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The OC Returns: Season 3 Opener
9/14/05
by Tardio

The season three OC premiere came with more pent-up anticipation than the Paris Hilton sex tape. However, unlike the sex tape, it disappointed mightily. I've spent the past few days trying to deconstruct what went wrong in this episode – did I go into it with too grand expectations or did it just flat-out suck? Well, after much internal deliberation, I've determined that it flat-out sucked. The more important question is "Why?" Some theories:

1. Too much happened. Too much went on in this episode. I want to be eased into the season…come on Mr. G, there are 23 episodes left. You don't have to fit everything into the first one. Look at the college football season – you don't have nine intra-top 25 matchups in the first week. It just gets too cluttered. Take the Trey story arc for the show - he almost dies, then lives, then is in the coma, then out of the coma, then Julie pays him off, then Marissa visits him, then he escapes from the hospital, then he's off the show. And that's just one character.

2. Didn't Trey die? Another problem with starting the new season up with this storyline…it took me twenty-five minutes to accept the fact that Trey was not dead. Didn't he get shot directly in the head at the end of last season? Again, a college football analogy: The entire off-season you're following your team but not fully attuned to the changes. So, when they take the field, you kind of have an image in your mind of the team that finished last season. Same with OC. My last image of Trey is of him losing blood on the floor of his apartment as if he had been decapitated. Then, we get him alive in the hospital to start season three? I swear that everyone in the room watching this with me turned to each other and said in unison "I thought he died."

Trey and Ryan before their epic fight.

3. Frolicking: The scene with Ryan, Marissa, Seth, and Summer frolicking on the beach was absolutely painful to watch. A show watched by more than eight dudes cannot contain any scene involving over 11 seconds of frolicking. Frolic like hell for 11 seconds, but then it has to end abruptly. After 11 seconds, it beckons a borderline vomit situation. Unfortunately for this episode, the frolicking scene lasted about 22 minutes.

Not the OC cast, but beach frolicking nonetheless

4. Unbelievable-ness: Every good drama needs an element of unbelievable things going on. Just not at once. 90210 always had some ridiculous shi* going on (e.g., Luke Perry, at a balding 47 years old, going to prom; David Silver mixing it up on the keyboard with Babyface; Kelly being raped, burned, stalked, etc. within weeks of each other), but it balanced the episode with normal storylines (e.g., Brandon and Kelly's romance or Steve's hijinks). This episode had some absolutely ridiculous stuff that just wasn't cool. To borrow from DJ:

1. apparently aiding and abetting a person with a warrant for arrest in a murder case and stealing a yacht is not illegal in orange county. How did Ryan get in trouble yet the next day seth and the two girls are off scott free? and how did the cop know that they were escaping by boat? is that a typical means of escape in the OC?
2. that hospital has to be the worst in the world. first the candystripers can get in trey's room when he is the suspect to a murder case, so can the rich crazy mom, and he can walk out without notice at the end. no armed cops guarding his room? again, it's a murder case!
3. ryan guesses exactly how trey escapes, his exact bus departure time, and catches him for the eye contact. [And, for good measure…]
4. no hot floatergirl.

To continue the college football analogy, the OC has to pick it up next week. They've got to go back to the drawing board, get the mistakes corrected, and come out with a better game plan next week. I think you've got to simplify the offense for next week. Find a couple base plays (think Summer / Seth interactions, Marissa going crazy) and possibly run them out of different formations (think Marissa going crazy but now having Jimmy there for her). Maybe by next week the product on the field will match the pre-season hype.