How do you live with yourself?
Here, I correct one of the massive gaps in my own TV knowledge-base: The O.C.
At the Television blog, TV Surveillance, critic Cory Barker runs a bi-weekly feature called "Test Pilot," where two critics watch one pilot of a significant television show. One has seen the pilot, and, ideally, the rest of the show. The other has not.
In this case, I'm the know-nothing. Barker asked me, from my perch of ignorance, if I'd review the O.C. pilot. I agreed.
If you want to watch along, most episodes are streaming at, for some reason, The WB.
Here's my take:
Call it the Beverly Hill’s Law: The amount of bitchy drama in any givenhigh school is directly proportional to the average income level of itsstudents. —-
The wealthier the parents, the more concerned with social hierarchyare the kids. Cut-throat, status-obsessed parents have a habit ofraising cut-throat, status-obsessed children. Especially in that certainpart of TV land where, in their fancy houses and prestigious incometax bracket, live the teen dramas.
It’s a place where guilty pleasures don’t get much more guilty or pleasurable.
There are dramas featuring teens, like Friday Night Lights. But those are very different than teen dramas (pronounced duh-raaamaas,) those shameless stories rife with OMGs and WTFs I-can’t-believe-he-just-said-thats. Think Gossip Girl.
Gossip Girl (at least the TV show) was created by JoshSchwartz. He’s the guy who, at 26, became theshowrunner of The O.C..
Until now, my knowledge of The O.C. has beenlimited to:
1). a brief clip of the pilot on the big-screen TV atGrandma’s house in 2003
2). passing references on Arrested Development, and
3). that one Saturday Night Live digital short where everyone is shooting each other to an Imogene Heap tune.
I didn’t start watching TV — at all — until 2006 so the fact that I missed the O.C. pilot isn’t surprising.
I have, however, seen the first season of Gossip Girl. But where Gossip Girl’s carefully-coiffed, hyper-clever dialogue was its focus, in The O.C.,the dialogue is less showy. Instead, it’s a show about setting. Newport,Calif., is drawn as a place of a glorious excess — gilded andglowing, but rotten to the core. It’s everything we love and hate aboutwealth. It’s simultaneously seductive and repulsive — the perfectTV-friendly combination.
Even more attractive to audiences? The protagonist is a bad boy — no, a 15-year-old girl’s dream of a bad boy. He steals a car. He disrespects authority figures. He punches all sorts of people. He even smokes.
But he has a baby face, perfectly non-threatening hair, and he dresses smooth and wrinkle-free. At least the 10 Things I Hate About You ABCfamily show shelled out for leather jacket for its harmless rogue. Ryanlooks like the clean-shaven evangelical church boy pretending to be asinner in a First Presbyterian “Jesus Saves” theater dance number.Tim Riggins nailed the uncomfortable-in-a-suit look. But Ryan Atwoodlooks uncomfortable out of them.
Still, he serves a crucial narrative purpose. Ryan is both The New Guyand the Fish Out Of Water. He’s the audience surrogate, letting us seethe crazy/beautiful hedonism of Newport through his eyes. Even moreimportantly, he’s the catalyst to upset the status quo.
Peter Gallagher, as Sandy Cohen, the kindly defense attorney whotakes Ryan in at a whim, is a less predictable choice. He looks odd.Meaningful. Soulful, even. Casting only conventionally beautiful peopleis one of the biggest mistakes a teen drama can make. Gallagher’spresence is a good sign for the show’s future.
Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), meanwhile, is your typical Josh Schwartznerd: A decent-looking guy who’d probably be pretty cool if he juststopped stuttering and had a little confidence. Knowing almost nothing about the future of The O.C., and a whole lot about the general Josh Schwartz M.O., I predict Seth becomes a lot more cool and confident over the series run.
The template for a successful pilot is seen even more clearly in theplot, which touches on every event you’d expect in a salacious teen drama. It begins with a crime. It morphs into lifestyle porn. It throws intwo or three love triangles. It gives you the requisite cuh-razy party(did you hear about that threesome, bro?) that ends in the requisitefight.
Some pilots throw two or three baited lines in the water to keep the viewers hooked. The O.C. throws in a dozen.
Check out the number of plotlines that, within a single episode, The OC sets up:
1) Ryan’s brother is a bad influence on him.
2) Sandy sees some of himself in Ryan and trusts him far more than he probably should.
3) Sandy’s wife is suspicious of Ryan.
4) There’s a wee bit of tension between Sandy and his wife.
5) There’s an entirely different sort of tension between Sandy’s wife and Marissa’s mom.
