The OC, brothers, and the connected high of friendship.
Watching the OC tonight I had a few thoughts.
1. Maybe some of the original appeal was the constant fighting. I mean, when the line “Welcome to the OC, bitch!” is in the trailer and the first episode, people may have come to expect fighting. Esp. since fights broke out in the first six episodes or so. While this seems like a back to basics season, maybe having Ryan be a cage fighter was a BIT extreme.
2. Seeing Kaitlin Cooper in $1500 fuck me boots. Just awesome. The blasé take from her mom may have been the harbinger for the rest of the season: “meh, she’s a slut. This is what they do.”
3. Jumping 5 months forward, and mentioning that Ryan wasn’t at Marisa’s funeral, just smart decisions. If season three is a wash, let’s get away from it as fast as possible. On a side note, Battlestar Galactica did this at then end of season 2, and they did it by a year. I think this is a smart choice. Sometimes, just make the jump. Actually let’s call it the bound forward. The leap is meant for when one person, show, or band suddenly becomes that much better, and the jump is meant for jump the shark. The bound forward should be saved for a logical movement of time past a seminal event. We didn’t need to see the people on New Caprica adjust, nor did we need to see the (or another) funeral on The OC. Smart move.
4. The comic book scene. Why I loved, then liked, then watched, this show, above all, and I feel it’s entirely the wrong reason to care about a TV show about richers, was the sense of family. LA and the OC represent a world where most of the people come here from a different place. Finding family out here when you are not of the culture was why I liked the show, and why I always felt I was more of a Ryan (the outsider) than a Seth (a music obsessed nerd who hates the superficial glaze to this town). Seeing Ryan trying to figure out where he is, and accept the change and love the area because of the people, that’s why I watched it, because I am trying to do the same thing. Having the best part of the show, distilled into an alternate media flashback hinting at all of the sentimentality behind the relations was not just a highlight of the episode, it may be series saving. They’ve realized what the crux of the show was again. As much as I miss Mischa, I don’t miss Marisa, both were a distraction, but this was about Ryan, Sandy, and Seth.
5. My favorite scene other than the above belonged to Summer. The moment she walked back into her room after being away at college, there is a look on her eyes that reveals the old axiom: “You can’t go home again.” The room is the same, save the fact that she no longer lives there. When she looks across through the open hallway doors and sees the visage of Coop; it was likely supposed to be a nod to her loss of a best friend and the fact she hasn’t dealt with that yet, but on the basic level, it’s coming back home to an old life and knowing some people aren’t there anymore.
I think of my first Thanksgiving my Freshman year of College. I thought it important to leave on Wed so I could go to classes. Of course, little did I know, most students leave after Monday night that week. I was one of 10 kids in the class of 75. It was called short, and I went home to pack.
I got home around 9pm Indy time. I grabbed my Ma’s cell phone to call my friends to meet up with them. I couldn’t wait to get back. While I made some good friends in the first semester of college, I had great friends waiting for me back home, most of which I talked to daily on IM.
Before I went out, I dropped my bags back at my mom’s house. I remember looking at my old computer and asking: “You changed the monitor! What happened to the bigger one I used?” Same monitor, same room. It was a place I had been in for 4 years, but I didn’t totally recognize it.
(side note) That house was sold and my mom moved out within 18 months. In a separate but connected twist of fate, the house my father built with my then and now former Step-mother would be gone before the end of my senior year of college. That Thanksgiving was the last I spent in the house my father had when I was in High School. Three houses lost in 4 years. Talk about change.
While I will still reserve one night during 2001 as the official end of the High School Era of my Indiana friends, this trip felt like the beginning of that end. I never believed I would return to live in Indiana, and for the first time in my life, the houses I lived in Indiana didn’t seem like my home. The final nail was that my school where I went to pre, lower, middle, and High School at (yeah, it was a private school and I was there for 14 years) was undergoing change, combining buildings, adding a coffee cart, revamping the cross country course. I haven’t gone back since, save playing wiffle ball in the parking lot in the Summer of 2000. That above all would be too damaging.
