Amy's Robot

So now, Bad TV: The

So now, Bad TV: The OC.

Because the summer is TV's graveyard, any zombified corpse that gets up and starts walking around will get a lot of attention, and that seems to be what's happening with The OC, a very bad show that wants to explore the tension between "two worlds", but has nothing new or interesting to say about that tension. Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which (strangely) this show very closely resembles, managed to explore this theme in a funny and interesting way for at least three seasons, yet The OC seems struggling after just three episodes.

The entire cast is gloomy-faced, and each one seems to have come from Celebrity Lookalikes, Inc. The lead, the moody Ryan, is played by Benjamin McKenzie, a young man who's shooting for James Dean but comes across more as Breckin Meyer crossed with a young Ed Norton. He carries the same half-cockeyed expression on his face no matter what he's trying to emote, and doesn't even bother trying to overcome the terrible dialogue the writers feed him. There is something a little compelling about him -- but after a while, you realize that you're just waiting for him to do something interesting. The rest of the cast is invisible, only notable because you can keep saying "S/He looks like...Charisma Carpenter/Sarah Jessica Parker/Stifler's mom/Xander from Buffy/Denis Leary/Peter Gallagher." Hey, no wait...that is Peter Gallagher!

So, the show does have one thing worth watching: The amazing PG, who conveys more with those glorious eyebrows than the rest of the cast combined. PG, as Amy pointed out, acts as if he's in some other show...he is completely out of sync with everyone around him, and it works great. Everyone else is toned and tan and beautiful and then PG shuffles into the scene, hunched and rumpled, delivering his lines with his trademark casual confidence, but filtering them through his role as the outsider from the Bronx who's not as wealthy or powerful as his wife. His dialog sucks, but he manages to add some depth to it that is lacking in the cardboard-cutout performances of everyone else.

As with the acting, the rest of the show is similarly drab and uninteresting. The show's camera work and production design seem to lifted directly from The Sopranos. Everything domestic uses the same color palette as Tony and Carmela's kitchen, and the shots are composed the same way. They're so similar that PG's wife on the show starts looking like Edie Falco for a little while. And then there's the script -- turgid, tedious, condescending, and uninspired. Last night's episode centered around the re-emergence of Ryan's mom, a white trash alcoholic who abandoned her son and abusive boyfriend to work at the laundromat. Inevitably, the caring and liberal rich family invite Ryan's mom to stay with them and even attend their high-society fundraiser. Of course, that outfit will just have to go! She gets the the classic tv makeover treatment that takes her from Ugly Duckling to Surprisingly-Attractive-Once-You-Clean-Her-Up, but -- unlike Queer Eye -- there's no happy ending here, and she blows it by drinking too much at the fundraiser and making a scene. See? Poor people can't mix with rich people. As Charisma Carpenter's lookalike says on the show, in a shockingly, teeth-grittingly trite bit of dialogue: "We're from different worlds."

I wish The OC and I were also from different worlds, because then we wouldn't be able to see it. -adm

Another thing that drives me crazy about this show is the mutability of the characters. We've only known PG's son, Seth, for 3 weeks now, and we've already been thrown into confusion about his attitude toward the rich idiot kids in his neighborhood. He knows (and we know) he's smarter/cooler/better than they are, and seems to have spent his whole life calling them 'alien freaks' and avoiding them. Then one glance at Summer in her bra, and he's all blowing on her dice and transformed into the cool kids' puppy dog? I don't buy it. As far as I'm concerned, the only things this show has going for it are all the drunk girls in bikinis, PG, and the non-stop fist fights. Seriously. Five fist fights in three episodes. That's dedication. -amy

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posted by adm at 3:03 AM | #