Season 1, Episode 1
Date of airing: August 5, 2003 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 7.46 million viewers, 5.0/8 in Households, 2.9/8 with Adults 18-49
written by: Josh Schwartz
directed by: Doug Liman
There is a reason THE O.C. might have successfully started its life and then became a popculture-defining event soon after its premiere in 2003: FOX gave not only a pilot order, but a seven-episode summer run, giving Josh Schwartz and his writers’ room a chance to create an entire show from scratch, or at least a miniseries worth of tons of teen drama, instead of just having to focus on the pilot to immediately attract audiences and network executives. Pilot season has become hell since the networks tried to emulate LOST midway through the 2000s, and they failed to entertain me with shows like THE EVENT, REVOLUTION, or FLASHFORWARD, so it was only natural that I would not care at all about the May Upfronts or the broadcast network premieres in September and October any longer. In fact, I don’t even watch the trailers anymore, I don't follow the news, and I stopped caring at all about how broadcast networks do their business, because I know that pilots are produced to make network executives and maybe advertisers happy, not the viewers. Any pilot that throws you into cold waters, the writer forgets to properly introduce the characters, turning the first hour of business into substance over style, into quantity over quality. That makes me shiver, and I generally hate the entire show before the writers even get the chance to properly get into the series with the second or third episode. Pilot season is an old relic of network television that needs to be dismantled, abolished, and written into the history book as something that once existed before we all came to realize the errors of our mistakes.
THE O.C. found its way into the FOX executive offices through the pilot season, but it’s the simple fact that Schwartz was given a seven-episode run that created the opportunity to ease the audience into the show and its world, to focus on the characters before screwing up things for them later. This episode didn’t even have a proper ending when Ryan was standing in his empty home, because there was this sense that the episode, albeit it being over, wasn’t quite over yet. The pilot wasn’t finished. Ryan’s entry into the world of Newport Beach hasn’t been concluded. His very first character arc wasn’t done, because there was no more time left in the first hour. Characters were introduced with a few glimmers of character arcs here and there – Marissa and her love for alcohol; Jimmy and his problem of wasting money that isn’t his; Luke and his issues as the Orange County quarterback who thinks he is the king of swinging fists – but this was Ryan’s episode through and through, which means the show cared about giving you an entrance into the world of riches and expensive sunshine through the eyes of an everyday teenage criminal, because even for the generic viewer, Orange County was a place they have never heard of. I certainly never did, although my German background doesn’t allow me to know of American neighborhoods outside of the famous TV primetime soap opera zip code 90210. Instead of getting thrown between characters and their many stories, these 45 minutes were all about getting acquainted with Newport Beach and its craziness. No one cares right now about the trials and tribulations of the high school students, and no one wants to know who cheats with whom on who. Setting the world and placing the characters in the first episode is more important than messing things up immediately, because writers and network executives still think that absolutely everything needs to happen in the first episode. A lesson that either needs to be learned by the suits or they can forego pilot season completely and just order shows as they come and like.
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| Two teenagers become best friends over an orgasmic computer game. |
16-year-old Ryan Atwood has never lived a proper life. His mother is
an alcoholic, his father is absent, his mother’s boyfriend is like Luke (the King of Swinging Fists),
but older and without money and fame, and his older brother is just
about to steal a car for a little joyride, inviting Ryan into the
passenger seat. This is certainly a way to introduce a character to the audience who is not only down on their luck, but kissing rock-bottom. One might wonder how it was not possible for Ryan to fight his way out of this dark and miserable life (by running away, for example), but here he is, being in absolute crap in his first episode as a teenager becoming acquainted with the world of the super wealthy. With Sandy Cohen, he gets a lawyer who gives him a bigger chance to get back on his feet than his own family has ever given him in all of his 16 years; with Seth Cohen, he gets a possible brother figure who is not going to teach Ryan how to steal cars (or maybe even go against a cop with fists drawn); with Marissa Cooper, he gets a potential love interest who will most likely not just be interested in doing him because of his access to booze and cigarettes (although, who knows how troubled Marissa really is); and with Newport Beach in general, Ryan is going to live in a neighborhood that he has never heard of before, while they have never heard of someone like Ryan before. In a way, he will fit right in.
This is the first episode of a teenage drama that became a sensation for some reason. One of them could be the fact that the audience had a great start to the show, with the writers easing them into it. It also turned out that Ryan was an immediate smash as a likable character. He was the bad boy (according to the first scene), but that didn’t mean he was a dumb screw-up who liked to stir up trouble and give you the literal beat-down. He happened to be smart and he happened to be friendly and helpful and caring, and it showed when he had Seth’s back in the fight against Luke and his muscular Water polo boyfriends. It showed when he carried Marissa to the poolhouse because he couldn’t just let a young woman lie on the side of the road like that and be eaten by all the lions and tigers in Newport Beach (or all the animals that may roam freely in California). He wasn’t the criminal you would think he is, as he was doing absolutely nothing that would have made him look bad, including stealing stuff from Marissa’s purse, which was a great way to break norms in the show – you would have thought he is being caught snooping through Marissa’s purse, but that was not the case. And he happened to be a young guy who could make friends easily. He charmed Sandy enough to jump himself into help mode, and he made an easy and quick connection with Seth over a quick computer game, a quick sail on the water, and a quick story about how he is in love with a girl named Summer whom he named his sailboat after. Ryan found out he fits quite well into the bubble of Orange County, and maybe he realized for the first time that having a family was a pretty great feeling. Did the Cohens care for him more during the 36-or-so hours he was with them than his own mother did? It must have been a weird feeling for Ryan after realizing this – a stranger gives him a place to stay for a few nights, and that stranger happened to be more loving to him than his own flesh and blood. Talk about a life that’s messed up for a teenager...
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| What to do when a young woman lies unconscious in front of your house? |
Besides all that, the first episode managed to have some style, too. Sexy girls (because hey, a show set on a beachfront in California can’t have too many bikini models walking around), sunshine and beach sand deluxe, pretty houses and housewives with expensive make-ups and crazy demands (Julie wanted a Froyo, and she couldn’t get it herself form some privileged reason – by the way, did she ever get that Froyo she demanded?), and a soundtrack that demanded to be sold as is, because the show’s executives decided to bring only hot tracks into the show and not the boring radio stuff. Of course, the young audience would fall for that and make THE O.C. what it essentially became during the first season: a slowly rising television hit no one saw coming, even though FOX definitely planned it to be the new BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 (after that show became a hit during the summer repeats after the first season’s ratings were rather mediocre). FOX was banking on THE O.C. to get all the word of mouth it needed during the summer weeks, so that the show would be a hit in the Fall. This was more than calculated.
But then again, the show wasn’t a hit in its own right because of calculations. It happened to be extremely solidly written, and the simple fact that it’s just the first chapter of the beginning makes it look more like an epic, and isn’t that the reason we watch television?