Those 4 days and nights were as wild as they came. I ate Penn Station 5 times; I was still hooked like a fiend. With the exception of Thanksgiving night, we went big every night. We had a 12 pack challenge that I and House won (thanks to my ingenious idea of cheating thru 2 cans of Naddy Light by dumping them out when we peed). We brought back the girls we used to hang out with; if being with the guys seemed like we never lost a beat and were just a bit older, being with the girls felt just like the old times, awkward, and everybody was wary of fooling around (then it was rumors, now it was fresh STD’S).
I was the last of our group to come in and the first to leave. We talked about the wild classes we were taking that actually counted to our degrees. We boasted about the girls we scored with. We screamed about the parties and the debauchery. Yet most of us were just happy to be back with one another. I remember in my yearbook, I left a Robert Kennedy Jr. quote:
“It usually happens at a party or some event I know I should be shaking hands meeting people, but inevitably I find myself surrounded by my brothers. I am drawn to them; It is where there is life. It is where I feel most alive.” Joseph P. Kennedy II- To my friends, you are my brothers and I am myself with you and only you.
With them I felt at home, as myself again. But the notion of going home to a computer screen I didn’t recognize (and for god’s sake, I wrote my first screenplay on this thing) seeing a family who looked at me waiting for me to show my new differences, and losing a house and more importantly a basement that I loved, didn’t feel that way.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe, well, sure, yeah. The further you get from youth the more the mash of regular life draws comparison. But adulthood and youth are not two sides of the same coin, they are not even chapters to be reread, because with re-reading, the joy is living it again. Going home from college is when the playgrounds seem shrunken, too small for you to play on anymore. The kids on the basketball court appear to be 75% your size and it’d be like picking on 4th graders. When I go home now, I see the same family, I occasionally see the same friends, and I always come home with a slew of new stories, but I know I am talking a different language; it’s in the vernacular of David, but it’s coming from Indiana Dave.
Now, when I come home, we just go out. We’re too busy to organize croquet games like we used to, we try to play one handed drunken basketball, and we all pass on beer pong, and while we go to the movies, we don’t get to build like we used to. The movies and TV shows and albums we like aren’t shared like they used to be. We don’t live together anymore. We just don’t have that level of tedium which let us build like we used to. So we go straight to the riffs and chorus…we go get hammered. Then we can remember. Occasionally we make some great moments, but it’s not like the same, and it doesn’t happen as often… but even with that said, we still have that chemistry.
Klosterman tried to put this to point with friends by likening the Saved by the Bell episodes where there were secondary characters, and that there are shared emotions and moments that those missing were never there for. Like most of Chuck’s work, he’s right, and then wrong, but he’s right enough to prove a point. When one comes home after 6 years, it’s hard to talk to the same people you used to hang out with, because the stories aren’t the same, the wild paths taken may not include some of the group, and the hard part is remembering that you lived your life without them.
The falsehood of his statement was that he was the only one in his group that likely left, and that he wanted to go elsewhere because of them. Tying his friends into a TV show is an easy out, but it works because with Saved by the Bell, those characters felt like friends. My friends were not characters, they were my brothers. You know you’re going to part from them, you just hope your kids grow up together. To pretend they are part of a sitcom is to think that it will all end in the same situation.
About twice a year, one of my friends from Indy will make their way out here, and on this same notion, once Lady Portland Rose Royce comes back to LA, and we pick up just where we left each other. The trick to a happy ending is to know when to roll the credits, because nothings ends well, otherwise it wouldn’t end.
The trick to living is hoping it goes on past the goodbye. You just want to know you’ll see them again and maybe through the magic of life, and more so, the magic of booze, you’ll get home to the youth again.
Somewhere on another plain; some where beyond the stars, it’s not elegiac or amiss like Klosterman wants to put it, it’s hopeful and it’s loving, it’s a slow walk down the hall, wondering where they were when I was getting high in college.
When we find each other, it feels like home. You and I will never die, the world’s still spinning round….
In the end, we find each other.
Two clips:
One: it’s not the best video they ever did by far. It does get the rhythms right though. While the shots of Noel head on are a bit much, the backlighting always works when the whole group is in shot. Still love it.
Two: Going back to that hope that the connection never dies. You can’t go home again, but you can remember the old times.
My favorite moment of The OC.
