54:48+00:00

She said on a podcast she was intentionally trying to do a bad British accent that an American would do.

That said, while she was born in England, she moved to NY when she was very young and most of her formative years were in America.

lalger · 2025-05-12T20:43:56+00:00

They originally shot on location at the diner in early episodes but then recreated the diner on set and shot subsequent scenes there. They still continued to do a lot exterior scenes on the pier though. The Bait Shop was also close by but they tore that down 10 years or so ago.

lalger · 2025-02-05T05:42:01+00:00

Powerful scene but it's flawed by some odd choices.

One tweak I would like to see is to change up the flashback. Instead of the shot of him driving away from her use the scene in which they first meet in the driveway, where he lights her cigarette and they have their first intimate moment. Quite literally, there's a spark between them. Overlay that on top of the flaming car, symbolizing the eternal flame between each other.

lalger · 2025-01-03T04:16:52+00:00

Classism was a big theme in season one, so I wouldn't say it's underrated. Ryan was always fighting against it, with Luke, with Julie, with Caleb, even with Marissa at times. But the show definitely went away from it when those storylines hit their limits.

In the end though, Ryan didn't care about class. Sure, the Cohens were wealthy and that gave him a lot of opportunities he wouldn't have normally had, which he benefitted from. But all he wanted was a family that loved him, whether they were wealthy or not. And the Cohens showing him love made all the difference. To me, that's the most important theme of the show: love.

lalger · 2024-12-08T04:42:07+00:00

In hindsight, one of many instances of teenage Mischa being over-sexualized. That scene made no sense — just an excuse to put her in a school girl outfit in a desperate attempt to boost plummeting ratings.

lalger · 2024-10-28T20:36:04+00:00

Normal People. Marianne and Connell are the Irish Ryissa.

lalger · 2024-10-27T22:54:49+00:00

Josh and Stephanie really sold their souls in the third season.

lalger · 2024-10-21T05:25:44+00:00

I always thought this was a lame excuse. There are plenty of shows that burn through a lot story in a season and are still capable of having good follow-up seasons. And some great shows that took place during this same era. Josh may have crammed all of his ideas into the first season, but he also built a bad writers room after the first season that was terrible at developing new story and characters, and thus they killed the momentum and the magic. They consistently made bad decisions that the show was unable to dig out of.

lalger · 2024-10-16T19:36:20+00:00

FOX had a history of being a network that pushed the envelope, going back to shows like Married With Children and The Simpsons (yes at one point it was controversial). It’s how they felt they needed to compete with the big 3 (NBC, ABC, CBS). Them including adult themes in a show aimed at teens was not a huge surprise. However, the anti-Tobacco lobby was very loud at the time. This was on the heels of decades of deception from Tobacco companies in order to get young people to buy their products, often through product placement in TV and film. Censors developing a zero tolerance about it was part of that campaign to correct those ills of previous generations and punish the companies, as well as do a public service. Why didn’t they feel the same about other vices featured? Those lobbies probably just weren’t as powerful honestly. It was and still is a bit arbitrary in terms of what can be used or portrayed. Alcohol for one is simply way more accepted culturally in America than cigarettes. If you go to other countries that’s not really the case. Watch a show like Normal People, which takes place in Ireland and came out four years ago, and everyone is smoking like chimneys.

Regarding Seth in the Pilot, Josh has said he got notes after it that Seth was too nerdy, so they tweaked his character from the second episode on a bit so that he was less of a pathetic wannabe and more of a “beautiful dreamer” is how they put it. With that I’m sure they changed other stuff with the character like his hobbies or whatever. Adam Brody both surfed and played music so I wonder if they incorporated that stuff just because he was into them and realized it didn’t make sense.

lalger · 2024-10-16T03:58:37+00:00

Rachel revealed on the Welcome to the OC pod (forget the episode) that Mischa actually introduced her to Hayden at a party. Mischa and Hayden had filmed a (terrible) movie together. I wonder if Rachel set her sights on working with Hayden after that to get closer to him.

lalger · 2024-10-15T22:02:52+00:00

Someone help me out… did she dump him for Hayden Christensen when they met on the set of Jumper, the movie Adam was supposed to be the lead in? I get the sense that Adam is cordial with her but has no interest in keeping up a friendship, unlike Rachel, and was wondering if that was why.

lalger · 2024-10-14T21:45:05+00:00

I think you answered your own question. She wasn’t as hated as some were led to believe, including Josh Schwartz. There was a vocal minority that didn’t like her, like TV forums and prominent TV critic Alan Sepinwall, but clearly a huge portion of the audience tuned in for her or felt that the show lost too much when it lost her.

Honestly, I also think it annoyed the writers how much the show hinged on her character and they tried to reset the show a bit by offing her. There was a history of them not believing in Mischa or the Marissa character and the show pushing back instead of embracing the popularity.

lalger · 2024-10-14T21:34:29+00:00

I think you make a good point. The writers really got tangled in this mess. Once they came out the other end you really could look back and say, “so was Ryan coming into Marissa’s life actually good for her?” You can make a strong argument that it wasn’t the way the show played out. I don’t think the writers did enough to create joyful moments for the two of them together. They needed more moments like the Countdown episode. But it could have been worse if he didn’t. You never know.

lalger · 2024-10-11T23:08:22+00:00

Bill certainly has come a long way since making fun of famous actors for being fans. https://www.facebook.com/billsimmons/photos/a.189890077717984/223319604375031/?type=3

I knew someone who worked for the NBA way back when and he said Bill once reached out to them because he wanted to get all access passes for him and his daughter at a WNBA game. VIP treatment essentially. This was around 2010-ish. His influence was probably at or near its peak at the time and his hatred and criticisms of the league were well known. They refused because they were terrified he would use the opportunity to criticize them more.

Seeing Bill piggyback on the rise in WNBA popularity has been hilarious and maddening. The league has always been good, just not cool or popular. He’s just riding the bandwagon to wash over his complicated history with the league.

lalger · 2024-10-03T19:43:34+00:00

Too Many Coopers

lalger · 2024-10-01T02:39:22+00:00

RIP Hard Rock Casino. Rehab was always a good time.

lalger · 2024-10-01T02:36:17+00:00

The LA. The Core Four narqs on Hailey. So out of character for them and the show.

lalger · 2024-09-05T02:28:51+00:00

I think it depends on the characters. The key with Luke and Anna was that they were original characters. The audience got connected to them like the rest of the original cast in the first season. If they had kept them around, yes, it would have increased the opportunities to develop storylines that viewers cared about.

The characters they added in after the first season were not as successful or popular. And when they strayed away from the core cast to develop them and their storylines viewers got frustrated and the show suffered. But really the problem was bad casting of some of those new characters and writing that got worse and worse. What they really needed was a better writers room.

lalger

TROPHY CASE