HE LAST EVER EPISODE OF ... THE OC

So I'm chilling here in the apartment and I just wanted to do a quick post about the episode of The OC that just ended - the last ever episode, in fact. If you read my previous post you'll see my little tribute to the show and the greatness it achieved in its first season. Now, things have changed. The show has struggled for a few years now, both in terms of quality and in the ratings. But last week, even though the episode itself wasn't great, per se, I had that moment of realization that, man, I'm really going to miss this show, in large part due to its truly great core characters, who I've always enjoyed visiting each week even when their stories became silly, redundant, or cheesy. Of late I rarely watch the show when it airs, preferring to record it and watch later - able to fast forward through endless emo-music tinged montages at my leisure. But tonight I sat down in front of the TV and watched this event, as I suspect many did across the country. Of course, Nielson probably won't reflect this, because many, like I did senior year of college, were probably gathered in their dorm rooms, huddled around a cheap TV, laughing and wondering what would become of Ryan, Seth, Summer, and the rest.

THE OC - THE FINAL EPISODE:

I'll be honest with you - for the first 40 minutes or so of this ep, I was skeptical. Sure, I laughed at the classic self-referential humor (The Valley, of course, was renewed for 5 more years!). I got caught up in the Six Months Later time-jump from the end of last week's episode, curious to see what had become of the old status quo. But at the same time, the episode seemed to suffer from many of the same problems that have plagued the entirety of this season. Things felt light - there was little real drama or gravity to anything - the show has always excelled at humor, but it's been at its best when the humor is slipped in in the quiet moments to break up the melodrama. To make matters worse, many of the characters have been so watered down from their original incarnations - they just don't have the same appeal. Ryan went from street punk kid to a veritable Newport preppy, albeit one with an affinity for punching things. Seth went from a nerd who was picked on and an outcast to whiny comedy relief despite dating the girl of his dreams and creating his own comic book. Julie Cooper went from uber-bitch villain to watered-down quirky friend of the Cohen family. The OC of old would have had Julie in full-scale evil mode plotting some crazy scheme for her wedding night. At this point, Kirsten Cohen has forgiven her for so much treachery that Julie may as well burn down the Cohen's new house - she'll go back to being good ol' Julie Cooper in a matter of days. Even the newer characters on the show seem to suffer from schizofrenia. Every episode it seems the writers change their minds about whether we're supposed to root for Bullet or Hercules to win over Julie's affections, despite both alternatively being portrayed as sleazy, villainous, and downright unlikable (tonight, it seems, they finally arrived at the conclusion that NEITHER was to end up with her - a decision I applaud). Basically, the writers kind of painted themselves into a corner. They rushed into a status quo where everything was as it should be. Seth and Summer were together. Kirsten and Sandy were happy and healthy. Ryan and Taylor had their thing going. So for a while now, the show has just been in a weird limbo where the ending seemed a forgone conclusion, and all the little plot twists that were introduced flt more like harmless distractions than legitimately dramatic turns in the story. Taylor's old French husband comes to Newport? Meh. Summer is torn over whether to go to Rhode Island with Seth? Whatever ... So that's what we were left with going into tonight's episode -- much ado about nothing - as the status quo has been written on the wall for a long, long time now. Seth and Summer would go their separate ways but still be destined for each other. Ryan and Taylor's future was uncertain, but the important thing was that they helped each other through their various issues. Sandy and Kirsten would get out of Newport and get a new lease on life. Julie would strike out on her own and give up on finding happiness through hasty marriages. And so it goes. Sure, there were little forced moments of drama ("The baby is coming now!" - I mean, come on ....), but overall things felt like they were just meandering towards a foregone conclusion.

But finally, as the episode wound down, something happened. Suddenly, the ep shifted gears and managed to, in a few wonderful minutes, recapture what made this show great in the first place. Finally, the focus was where it belonged - The OC as a story about two adoptive brothers who got each other out of their respective ruts, who developed an unlikely friendship. The OC as a story about one kid from the wrong side of the tracks, who somehow beat the system and came out on top despite all the odds being against him - I know, it sounds cheesy, but The OC as a modern day rags to riches story, Horatio Alger for the Nintendo generation. Okay, so The OC went out as everyone knew it would - with cheesy montage after cheesy montage, schmaltzy flashbacks to the pilot set to whiny pop songs, as the camera panned across sprawling beaches and scenic ocean-side panoramas, complete with the obligatory flash to Marissa Cooper - embodied by Mischa Barton in all her waifish glory, the classic girl next door as could only exist in an upscale beach community in TV fantasy land. But dammit all, The OC went out in style. Dammit all, I'll admit it, it made me misty eyed. Dammit all, I'll admit it, it made me sad to see THE OC go, but at the same time, I appreciated how it all went full circle, with Ryan Atwood the prodigal son coming into his own - and I realized that clearly the show had told the story it set out to tell, which in the world of serialized network TV, is a rare occurance indeed. Seeing Sandy Cohen teaching law at Berkley, Seth dawning a yarmulke as he wed Summer, Caitlin Cooper sporting a Team Julie T-shirt as her mom graduated college, and seeing Ryan managing a construction site, asking a kid much like himself if he needed any help - well, it made me smile. Plain and simple, this was a great ending for the show.

So all hail to THE OC. Through the good times and the bad, it cannot be argued the influence it had. It made it fun to end declarative sentances with an emphatic intonation of "Bitch!" It made cool geeks like myself liken ourselves to Seth Cohen and dare to believe that our comic book reading, videogame playing ways were in fact the epitomy of pop cool (and they are). It brought Jewish humor back to a post-Seinfeld prime-time, and made us wonder if cross-bred winter holidays with funny names were a viable option for the cultural melting pot of the 00's. Sure, a lot of the time the show sucked. But sometimes it didn't. Sometimes, it singlehandedly proved that a teen drama could be as smart and well-written as any "adult" primetime program. And I give the show credit ... it had me worried there for a while, right up until the end. But somehow, Josh Schwartz and co cowboyed up and came through in the clutch. Maybe Im just being sentimental, but I'm a sucker for a good ending.

My Grade: A -