Wipe that tear away from your eye.
1. Maybe some of the original appeal was the constant fighting. I mean, when the line “Welcome to the OC, bitch!” is in the trailer and the first episode, people may have come to expect fighting. Esp. since fights broke out in the first six episodes or so. While this seems like a back to basics season, maybe having Ryan be a cage fighter was a BIT extreme.
2. Seeing Kaitlin Cooper in $1500 fuck me boots. Just awesome. The blasé take from her mom may have been the harbinger for the rest of the season: “meh, she’s a slut. This is what they do.”
3. Jumping 5 months forward, and mentioning that Ryan wasn’t at Marisa’s funeral, just smart decisions. If season three is a wash, let’s get away from it as fast as possible. On a side note, Battlestar Galactica did this at then end of season 2, and they did it by a year. I think this is a smart choice. Sometimes, just make the jump. Actually let’s call it the bound forward. The leap is meant for when one person, show, or band suddenly becomes that much better, and the jump is meant for jump the shark. The bound forward should be saved for a logical movement of time past a seminal event. We didn’t need to see the people on New Caprica adjust, nor did we need to see the (or another) funeral on The OC. Smart move.
4. The comic book scene. Why I loved, then liked, then watched, this show, above all, and I feel it’s entirely the wrong reason to care about a TV show about richers, was the sense of family. LA and the OC represent a world where most of the people come here from a different place. Finding family out here when you are not of the culture was why I liked the show, and why I always felt I was more of a Ryan (the outsider) than a Seth (a music obsessed nerd who hates the superficial glaze to this town). Seeing Ryan trying to figure out where he is, and accept the change and love the area because of the people, that’s why I watched it, because I am trying to do the same thing. Having the best part of the show, distilled into an alternate media flashback hinting at all of the sentimentality behind the relations was not just a highlight of the episode, it may be series saving. They’ve realized what the crux of the show was again. As much as I miss Mischa, I don’t miss Marisa, both were a distraction, but this was about Ryan, Sandy, and Seth.
5. My favorite scene other than the above belonged to Summer. The moment she walked back into her room after being away at college, there is a look on her eyes that reveals the old axiom: “You can’t go home again.” The room is the same, save the fact that she no longer lives there. When she looks across through the open hallway doors and sees the visage of Coop; it was likely supposed to be a nod to her loss of a best friend and the fact she hasn’t dealt with that yet, but on the basic level, it’s coming back home to an old life and knowing some people aren’t there anymore.
I think of my first Thanksgiving my Freshman year of College. I thought it important to leave on Wed so I could go to classes. Of course, little did I know, most students leave after Monday night that week. I was one of 10 kids in the class of 75. It was called short, and I went home to pack.
I got home around 9pm Indy time. I grabbed my Ma’s cell phone to call my friends to meet up with them. I couldn’t wait to get back. While I made some good friends in the first semester of college, I had great friends waiting for me back home, most of which I talked to daily on IM.
Before I went out, I dropped my bags back at my mom’s house. I remember looking at my old computer and asking: “You changed the monitor! What happened to the bigger one I used?” Same monitor, same room. It was a place I had been in for 4 years, but I didn’t totally recognize it.
(side note) That house was sold and my mom moved out within 18 months. In a separate but connected twist of fate, the house my father built with my then and now former Step-mother would be gone before the end of my senior year of college. That Thanksgiving was the last I spent in the house my father had when I was in High School. Three houses lost in 4 years. Talk about change.
While I will still reserve one night during 2001 as the official end of the High School Era of my Indiana friends, this trip felt like the beginning of that end. I never believed I would return to live in Indiana, and for the first time in my life, the houses I lived in Indiana didn’t seem like my home. The final nail was that my school where I went to pre, lower, middle, and High School at (yeah, it was a private school and I was there for 14 years) was undergoing change, combining buildings, adding a coffee cart, revamping the cross country course. I haven’t gone back since, save playing wiffle ball in the parking lot in the Summer of 2000. That above all would be too damaging.
