Of course, even if we didn't completely identify with the characters, we could always enjoy the campy clash of cultures. Whether it's Julie Cooper's nouveau riche social climbing or the Newport ladies' catty dismissal of Kirsten Cohen's Jewish husband or a cocky Luke boasting "This is how we do it in The OC, bitch!", there's something completely fun and silly about this conflict. Plus, we always enjoyed seeing what people would do in this environment for acceptance, popularity, or mere survival. But again, with the social context absent, these battles have disappeared to the sidelines, and thus this season's twists and turns have been undercut with a growing sense of boredom. Who cares?

2) Have the teenagers act like teenagers.
This sort of echoes the last point. The teenagers just aren't realistic anymore. Granted, they never were totally realistic, but in the first season, they existed as a heightened, exaggerated version of reality. Now they're lame and boring. When they're not going to dumb dinner parties, the teens are getting hopelessly involved in their parents' sagas (Ryan, for one, is constantly embroiled in random adult storylines). Earlier this season, when Sandy punished Seth for being drunk, it worked because for once, Seth was acting his age (and so was Sandy). We need to get behind these characters, and the first step is making their motivations and worlds believable. Going along with that...

3) Make Ryan less self-righteous.
Let's not forget that Ryan is the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, specifically Chino. One of the major pitfalls of this series has been its inability to nail down Ryan's character. I believe that's because the writers never encountered someone like Ryan on a day to day basis. Last season, Ryan was short tempered but self-righteous to a fault. He had no fun and in turn sapped the fun away from anyone else. When the group snuck into a club, Ryan made Seth return his alcoholic beverage for a Mountain Dew. He then had the balls to lecture Seth's aunt, Hailey, for dancing (not even stripping) at the club, ultimately pulling her away from her job in front of her boss. Would you ever do that to your friend's aunt? Honestly, Ryan sucks.

It's hard to believe someone from such a tough background would have no vices or struggles. Ryan became angelic overnight, save for the occasional fist fight. But even then, he was always instigated into fighting for a noble and virtuous cause. There is hardly ever any true internal struggle with Ryan. No sense that his roots might catch up with him. Yeah, there have been scenes with Ryan and his no-good family, but these moments are rare and isolated. It's like the writers are saying "RYAN IS CONFLICTED." As they say, don't tell us about it, show us. On a day to day basis, we don't see the constant grappling between the Chino and Newport lifestyles. It's just all virtue, all the time. The only lapse occurred when he impregnated Theresa, and amazingly enough, not one character admonished him for underage sex without a condom. That subplot played less like a teen caught between his two worlds and more like the writers throwing in a twist for twist's sake, especially when the entire pregnancy plot was, er, aborted in this season's premiere.

Ryan 2005 is thankfully a little more lighthearted than last year, but his righteousness remains, and his constant nosiness and preaching makes him completely unlikable. His status as outsider has all but vanished, and now all he does is meddle in other people's business and cause chaos. Plus he's a downer and needlessly dramatic. Who wants to watch that?

4) Know when to kill a story.
One of the more nagging problems with The OC is its inability to gauge the tedious plots from the promising ones. Unfortunately, we usually get stuck with the lame stuff while the fun stories resolve themselves in three-episode arcs. Oliver has become the poster child for ridiculously poor OC plotting, but I think we can add the plight of Theresa, Rebecca, and occasionally Lindsay on the heap as well. Also overlong: the improbable romance between Alex and Marissa.

Surprisingly enough, the most kill-worthy rut this season has been the ongoing romance of Seth and Summer. Everyone loves these two. Everyone was happy to see them kiss again this week, even if it was in a contrived Spider-Man ripoff/ode. But not everyone was happy with the four months of whining and complaining that led up to this moment. The once charming and lovable Seth became a broken record this season as he moped around in a state of self-pity in the wake of losing Summer. There were minor variations on his malaise as he occasionally directed his pathos onto Alex and Zach, but at the end of the day, the writers managed to drive his character into the ground. Season 1 Seth was great because he simply never thought he had a shot at anyone. He pined from afar but was ultimately too shy and too awkward to do anything productive. His quirky banter was actually a self-defense mechanism, not a gimmick. Now he's confident, which isn't necessarily bad, but he's annoying too.

Compounding this is the fact that it never made any sense why Seth broke up with Summer, the love of his life, to go sailing into the unknown at the end of last year's season. Never mind that the whole sailing thing was completely contrived, but why would he ever dump Summer because of Ryan? That false note became the shaky foundation for the various Seth-Summer-Zach-Alex dramas, and unfortunately, none of those plots ever took off because at its core, we couldn't believe that any of this would exist in the first place. As a result, this entire love rhombus felt forced and uninteresting, causing a large portion of the show to simply spin in its wheels and inevitably stall.

Posted by B-side on February 28, 2005 3:04 AM