6) Ryan may be a destructive influence on Seth
7) Seth likes Summer…
8 ) … but Summer’s totally into Ryan…
9) … who is sort of interested in Marissa…
10) …who is dating a jock asshole cliché.
11) Marissa has a drinking problem.
12) Summer, in all likelihood, seems like a bad friend to Marissa.
13) There’s something really, really weird going on with Marissa’sdad — what with the angry bathroom visits and the suits at his door —and Ryan knows about it.
14) Ryan’s mom left him.
15) There are multiple bared midriffs and low-cut blouses inNewport, a plot point we will continue to follow veryclosely.
Teen dramas subsist on voracious conflict, twists andplot momentum. Ultimately, this sort of show burns up under its ownunsustainable metabolism. But a methodical show that metes out its plotpoints — well, those rarely get past the first season. And the O.C. pilot gives the show enough fuel to keep it burning hot and fast for a very long time.
This is a shameless show, but — and this is key — it's neverdesperate. In some pilots you can hear cynical wheels of marketcalculation turning. But, in the O.C. pilot the wheels spin so smoothly, so effortlessly, they lull you into just succumbing to entertainment.
Conclusions on legacy: One episode in, I don’t see The O.C. as a revolution of teen drama as much as a refinement. In the same way Modern Family is a masterful refinement of the family-sitcom formula, The O.C.almost perfectly hones the teen drama formula. “Trust me,” 26-year-oldJosh Schwartz tells TV executives and the American public, with agleaming roguish smile. And we did.
***
Finally, Cory gives his thoughts on the series legacy. Here's a selection. The rest — and there is a lot — is at his blog.
Today we’re here to discuss my — and I’m guessing a lot of people’s — favorite teen drama of all-time, The OC. I guess it’s fitting that we’re discussing The OCright before Thanksgiving, as the series always made great episodes outof the biggest holidays, including Thanksgiving. ... Like Dawson’s Creek, I’m very, very familiar with this series and thus will be serving as the veteran voice. Let’s do this:
I think The OC is my favorite television series ofall-time. Period.... Ithink a lot of this has to do with the fact that I was in the same yearschool-wise as Ryan, Seth, Summer, Taylor and Marissa, which made itfeel as if the series was the backdrop to my high school life.
But I do think it’s more than that. What the series nailed the best,aside from the grandiose emotional moments like the [spoilers at Cory's blog] .. Ryan and Seth are legitimate outsiders in the Newport world,but the pilot and subsequent episodes do a really great job of showinghow even in the most popular corners of the world, there is loneliness.And importantly, the series approached these kinds of stories withoutmaking it seem like “Oh, woe is me” for the rich and fabulous, insteadthe money often felt like a surface tension to really get to the messedup psyches that come along with living in a suffocating world, whetheryou’re rich or not, or cool or not.
... The OCpilot and for the most part, the whole first, second and fourth seasons— don’t ask me about the third season, sigh — are just sharp.
It’s not particularly edgy, but it is self-aware in how the storiesit is telling exist as fairly familiar tropes of not only the teendrama genre, but storytelling in general. The pilot is perhaps a littledarker than the series is overall, but it’s not melodramatic orself-involved like some of the WB series of the ’90s and from thebeginning, all the elements that will later be important to the series’full run are here — Ryan and Seth’s relationship, Ryan trying to fitin, Sandy being an awesome parent and lots of punching — that it’s hardto say this episode doesn’t exemplify what The OC is...
A few things really stick out about the actual events of the pilotepisode that seem worth mentioning. First of all, despite the undyinglove I think every fan of the series has for Seth and Summer as acouple, the pilot depicts what I always thought were the strongestrelationships in the series: Seth and Ryan, Ryan and Sandy and Sandyand Seth....
Moreover, I’ve always appreciated the series’ dedication to Ryan’s“otherness,” I guess you could call it. So many series or movies havethe stereotypical “outsider” from “the other side of the tracks” orwhatnot who aren’t really that different (just like 90210‘sBrandon and Brenda), but this episode — which is really just part oneof a three-part pilot, if I remember correctly — goes out of its way tomake sure that Ryan doesn’t really understand how this place operateswhatsoever and is from a legitimately bad place. It even has a name!Chino! ...
...
Outside of the text itself, The OC brings us a lot todiscuss. The series exists as one of the biggest legitimate culturalphenomenons that came out of the broadcast television world in the 21stcentury — others being Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, The Office, Idol, Glee and probably 24 and Desperate Housewives — but barring a complete Glee flame-out, it also exists as the series with shortest time in the spotlight since Twin Peaksback in the early part of the ’90s. There are probably a lot of reasonsfor the series’ quick rise and fall, but what is perhaps mostinteresting is the impacts of having a fairly young audience,especially in the 21st century. [Reasons at Cory's blog]
....
