{"id":2287,"date":"2020-12-15T11:30:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T11:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=139462"},"modified":"2020-12-15T11:30:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T11:30:06","slug":"everything-i-learned-from-the-o-c-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/15\/everything-i-learned-from-the-o-c-in-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything I learned from \u2018The O.C.\u2019 in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 2003 marked two watershed moments in my life: I started high school, and I was introduced to Ryan Atwood, Seth Cohen, Marissa Cooper, and Summer Roberts, the cast of the unforgettable teen soap opera<\/span>, The O.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

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For those who, like me, find no purer comfort than simple, completely implausible drama, the show was absolute perfection. Hot jailbird brothers, tragic surfers, the most endearing MILF character ever written for primetime television \u2014 it truly had it all. For four years straight, my friend Katie and I religiously tuned in to the weekly crises and triumphs of those fictional Orange County high schoolers. After every episode, we would walk around the block in the freezing cold, awash in her cigarette smoke, discussing the developments of the evening\u2019s episode alongside the less salacious mini-dramas of our own lives.<\/p>\n

I found the fictionalized, vodka-soaked version of Newport Beach a welcome retreat, partially because it looked nothing like my gloomy Pittsburgh public school reality and partially because I wanted to believe that my moody teen self<\/span> was as compelling as pouty, lanky Marissa. (This was not the case.) So it is hardly surprising that half a lifetime later, I found myself returning to Newport\u2019s poolsides in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone has their own form of escapism<\/a>, and for me \u2014 sad, alone in my Seattle apartment, and overwhelmed with free time \u2014 there was no better mental vacation than revisiting the show\u2019s tortured teenage love triangles, listless weeping, and punny quips.<\/p>\n

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WEDNESDAY<\/span>
Is climate change coming for the Christmas rom-com?<\/strong>
In this year\u2019s festive romances, you can count on two things: true love and tons of snow.
By Shannon Osaka<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But I returned to the O.C. a more complex woman than my younger self, thank God. Less wracked by the self-inflicted woes of my own personal life and more distraught by those of the world, I found myself drawing fewer parallels to my terrible teen relationships and more time fascinated by how the characters come to terms with real-world conflicts \u2014 including, ugh, climate change.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a connection I set out to make \u2014 in fact, quite the opposite. I was attempting to escape<\/em> from the realities of some very dark months, including my daily work reporting on climate change. And for all my years identifying with Marissa\u2019s angsty and self-destructive tendencies, and I had completely forgotten the plotline in which Summer Roberts (played by Rachel Bilson), Newport\u2019s most bronzed and materialistic daughter, becomes a die-hard environmentalist.<\/p>\n

When we meet Summer in the first season of The O.C.<\/em>, her self-proclaimed interests are \u201ctanning, shopping, and celebrity gossip.\u201d She is a lip gloss-laden encapsulation of the vapid McMansion SoCal culture of the early aughts. But zoom ahead to the start of the fourth season, and she is rushing out onto the quad to defend the rights of chickens, clad in a t-shirt that reads \u201cMore Trees, Less Bush.\u201d (A slogan somewhat at odds with the fact that she has also stopped shaving her legs.)<\/p>\n

Summer\u2019s activist turn is, of course, a symbol of her emergence from a cocoon of shopping-obsessed narcissism and transformation into a more responsible, mature adult. It\u2019s also framed as a kind of coping mechanism for (spoiler alert!) her best friend and show protagonist Marissa\u2019s fiery death. Summer attempts to resolve her grief by hurling herself into environmental activism at Brown University. She chains herself to campus trees, demonstrates against the use of cages on poultry farms, and plasters her dorm walls with posters of forests and trees. She embraces nihilistic references to the subsummation of her beloved beaches and malls and lacrosse fields by a Pacific Ocean swollen from melting polar ice caps. Imagine your personal tragedies being so terrible that it\u2019s preferable to think about immobilized chickens and the mass destruction of the California coast! Poor Summer!<\/p>\n

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