Josh Schwartz
The O.C.

Some time ago, I came across a report by Santoro on the economic crisis in the United States. They were in Orange County, and the fabulous villas characteristic of the area were all for sale, at fairly affordable prices. There was a villa for only eighty thousand dollars. I even considered it for a moment and went back in my mind to when I was in high school watching the famous series The O.C., set precisely in that luxurious and dazzling place, both for natural and artificial beauties. The boundless ocean, the hills, the villas overlooking those sublime sunsets.

In this setting, the lives of Newport's offspring unfolded, amidst parties and adolescent problems now canonized by this type of TV show along with a well-nourished depiction of the average billionaire in California. Truly, the billionaire O.C. style is far from average and mediocre. If it’s a cliché of TV series that even the rich cry, while remaining in their anonymous mediocrity, subservient to the upheavals of the plot, the billionaires of O.C. are real characters, who astonishingly maintain a line of coherence until the last episode of the last series.

It all starts with Ryan, a boy from the province, without a family, who finds himself in jail for theft and is defended by Sandy, a court-appointed lawyer with a Berkley upbringing, who nonetheless married Kirsten Nicol, daughter of magnate Caleb, a real estate mogul in O.C. and beyond. The boy is adopted by the couple, who already have a son, Seth, introverted and misfit, who can hardly stand the Orange County environment. The two will live a series of adventures, almost always accompanied by Marissa and Summer. And although their life seems blatantly easy, although we see them driving SUVs at only 16 years old and moving from one pool to another, it is not their state of bliss that the TV show highlights, much less is the bliss triumphantly represented in Orange County. Each of the protagonists has to deal with their own weaknesses, personal but also economic crises, the conditioning, and contradictions of a comfortable life but not free from difficulties. The very essence of the series lies in this strong discrepancy between the glamorous and bright façade which conflicts with the internal dramas of the characters.

And despite the first impact, which would lead us to brand the product as a child of the cynicism that prevails so much in trendy TV shows, if watched not superficially, one can realize that O.C. is still a very naive product from a narrative point of view. Because common sense always and anyway prevails, and bad taste is still considered always and only bad and never cool. American-style feel-good, one might object, I would rather say a well-hidden didactic intent that emerges in every episode. Far from being presented as hot-shot billionaire omnipotent figures, ours are still kids scared by life and tested by disappointments. At the center of the story, we don’t have muscular west-coast boys and Paris Hilton-style bimbos. We have Seth, obsessed with manga and unknown rock bands, with a penchant for oriental cinema, a typical school nerd, yet the protagonist of the series. We have Ryan, raised on the streets, yet endowed with great sensitivity and intelligence, who will shake the daddy’s boys of Orange County. We have Marissa, who above all will bear the consequences of the economic crisis, through family and personal disasters. We have Summer, who will try to fill the void of her lifestyle through social commitment.

And in the background, California, a symbolic place of the American dream, where the enchanting scenarios are contaminated by relentless real estate speculation, an inexhaustible source of profit for entrepreneurs, around which the entire system revolves which will soon collapse, bringing into crisis the dream lives mentioned above. Even in California, there are dark places, although the darkness is overwhelmed and drowned by the blinding sun of the Sunset. California here we come.