As a series a part of the teen drama genre, The OC servesas an interesting change of pace, but also something of a return toform in some ways. By that I mean it discards a lot of the pretensionand earnest hues of the WB’s lot that tired folks out by the first fewyears of new millennium and instead brings back some of the debaucheryand excess that defined 90210. However, the series takes the self-awareness of Dawson’s Creekand ramps it up to 11, maybe 12, which helps serve as something of acommentary on how stupid lives of excess can be. The Cohen’s might berich, but they don’t really live like it in a luxurious or lavishsense, and they often make fun of the stupid parties and celebrationsthat the other people want them to go to...
And if we think about the pop culture references and the holiday gimmicks, The OC was definitely the most post-modern entry in the teen drama genre, even if there’s an indication that it’s been passed by Gossip Girl.However, the FOX series was always willing to clash together thingsthat shouldn’t presumably go together — Christmas and Hanukkah! — andcomment on itself...
...
Finally, I think the biggest point to make about The OC inrelationship to the teen drama genre is that it basically killed it.Hear me out: While certain smaller networks and channels like the CWand ABC family can produce and air their fair share of new teen dramashere in 2010 and for as long as they want in the future, I would beshocked to see one become legitimately “successful” in the traditionaltelevision sense. Though some of that has to do with the lack ofsuccesses across television in general, the teen drama has seeminglybeen hit particularly hard and turned into something of a niche genre. The OC rose and fell so quickly that it scared any of the bigger networks off, particularly FOX, and now series like Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liarshave to redefine their values based on internet buzz, Gawker coverageand tweets — or something. Thus, I think it’s absolutely fair to call The OC as the last “real hit” teen drama, and I kind of love it that way.
For someone like me... it’s interesting to seehow quickly the series has been forgotten, especially since Schwartzhas moved on to two other series that take elements of this one inearnest — Chuck is obviously an extension of Seth Cohen, Blair feelslike a similar extension of Summer in some ways and Serena is an exactextension of Marissa in that she sucks majorly — but it seems like timehasn’t been kind. However, I think it’s fairly apparent that the seriesexists as the most well-respected mainstream successful teen drama ofall-time and that’s where it should be.
Tags: Fox , Television , Better Late Than Never , TV , Image
Each Wednesday on Bloglander, we give you a taste of happy hours going on at bars around town that night. (Read previous posts.)
Tomorrow we dine on turkey. Our families surrounding us. It's been a year since we last all got together. And if we're smart, we'll get through it all with a little inebriation and a slight hangover.
But that depends on what we do tonight.
Newly opened Ugly Bettie's understands what it's like to spend Thanksgiving sober. And they have the cure for it. From 9-11 pm, any drink goes for $3. Dollar shooters will get you on the dance floor with a DJ spinning, during this Thanksgiving pre-func.
At the Mill in Coeur d'Alene, PBRs and Hamm's drafts are a $1.50 from 4-9 pm.
If gambling is how you deal with the holidays, at the Q from 3-6 pm you can get a $3 well, along with some boneless chicken wings, nachos or fries, each for $5.
Stir is also having a pre-turkey day party with $3 fireballs, $2.50 Bud Light pints and $5 cheeseburgers.
At Tonicx, the Rolling Rock costs $2 and the Medalla costs $3.
From 3-6 pm, the South Hill Twigs will serve their house cabernet and chardonnay, martinis, draft beers and mojitos for a dollar off. The Mezza, calamari, margarita pizza and blue chicken pizza are on special for $6.99.
We're Awesome — City officials are plain tickled with the snow plow job they're doing. (KXLY)
Ask, tell everybody — Even though Obama's Justice Department appealed a federal judge's ruling that allowed a lesbian flight nurse to stay in the Air Force, it didn't move to block her reinstatement. (AP)
Lonely? Hang with the TSA — Extra manhandlers will be on staff at the Spokane International Airport this weekend as travelers prepare to be groped by government workers in lieu of being microwaved. (KREM)
Obesity-in-Chief? — Finally, the Daily Beast asks the most salient question of the day: Is America ready for a chubby president? With hefty presidential contenders lining up — Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, Chris Christie — the answer is a big fat maybe. (Daily Beast)
Tags: morning headlines , News
Poor, poor, students of the Spokane Public School district. If their vision were good enough, while staring wistfully out the windows from third-period Algebra, they could see their peers from the Seattle Public School District, laughing and building snowmen and frolicking gaily in the powder.
