On The O.C. (in observance of the fifth anniversary of the series finale)

photo: The WB

The final episode of The O.C., "The End's Not Near, It's Here," aired five years ago today on Feb. 22, 2007.


It's difficult for me to believe that it's been five years since I last hung out with Ryan, Seth, Summer, Sandy, Kirsten and Julie, but that's probably because I haven't spent the last five years without them. I have probably thought about them at one point or another every day since then. As weird/sad/awesome as it is to say, those characters and that show became a part of me.

So many moments from The O.C.'s run are iconic to me: from "Welcome to the O.C., bitch" and Ryan carrying Marissa after her overdose to Captain Oats and Chrismukkah to the New Year's Eve kiss and Seth and Ryan's horror at discovering Luke and Julie's affair. From Seth sailing away and Marissa's poolside freak out to Ryan chasing Marissa around with a giant penguin and Seth and Summer's Spider-Man kiss. The list goes on and on and features so many of my favorite moments ever on television.

I know The O.C. wasn't flawless. There were missteps: the Marissa-goes-to-public-school arc, many of the Sandy/Kirsten love triangle attempts, Sandy running the Newport Group... Season 3 was rough in general. And I will probably never agree that killing Marissa off was the right thing to do for the story. I'll readily admit that some of the other shows I've watched have more consistently maintained a higher level of quality than The O.C. did during its duration - Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Community, Mad Men, and certain stretches of Lost, for example.

But, still, The O.C. remains my favorite of them all. Because when I define "favorite" as the show that has most infiltrated the various aspects of my life, The O.C. takes the title in a landslide. It has impacted the actors I like, the movies and TV shows I've watched, the music I listen to, the books I've read, the things I laugh at, the way I talk, and the way I think.


The O.C. premiered the summer before I started college and ended a couple of months after I graduated, and different moments from the show remain forever tied to different moments in my life. I remember watching the pilot in the summer of 2003 (coincidentally right before I took my own trip to Orange County) and being excited by the unexpected awesomeness the show offered. I remember being rendered so desperate by my lack of a working television during my first week of freshman year that I made a rare attempt at socializing with other people on my floor just so I'd have somewhere to watch The O.C. Just hearing the opening strains of "Honey and the Moon" sends me instantly back to my freshman dorm room, where I obsessively listened to The O.C. soundtrack while studying for finals. I remember my four different dorm rooms that I watched the show in, and I know which one I was in when Marissa shot Trey and where I was sitting when Marissa died. And I remember watching the finale five years ago and bawling like a little child during Ryan's flashbacks in the Cohen house (the image of Marissa standing on the curb while Ryan drives away gets me every freaking time).


I started this blog a couple of months after The O.C. concluded its run, so I don't have an blow-by-blow online account of my adoration for the show like I do for Greek and So You Think You Can Dance and others. But it's rather telling that in the past five years, after it's last episode had aired, I still managed to mention The O.C. and its characters in 86 posts on this blog. (This post makes number 87.)

The O.C.'s Season 1 finale was called "The Ties That Bind," and some pretty formidable ties continue to bind me to this show. So how will I observe this milestone? By watching the series finale. I think it will be the first time I've watched the entire episode since it aired five years ago, a fact that's especially surprising considering that I've probably watched many episodes of this show upwards of a dozen times. But I've never been really excited to watch the finale again, although I absolutely loved it. I think I just never wanted to remind myself that the show was actually gone. But on this anniversary I think I can handle watching the finale again, because after five years it's clear that The O.C. has become part of my identity and, to me, it will never truly be gone.

Premiere Watch '09: Community

Community:
"Pilot"

I loved, loved, loved Community's pilot episode. It was fantastic and hilarious. It's a sign that a comedy is awesome when I'm trying to write down the funny lines and I end up writing down basically the entire script, and I totally did that for this episode.

I adored Jeff's "Shark Week" motivational speech. That speech was definitely the best persuasive oratory I've seen on TV in a long time that wasn't delivered by Don Draper.

I was already a Joel McHale fan because of The Soup, and he was great in Community (plus the Seacrest joke was a nice shout out to The Soup). I loved Troy, Abed and Duncan as well.

