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October 30, 2003
The O.C., Wednesday nite sitcom
Season 1.5 started last night with a surprising change of format for everyone's favorite shoddily-written summer premiere. Whereas over the summer, The O.C. featured a lot of arcs and ongoing tensions, (like Marissa's on-again-off-again with her boyfriend, Denis Leary with no neck; Summer getting drunk and walking around in bikini tops; Ryan getting in fist fights; parents getting in fist fights; illicit investment practices; Peter Gallagher's eyebrows and Bronx accent all sneaking off together in the night to cry and wonder how they got stuck on this show) this season seems to be all about resolving every conflict in the course of each episode. Kind of like on Growing Pains. Marissa's in the hospital and her mom would rather institutionalize her than listen to her problems? Solved! Ryan can't get into the tony private school? Solved! Peter G.'s hot lady boss (who looks just like Reese Witherspoon. As we've discussed before, everyone on this show looks like someone else more famous than they are) makes Mrs. Peter G. antsy? Solved! Marissa's mom dresses like a 17 year-old at Contempo Casuals? Um. Perhaps this is part of the new arc?
One other issue keeping viewers on the edges of their seats until next week is Ryan's freaky dialogue pattern: stony silence and very occasional non-compound sentences that consist only of subject, verb, and object, punctuated with one long, impassioned speech at the end of the episode that shocks the other characters into doing exactly what he wants them to. Also, please note: we viewers are being manipulated into liking that sassy Summer. She's probably the best bad-TV-show character this season.