Spokane Public Schools refused to shut down today. Seattle Public Schools, on the other hand, announced those words every child has their ears glued to the radio to hear: "School has been canceled due to weather conditions."
"Our freeways get pretty crazy with people who don’t know how to drive in the snow," Seattle Public School spokeswoman Teresa Wippel says "Two inches drives people into a panic and everyone shuts down."
But before we Spokanites get too full of ourselves, consider all the other elements that makes snow a problem for Seattle. As in: There's much more traffic and, thus, a much greater chance of collisions. The ice wreaks havoc on traffic on all those hills. One school, Queen Anne, is atop a very steep hill.
When one road is closed due to an accident in Spokane, detours are easy. But with bridge-bound Seattle, an accident or too much snow in the wrong place can be devastating to traffic flow. Because of airflow, bridges tend to get extra icy. Many Seattlites, presumably, don't own snow tires.
"Nothing takes precedence over the safety for students," Wippel says.
So does the Spokane School District hate kids?
Nope. At Spokane Public Schools, there are similar student-focused considerations, but with a different perspective.
"We know that in this community the safest place for most of our children is school," spokesman Terren Roloff says. It's warm and stable, and there's food. "Sixty percent of our population does qualify for free or reduced meals. ... It’s a hard-working community. So many people work outside of the home."
In the last 14 years, Roloff says, there have been only nine "snow days" in Spokane Public Schools, all within a two-year period.
Here, Roloff says, the questions are: Are all facilities up and running? Do the schools have heat and power? Are the sidewalks walkable and the school entrances plowed? This morning, all those questions were answered satisfactorily, Roloff says.
"Our goal is to ALWAYS to have school... We're not Seattle," Roloff says. "We're used to this."
So what about tomorrow? Will there be a snow day tomorrow? Pleeeaaase?
"Looking outside right now, I’d say a very slim chance," Roloff says.Sorry, kids.
Only three times since Eisenhower was elected president have so many of us voted in an election.
With the general election's official certification, we now know that an astounding 71.29 percent of registered Spokane County voters returned their ballots this year, a proportion just behind the records of 1970 (72 percent), and 1958 (71.3 percent). (Voters in 1952 came in fourth.)
That's more than 186,000 voters in total. Which, if we all stood on a scale, would weigh around 30 million pounds.
We all know the results by now, but to recap:
• Former Spokane City Councilman Al French unseated Spokane County Commissioner Bonnie Mager, making the board completely Republican.
• Michael Baumgartner took out state Sen. Chris Marr, returning the seat to Republican control after just four years. (It was Republican for the 40 years before that.)
• Democrats kept the 3rd Legislative District. Republicans took back the 6th. (Thank you, gerrymandering!)
• Unopposed Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich got 100 percent of the vote — at least 100 percent of the 130,000 or so people who decided to vote for sheriff.
And etc., etc.
Finally, nice work voters. Scoring 71 percent is just a C- in school, but it's an A in democracy.
Go to the Spokane County Election Results page for the full, unadulterated breakdown.
Tags: election 2010 , News
Happy evening commute, everybody!
Novels, biographies, mysteries, theology ...
Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas about Cities, by Witold Rybczynski (Simon & Schuster, 250 pages, Nov. 9)
How can we get more green space in our cities? The Univ. of Penn urban thinker surveys the past (the Garden City, the City Beautiful) and then looks toward the future, keeping in mind the tension between the cities we want and the cities we need. By the author of Home and A Clearing in the Distance.
Love in Complete Sentences, by Mary E. Mitchell (St.Martin's Griffin/Thomas Dunne, 300 pages, Nov. 23)
A novel about a widow with two rebellious kids; she's a high school guidance counselor. Somehow she can run a touchy-feely support group at school but can't talk to her own daughter without screaming and yelling.
Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris (Random House, 800 pages, Nov. 23)
Third book in the monumental three-part biography (after The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex) covers TR's post-presidential years: safaris in Africa, forming a third party, running yet again for president, advocating the U.S. entry into WWI, his death at age 60.
The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore (Twelve, Dec. 1)
A meta-Sherlock Holmes mystery: What happened to the diary that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle kept during the time when he decided first to kill off his super-sleuth and then revive him? A literary researcher is all happy when he gets to join the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, the Baker Street Irregulars — but then, when another Sherlock Holmes expert is murdered, our hero finds himself thrust into a dual mystery: Where's the diary, and who killed our victim?
Sea Change, by Jeremy Page (Viking, Dec. 2)
In this novel, a divorced guy sets out to sea on a barge so he can write an imaginary diary about the man he should have been, the family he might have had.
