So as you've probably heard, my favorite show The OC is being cancelled next month. I guess I can go back to watching Grey's Anatomy, but I must say that it got kind of boring to me this season now that McDreamy and Meredith are dating (or at least I think they're still dating; I haven't exactly watched the show since the new OC season started). Maybe it's just me. Note to self: I must start an OC countdown on this blog soon. Here's an article I found on nytimes.com.---
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 5 — The end was in sight for “The OC” by at least last summer, according to Josh Schwartz, the wunderkind creator of the show that, with its glamorous locations, beautiful actors and hip soundtrack, defined new trends for music, fashion, celebrity and, of course, television.
After a stunning debut on Fox in 2003, in which the series drew nearly 10 million viewers each week and a particularly high number of adults between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Nielsen Media Research, the show’s ratings fell in each of the last two seasons.
It entered the fourth season without its most recognizable face, the pouty rich girl played by Mischa Barton, who was killed off at the end of the previous season. Fox, meanwhile, demonstrated its lack of confidence by leaving “The OC” in its 9 p.m. Thursday time slot to face off against “Grey’s Anatomy” and “CSI.”
Fox ordered only 16 episodes, down from more than 20 in each of the first three seasons, and its budget for promoting the show’s return, Mr. Schwartz said, made clear that hopes for the series this year were not high.
“We tried to be realistic about it,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Few shows get to have their last season be their best. So if this was going to be the last season, we wanted to write the show we wanted to do and the show the fans wanted to see. It was creatively liberating.”
Fox, for its part, declined to address its reasons for ending “The OC.” No network executives were quoted in the news release, issued on Wednesday, announcing that this season would be the show’s last, and a spokesman for the network said Friday that no one would comment for this article.
When “The OC” had its premiere, it was quickly compared to “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Dawson’s Creek” and other series that drew raves for their chronicles of teenage angst. But while “90210” lasted 10 seasons, “The OC” will not even make it to the 100-episode milestone, considered a benchmark for profitable syndication.
It did, however, influence the culture. Orange County’s Newport Beach community became a tourist destination for young fans. At least two reality-based television series drew on the fame of “The OC”: “Laguna Beach,” an MTV series that billed itself as “the real Orange County,” and “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” a Bravo reality show that follows a gaggle of women from their tennis lessons to Botox sessions.
Thanks to its heavy use of mood music from emerging rock and alternative-music groups, “The OC” became known as a showcase for new bands, and it produced a half-dozen soundtrack albums featuring groups like Death Cab for Cutie and vocalists like Imogen Heap.
For all of its focus on good-looking rich kids, the show was also about adults, winning praise for developing parental characters with their own storylines and concerns. The show also created what were arguably the first Jewish heartthrobs on television: Sandy Cohen, played by Peter Gallagher, a public defender married to a wealthy gentile developer; and his son, Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody, who dealt with his mixed religious heritage by promoting the family’s adoption of Chrismukkah as its winter holiday celebration.
Reviewing the show’s second-season premiere, Virginia Heffernan, a New York Times television critic, wrote: “In tone, diction, fashion and music, Mr. Schwartz knows just how to keep it credible with its swooning fans. But he is also mindful of the strict rituals that define television drama, and his discipline in tightening the world he has created — rather than giving in to impatience and blowing it apart — is admirable.”
In the end, however, the weakness of “The OC” might have been that it was too much the product of one person, conceptually, if not in practice. Just 26 when Fox agreed to broadcast the show, Mr. Schwartz was the youngest person in network television history to create and produce his own one-hour series.
He worked furiously, writing or revising every episode of the first season and several in the first part of the second year. After that, he cut back, and while other longtime collaborators like Stephanie Savage continued to work closely on the show, many fans expressed the opinion that the second and third seasons did not match the originality of the first.
Mr. Schwartz disputes that. “I really believe in my colleagues,” he said, citing his particularly close association with Ms. Savage and Robert De Laurentiis, a show-business veteran who has served as an executive producer since the first season.
In fact, Mr. Schwartz will be producing a new series with Ms. Savage. The CW network has signed the pair for “Gossip Girl,” an hourlong teenage drama set in New York City and based on the book series of the same name. NBC, too, has signed Mr. Schwartz for a series, a dark comedy-drama titled “Chuck,” which Mr. Schwartz has developed with Chris Fedak.
For now, Mr. Schwartz, who grew up in Providence, R.I., not on the California coast, said he was focused on “delivering the most satisfying finale we can” for “The OC.” The remaining episodes will feature an unexpected pregnancy and more of the show’s familiar love-triangle tussles. All of which could work to raise the size of the audience from the fewer than four million who have tuned in for each episode this season, according to Nielsen. But it is unlikely that the series will win any reprieve from what, for such early promise, could be viewed as an early death.
---
--> California here I come, right back where I started from (I'm getting a bit bored with "Now That's Class!c W!th A Tw!st")
No comments:
Post a Comment