If this show continues to be this funny on a weekly basis, you can definitely count me in! It might even inspire me to consider enrolling in a community college just for kicks. Well, probably not.

Highlights and observations:

• The guy standing up close to the stage listening to the dean looks cute from the back.
• I liked how they used the dean's speech as snappy way to give quick introductions to the characters.
• Dean: "That's what you've heard, however...I wish you luck!!!"
• Abed: "My dad is Palestinian. He's an American citizen. He's not a threat to national security or anything. Most people want to know that after meeting him because he gives off an angry energy. Not angry at America; angry at my mom for leaving him."
• Jeff: "Abed, nice to know you and then meet you in that order."
• Jeff's got an interesting look: Adidas athletic pants, collared dress shirt, sweater and suit jacket.
• They've got a rather nice looking cafeteria.
• Jeff: "Oh, sorry, I was raised on TV and I was conditioned to believe that every black woman over 50 is a cosmic mentor."
• Abed: "Oh, a text message! Let's give this bad boy a read! I've never gotten one of these before..."
• I loved Abed reading "Say you have to pee; I need to talk to you" to everyone on the room multiple times.
• Abed: "'Say you have to pee; I need to talk to you.'"
  Jeff: "Do you have to pee?"
  Abed: "No!"
  Jeff: "Well, then I'm stumped."
• The professor's text message: "Con-4-s-8-tion on football field now!!!"
• Jeff: "I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I'm God or truth is relative. In either case, booyah!"
• Duncan: "Interesting, it's just that the average person has a much harder time saying 'booyah' to moral relativism."
• Duncan: "I'm a professor! You can't talk to me like that way!"
  Jeff: "A 6-year-old girl could talk to you that way!"
  Duncan: "Yes, because that would be adorable!"
  
• Troy: "That means you do my homework, right Seacrest?"
  
• Jeff: "I'm going to go to the bathroom and bring my jacket, wallet and keys with me...in case there's a fire."
  
• Pierce calling Annie "Princess Elizabeth"
  
• Aww, it's Trudy Campbell from Mad Men! Maybe she should stand up and do the Charleston like she did on MM with Pete.
  
• Jeff: "Pierce! Let's discuss this creepiness."
  
• Pierce: "Sexual harassment! That makes no sense. Why would I harass somebody who turns me on?"
  
• Troy: "Keg flip! They're very hard to pull off!"
  
• Lol, Abed's quoting Breakfast Club. And finishing it up with "Nobody puts Baby in the corner."
  
• Jeff: "Bluffs this weak are how your people lost the colonies."
  
• Duncan: "Take this car--it's good for the environment."
  Jeff: "Yeah, so is wiping your butt with a leaf, but it's not how a man gets around!"
  
  
• Jeff: "You know what makes humans different from other animals?"

  Troy: "Feet!"

  Pierce: "No, bears have feet."
  
  
• Jeff: "We're the only species that observes Shark Week. Sharks don't even observe Shark Week. ...It's the same reason I can pick up this pencil, name it Steve and do this and a little bit of you dies. We can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting. People can find the good in just about anything but themselves."
  
  
• Jeff: "And don't test her on that because that thing about the jukebox was way too specific to be improvised."
  
  
• Jeff: "You are all better than you think you are, you're just designed not to believe it when you hear it from yourself."
  
  
• That speech was actually pretty fantastic.
  
  
• Jeff: "I was a lawyer!"

  Group: "Ohhh. That explains everything."
  
  
• Troy (laughing): "Asperger's."
  
  
• Duncan: "Before you say anything, you might want to think about the gift you've been given."
  
  
• Jeff: "An excuse to punch a hippie?"
  
  
• At least Jeff got his car back.
  
  
• Troy: "Wow, you just wrinkled my brain, man."
  
  
• Troy: "You seem pretty smart; you've got a sports coat."
  
  
• Abed: "What's going on? Can you guys hear me? Am I deaf? Can you hear me talking right now?"
  
  
• Abed: "I'm sorry I called you Michael Douglas, and I see your value now."
  
  
• I adore the cover of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" that they played at the very end.
  
  

Premiere Rating: 9.0/10

(Photo: NBC)