Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
- It's hard to determine how much my appreciation of the show would change if it had a different theme song.
- The closing credits music is strikingly similar to the closing credits music for Friday Night Lights. Overall though, The O.C. really makes me appreciate FNL even more for its unglamorous small-town Texas setting.
- In the pilot, Seth Cohen's room seems to be covered in posters of The Ramones, The Clash, and other '70s punk icons. Now, the most prominent posters are of Rooney, Death Cab for Cutie, and Bright Eyes. What accounts for the sudden degradation of his taste?
- The character of Luke at first is a broad, cringe-inducing hypermasculine caricature ("Welcome to the O.C., bitch!") that brings to my mind (and I'm sure no one else's) the super rugged character from Dark Shadows with the super rugged name Burke Devlin played by an actor with an equally rugged named, Mitchell Ryan. But by midseason, Luke becomes really hilarious.
- I haven't found out yet what happens with the character of Oliver, but Ryan's perceived paranoia regarding Oliver really resonates with me. Perhaps it's self-fulfilling prophecy, but I've yet to see paranoia of this type ever to be unfounded IRL. Maybe I like this show cause it plays to the intense distrust I have of several demographics, namely: people's boyfriends, women, and single men. The show confirms my suspicion that perhaps the only worthwhile people are husbands.
- I was asked recently if I watch the show because I genuinely like it, or if it's because I find it funny. It's a question I'm asked a lot about many of the things I like, from '60s vampire soap operas to teen-pop music, so it's something I need to think more about and be able to articulate better. I can safely say, first of all, that it's not irony. At the same time, I'm always conscious of its absurdity and of its transparency as an expertly crafted and marketed product. Some of the appeal to me with these things is an academic interest in the ways pop culture has been sold to teenagers since the rise of the independent, car-driving, disposable cash-holding teen in the 1950s. I can laugh at a show's silliness, but I never ever like something because it's "so bad it's good."
Tags: television, the o.c.
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