Those 4 days and nights were as wild as they came. I ate Penn Station 5 times; I was still hooked like a fiend. With the exception of Thanksgiving night, we went big every night. We had a 12 pack challenge that I and House won (thanks to my ingenious idea of cheating thru 2 cans of Naddy Light by dumping them out when we peed). We brought back the girls we used to hang out with; if being with the guys seemed like we never lost a beat and were just a bit older, being with the girls felt just like the old times, awkward, and everybody was wary of fooling around (then it was rumors, now it was fresh STD’S).
I was the last of our group to come in and the first to leave. We talked about the wild classes we were taking that actually counted to our degrees. We boasted about the girls we scored with. We screamed about the parties and the debauchery. Yet most of us were just happy to be back with one another. I remember in my yearbook, I left a Robert Kennedy Jr. quote:
“It usually happens at a party or some event I know I should be shaking hands meeting people, but inevitably I find myself surrounded by my brothers. I am drawn to them; It is where there is life. It is where I feel most alive.” Joseph P. Kennedy II- To my friends, you are my brothers and I am myself with you and only you.
With them I felt at home, as myself again. But the notion of going home to a computer screen I didn’t recognize (and for god’s sake, I wrote my first screenplay on this thing) seeing a family who looked at me waiting for me to show my new differences, and losing a house and more importantly a basement that I loved, didn’t feel that way.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe, well, sure, yeah. The further you get from youth the more the mash of regular life draws comparison. But adulthood and youth are not two sides of the same coin, they are not even chapters to be reread, because with re-reading, the joy is living it again. Going home from college is when the playgrounds seem shrunken, too small for you to play on anymore. The kids on the basketball court appear to be 75% your size and it’d be like picking on 4th graders. When I go home now, I see the same family, I occasionally see the same friends, and I always come home with a slew of new stories, but I know I am talking a different language; it’s in the vernacular of David, but it’s coming from Indiana Dave.
Now, when I come home, we just go out. We’re too busy to organize croquet games like we used to, we try to play one handed drunken basketball, and we all pass on beer pong, and while we go to the movies, we don’t get to build like we used to. The movies and TV shows and albums we like aren’t shared like they used to be. We don’t live together anymore. We just don’t have that level of tedium which let us build like we used to. So we go straight to the riffs and chorus…we go get hammered. Then we can remember. Occasionally we make some great moments, but it’s not like the same, and it doesn’t happen as often… but even with that said, we still have that chemistry.
Klosterman tried to put this to point with friends by likening the Saved by the Bell episodes where there were secondary characters, and that there are shared emotions and moments that those missing were never there for. Like most of Chuck’s work, he’s right, and then wrong, but he’s right enough to prove a point. When one comes home after 6 years, it’s hard to talk to the same people you used to hang out with, because the stories aren’t the same, the wild paths taken may not include some of the group, and the hard part is remembering that you lived your life without them.
The falsehood of his statement was that he was the only one in his group that likely left, and that he wanted to go elsewhere because of them. Tying his friends into a TV show is an easy out, but it works because with Saved by the Bell, those characters felt like friends. My friends were not characters, they were my brothers. You know you’re going to part from them, you just hope your kids grow up together. To pretend they are part of a sitcom is to think that it will all end in the same situation.
About twice a year, one of my friends from Indy will make their way out here, and on this same notion, once Lady Portland Rose Royce comes back to LA, and we pick up just where we left each other. The trick to a happy ending is to know when to roll the credits, because nothings ends well, otherwise it wouldn’t end.
The trick to living is hoping it goes on past the goodbye. You just want to know you’ll see them again and maybe through the magic of life, and more so, the magic of booze, you’ll get home to the youth again.
Somewhere on another plain; some where beyond the stars, it’s not elegiac or amiss like Klosterman wants to put it, it’s hopeful and it’s loving, it’s a slow walk down the hall, wondering where they were when I was getting high in college.
When we find each other, it feels like home. You and I will never die, the world’s still spinning round….
In the end, we find each other.
Two clips:
One: it’s not the best video they ever did by far. It does get the rhythms right though. While the shots of Noel head on are a bit much, the backlighting always works when the whole group is in shot. Still love it.
Two: Going back to that hope that the connection never dies. You can’t go home again, but you can remember the old times.
My favorite moment of The OC.
Wipe that tear away from your eye.
posted by Indiana at
9:57 PM
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