What watching The O.C. for the first time taught me about Trump’s second term
Yes, I'm being serious
No, I’m not being serious.
That would be a ridiculous thing to write and send to people who could then drop the link into the group chat and say, “Get a load of this nitwit.”
The truth is when I had this idea that was the headline that popped into my head, and I am willing to accept the consequences of everyone unsubscribing. (Please don’t, though.)
To take you behind the curtain, to write a good headline you have to be part craftsman, part artist. Sometimes I am both, sometimes I am neither. Headline writing is like designing furniture: You want it to be easy to understand (yes, that is a couch), eye-catching enough so people look at the entire thing (oh those are cupholders!), inviting but also with a hint of mystery (I wonder if it’s as comfy as it looks), and sturdy enough to support the weight of expectation (don’t sit there, Ben.)
In this case, I failed on that last part because I didn’t deliver what was promised. That headline was so terribly un-Karl-Farbman-like.
Let’s move past that and focus on the headline’s first 10 words. I’ll give you a chance to scroll up, read it, count the 10, and then check that I said the first 10 and…
Are you sure?
Yup. Let’s talk about the teen drama that ran from 2003-06 called The O.C.1
~ Spoiler Alert ~ I didn’t watch the show when it first aired and I’m only two-thirds of the way through Season 2, so don’t tell me about later episodes. I jumped up and had to walk around the apartment after the reveal of Lindsay’s mother in The SnO.C. episode.
So, here are a few observations:
- Chino is the most dangerous place in America
- Big fan of Sandy Cohen. How could you not be? Little Coach Taylor vibes from him, but he could never in a million years win Tami Taylor’s heart2
- Goodness is Julie Cooper a horrible person
- They’re doing a nice job of using the Cohen’s Jew-ish(ness) to accentuate the family’s differences from the rest of Newport without succumbing to cliches, with the slight exception of Sandy’s mom
- Summer's stepmom the funniest unseen character since Maris Crane
- Marissa is such a bad seed. I can’t blame her too much cause Jimmy Cooper was her only decent parent and he’s quite literally out to sea. I can’t prove this but I am certain her running away to Chino inspired the Arrested Development joke about Buster ‘escaping to Mexico’ and ending up at Lupe’s3
- These kids are drinking way too much coffee
- The Cohen’s giant house is a two-bedroom? Why is Ryan sleeping on the floor in Seth’s room in one episode? I have big concerns about the Newport Group’s designs
- They did Anna wrong.4 She was interested in Seth from the start and genuinely shared his interests, but then once Summer put on the Wonder Woman costume it was over and Seth was bad at handling that
- Say what you will about Julie Cooper she is all action
- The music is fantastic
The last point is the genesis of this piece. Season 2 has had me listening to the early 2000s albums of Interpol, The Killers, and Modest Mouse after I got a huge rush of excitement at hearing (and in the latter two cases seeing) those bands in the show.5
And it hit me: Am I enjoying watching The O.C. because it is good or it is just so familiar?
Even without watching the show while it aired, because it is such a product of its time, I feel like I am watching something I’ve seen before.
The simplest things – like the baseline at the start of “Evil” as Alex tells Marissa about a stolen heart-shaped necklace – have the power to invade my senses and send a shudder through me. Suddenly I’m back on the bus heading to Dumbarton Middle School listening to Interpol and experiencing, for the first time, unreciprocated attraction.6
Based on that little recollection – one that was not even a particularly sweet one, at that – I suddenly felt a tinge of regret for things I didn’t do and for the angst and overthinking and hormonal nonsensical emotions of that time.
Did I just slide right into the embrace of the music from my adolescence because I am watching a show (that the 2003 version of Ben had zero interest in watching) in an attempt to reconnect or, at least, maintain a connection to the person I once was?7
A few chords played in a primetime soap opera from 20 years ago just did that to me?8
Will I now end up just like all those other people who think the music they listened to when they were 15 was the best stuff ever made? I’ll be content listening to the same handful of bands and several dozen albums for the rest of my life? Longing for the past? Chasing the familiar? Consuming only the art that invokes the memories of carefree days of zero responsibilities?
False nostalgia, escapism, and a hankering for the mass culture from my youth.
Welcome to middle age, bitch.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives and works in New York.
Hey Ben, quick question.
We don’t usually do this on the Scribbles, but why not, go ahead.
Was this an entire thing because nobody wants to talk The O.C. with you?
Guilty. Much like Caleb Nichol is guilty of many things and got Sandy involved in something shady with the DA after Uncle Shaun...
God, it’s The Fugitive all over again.
Oh, man, I watched The Fugitive for the first time on the flight home from Paris in 2023 and was ready to go up and down the aisle looking for somebody to talk to about it. I spent the next week trying to memorize Tommy Lee Jones’ hard-target search of every farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, or doghouse speech.
End this now.
Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.
Ugh.
Full song from the opening credits so you can listen while you read
The Taylors parent circles around everyone in this show, it isn’t even close
Yes, the person I am watching with has told me over and over this is a bad take
The extras in concert scenes at the Bait Shop couldn’t look less familiar with the concept of being at a concert. It is so distracting
Memory is weird because the song “Evil” triggered a memory of listening to the song “C’mere” from the same album, which had the lyrics: “The trouble is/ That you're in love with someone else/ It should be me/ Oh, it should be me.” Phew, talk about choking on the splinters
To take a step back, the reason I started watching The O.C. was I got deep into The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast about SNL digital shorts (which first came on at around the same time), including this short parodying a later episode
The piano at the start of the theme song just did the same thing to you, didn’t it?