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The O.C.

johnnie utah

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2003-08-24 - 7:43 p.m.

i am so down for a new television show. it's called The O.C..

'but johnnie,' faithful readers plead, 'we read how you broke your television many months ago'. true, but i now head over to my brother's house in soho because he is blessed with digital cable. i am not allowed to have TV in my house. i can't be trusted.'but johnnie,' my biggest fans sing 'didn't you call bullshit on television only a few weeks ago?'. yes, i did, and i stand by that. this show is bad. i mean really bad. and i love every minute of it.

for those of you with no television or no stomach for cheesy evening soaps, The O.C. is the tale of wrong-side-of-the-tracks james-dean-scowl-alike Ryan who winds up crashing at a posh mansion up in the cliffs in newport beach. within moments of his arrival, marriages begin to unravel, catty social climbers and meatheaded surfpunks attempt to block his progress, and the willowy girl-next-door sets her eyes on his prize. he even makes the resident nerd a little bit cooler by proximity.

predictable? oh, my, yes. idiotic? certainly. i happen to hail from orange county in california (the o.c. in The O.C.) and i can attest to the fact that noone worries if 'you're down with the o.c.' mainly because noone ever calls orange county 'the o.c." when i was attending college in los angeles, we called going to orange county 'slipping behind the orange curtain'. it's not reagan country, it's nixon country.

so why in the world would i go out of my way to watch The O.C.? its one of the few shows on television alluding to one of the most important topics in our country right now: class. we like to think that as americans we are classless society, but its simply not true. class anxiety is everywhere, even more so now that economic boom-bust cycles are getting shorter and shorter. with crusty paleocons running the country, i think a healthy awareness of class tension (and its kissing cousin, racial tension) is going to be all but indispensable in the coming administration. Ryan's entry into the glossy comfort of newport throws everyone's leisure into sharp relief. he didn't even get a costume change for the entire first episode. in episode 3 (the producers haven't started coming up with cutesy episode titles yet), bighearted Sandy Cohen (played by cinematic Peter Gallagher!) shuts down the social climbing slut-next-door by alluding to her own humble roots in polite company. and she's angry and embarrased enough about the slight to dig up a dangerous secret in his marriage. of course its farcical. but not even the bighaired evening soaps of the 80s like 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty' packed in so much subtle social commentary.

don't take my word for it. the village voice and the la times are way ahead of me.