You recently mentioned that ...
Question: You recently mentioned that this season is likely
The O.C.'s "last hurrah." Why do you think that is? When the show premiered, everyone was comparing it to
Beverly Hills, 90210, a comparison I still think is valid. That show ran for 10 years and almost 300 episodes. If
The O.C. ends this year it will be after only four years and likely not even 100 episodes. So why did it peter out so quickly? Do you think it was because of bad scheduling, or did poor story-line choices drive viewers away? Even if the show isn't the phenomenon it was when it started (and how could it be, given how overhyped and overexposed that first season was?), I still think it's successful enough that Fox's decision to cast it aside so quickly is surprising.
Answer: I'm struggling with how to answer this one. A cynic would just say, "The show sucks now," and be done with it, but that's neither fair nor relevant;
90210's long run can hardly be attributed to its quality. It may be the fact that Fox and the culture are in different places now than when
90210 was in its heyday. Fox was a much younger network then, and WB didn't even exist, so there was less saturation of this kind of show and lower expectations for its ratings. (Crossover mass-appeal hits like
24 and
House were not even thought possible.) There was no reality TV of note back then, either, and I'm wondering if faux reality soaps like
Laguna Beach and its offspring have taken the luster off this fictional version. Despite the freshness of much of
O.C.'s writing (especially for Seth, Summer and Sandy), there's an inescapable sense that we've been down this glossy road too many times before, and maybe this kind of teen soap is going, for now, the way of the old-fashioned sitcom — at least where the major networks are concerned. Simply put, Fox has grown up, which may not leave much room for a show like
The O.C.
