Majoring in Angst
On The O.C., life after graduation and Marissa
One's natural reaction to
The O.C.'s return (Thursday, Nov. 2 at 9 pm/ET) is to wonder, "Is that still on?" It's looking awfully creaky for a fourth-season show, as it picks up five months after May's tragic graduation finale. That's when golden-girl Marissa died, although some might say Mischa Barton had been playing dead for years.
Did you know one of the stages of grief was getting yourself beaten senseless in cage matches? That's how her beau Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie) is moodily coping, just another excuse for him to throw punches in his T-shirt.
Meanwhile, her best friend Summer (Rachel Bilson) has shed her materialism as a Brown undergrad in Rhode Island, where she's busy with environmental protests. "I don't do sarcasm anymore. I'm post-ironic," she tells Seth (Adam Brody). Here's an inconvenient truth: She's not great company anymore, and neither's the show.
Granted, much of the first month's episodes involve putting Marissa's death to rest, including her mother, Julie (Melinda Clarke), hatching absurd revenge plots with Ryan against the delinquent Volchok (Cam Gigandet) while Ryan's father figure, Sandy (Peter Gallagher), frets. This involves an excursion to Mexico during which Sandy's long-suffering wife, Kirsten (Kelly Rowan), gripes, "How much longer do we keep doing this, rescuing them every time they're in trouble?"
My guess: Not much longer. Not with Grey's Anatomy as the new Thursday competition. It's possible The O.C. will regain its original sense of fun. But will anyone be around to notice?
Naked Cities
Two cable movies, both airing Monday at 9 pm/ET, are disturbing urban nightmares of different stripes. BBC America's Cracker: A New Terror, set in gritty Manchester, England, is a blistering psychological mystery fueled by political fallout from the war on terror. HBO's Angel Rodriguez is a quieter art-film slice-of-life about a troubled teen in New York City at a seemingly hopeless crossroads.
Angel feels like a complement to the current season of HBO's The Wire, as it unsentimentally shows how easily a promising youth (Jonan Everett as Angel) can slide into despair, despite the earnest efforts of an overwhelmed social worker (an understated Rachel Griffiths).
Cracker reprises the great '90s crime drama, starring Robbie Coltrane as Fitz, a brilliant but abrasive psychologist. Here, he faces a killer whose traumatic memories of the conflict in Northern Ireland are further poisoned by post-9/11 anti-American malaise. This is dangerously provocative stuff.