The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, by Andrew O'Hagan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 290 pages, Dec. 6)
The dog observes her with Sinatra, JFK, Natalie Wood and Sammy Davis Jr. — suggesting that the way people interact with dogs is analogous to the way we project our fantasies onto celebrities.
Jesus Was a Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All, by Scotty MacLennan (Macmillan, 270 pages, Dec. 7)
Feeling as if conservatives have hijacked your faith?
SEE OTHER BOOK BLOG ENTRIES at the foot of this page.
MUSIC
Love him or hate him, you cannot deny these two things: 1) Kanye's popular, and 2) He's crazy. Like, probably-certifiably-if-he-weren't-so-damn-rich levels of insanity (see: Tracy Morgan). Whether he's apologizing to George Bush* or Taylor Swift, it seems like his public life would be a helluva lot easier (and provide him with a lot more free time spent not apologizing) if he actually thought before things came out of his mouth.
Fortunately, what makes him so annoying as a celebrity is what makes his music so great. Universally praised (almost to an absurd degree), My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounds as good as its various covers look strange.
So what, if anything, is the takeaway? Kanye, please stick to the musicking and leave the ridiculous-ing to the professionals. Oh, and the authoring, too, if you don't mind.
DVDs
You can argue all you want about whether veracity is important. Some, like Tim O'Brien, might say it doesn't matter (yes, I'm still bitter). Others, like James Frey, would say that it's probably a bad thing to lie about.† But I think the most important thing to remember when dealing with any kind of entertainment is this: It still has to be good.
Despite however much joy Letterman may have gotten when Joaquin Phoenix first bored everyone to death on his show (Letterman was in on it), the rest of us still had to sit through either a) watching a guy being interviewed who was in the process of completely destroying his life, or b) watching a guy being interviewed who was pretending to be in the process of completely ruining his life. Either way, not exactly a barrelful of yuks, or even particularly interesting. If I wanted to watch celebrities acting like morons, I'd go find Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab.††
There may be some meta-philosophical layer that can bring a certain amount of satisfaction in wondering whether what we're seeing onscreen is real, but we get plenty of dramatic tension in actual movies. Growing a beard, wearing sunglasses and losing an entire year of your career isn't any more fascinating than trying to figure out how M. Night Shyamalan keeps getting to make movies.
VIDEOGAMES
After a mere five-year wait, the Playstation's premiere racing title finally hits the new console. Well, I mean, they did already release Gran Turismo HD Concept with the platform's launch in 2006, when they charged players for every car or track they wanted to purchase (buying everything cost upwards of $400). And then there was Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, which was basically a demo that cost $40 back in 2008. But now you can pay $60 for the whole thing! Woohoo!
This is an enormous game, though exactly what you're going to do with 1,031 cars to choose from is unclear. Regardless, this release is loaded: It's got rally racing, karting, a track editor, stereoscopic 3-D support … the only thing it doesn't come with is a Tony Stewart of your very own. (The licensing issues — and the fact that this isn't a NASCAR game — probably made that cost-prohibitive.)
The game's official release isn't until tomorrow, so there isn't much by way of reaction yet. However, if you're a car nut (especially a Gran Turismo fanatic), it's safe to say you're going to enjoy this game.
Tags: this just out , Arts , Image
Snow, again Seattle feels a bit of Spokane. Plus, plows are making progress, we're told, and highways are closed. (KXLY, SR)
Prison lockdown Attica! Walla! Walla! Attica! Er... joking! (AP)
North Korea shells island Chill, y'all (NYT)
Tags: morning headlines , News
Things are heating up in Spokane's City Hall, Eyeballers.
The city's firefighters have tentatively struck a deal with the mayor by forgoing a cost-of-living wage increase. In return, no firefighter will lose his (or her) job. Nice work, men in red.
Regardless, the City Council will continue to discuss the budget — and hear public testimony — every Monday evening through November. So you missed the first three meetings. Who cares? There are still two more to attend.
Speak up! Do you like libraries? What about police services? Snow plows? Guys that fill in potholes? Clean parks?
Go tell the council. You have three minutes. (And don't go over, otherwise Council President Joe "The Firebreather" Shogan might eat your face.)
On other items, the council will confirm the freshman class of the Spokane Regional Homeless Governance Council, a newly formed body that is intended to unite our community's many homeless advocates. Just in time. It's horrible out there.
Elsewhere, nothing's going on. Why? Because Spokane County commissioners are taking the week off, and the fair people of the Valley love giving thanks so much, they're taking the rest of the month off. (At least when it comes to having government meetings.) Have fun!
And Happy Guvment-ing, to each and everyone.
Tags: city hall eyeball , News , Image