User reviews

I started this show with not very high expectations and must say the first few episodes just made me cringe. I found it unrealistic, cliché and it involved some bad acting from the younger actors. But it rapidly gained on quality and the story lines just sucked me in. The show has both good and bad times. It went down in the season three and the beginning of season 4 made me think that it will turn into garbage. But once again they gained on the entertainment and I felt sad at the end saying good bye to the characters I now loved.

And I must say I didn't always love them. Some characters, like the main one Ryan, I had a love/hate attitude towards. Mostly love, but there were times when I wished somebody would kick his ass and though he was annoying. Then there was Summer. Oh man, did I not like her in the first seasons! But her character went through some great development as at the end I loved the girl.

And there were characters that I always cared about. Julie, a bit of a villain but the one that one just can't dislike. A strong, beautiful woman who can manipulate everyone and yet has a kind heart. And Sandy! Isn't he the kind of dad many would wish they had? And Seth, one of the best characters on the show. He makes us laugh and we love him.

The show is a sort of a soap opera with concentration on teens. But the adults also play a huge role in this one, which makes it even more entertaining as I haven't been a teen for a long time. And it manages to keep the viewer watching with fun stories and with characters we love.

This show is great. It is emotional, funny, dramatic, corney and hooking. There is a lot of struggle, love and life happening the whole time and you grow to love all the characters. However I honestly feel like the 4th season ruined the show. It turned really weird and different than the other seasons and I am really disappointed with how it ended. It didn't even seem like the same show by the end.

I saw a few episodes of the first series of the O.C and it was actually very entertaining and fast paced. The characters were well written, story lines reasonably fresh and it didn't seem too predictable.

But the main point I want to raise is the recurring theme within American movies and television for casting in terms of the age of the character vs the age of the actor playing the role.

As a general rule, the senior male (i.e Dad) is usually cast correctly. But the senior female is usually about 10 years younger than the role she is playing, and the 'kids' (such as they can be called) are usually about 5 years older than their 'acting' age.

Presumably this is the create the effect of mature kids and young 'sexy' mothers.

The O.C is a classic example - When the first series was shot, Peter Gallagher (Dad) was 48. Kelly Rowan (Mum) was 36. Adam Brody (Kid) was 24. In real-life terms that means Mum and Dad would have had to have 'got together' when Dad was 24 and Mum was 12! Actors have a 'casting' age admittedly, which is probably how they would respond. But these ages are either unrealistic or disregarded - so it would seem anyway.

I only saw about half of this when it was live on TV each week, so I grabbed the DVD set a couple weeks ago and began binge watching it after work. Just coming up on the end of Season 2.

There are some really great moments in this show. They do some decent character development for some of them, others just remain ridiculously 2 dimensional.

Some of the storylines are really compelling and well written, then others are just so ridiculous and out there, you can tell they really stretched for some fake drama to shake things up.

And that's really the worst part about the show. Some characters just go so far out of their character personality in order to generate random storylines.

The cinematography is outstanding though. Visually this is just so gorgeous, and not simply the beautiful people they parade in front of the camera. The locations are so eye popping and so well filmed.

If you can get past the lame drama they seem to randomly force into the stories, it's a decent show, even twenty odd years later.

First of all, this rating is not by IMDb's crazy standards. This show has some real weaknesses that are reflected in my rating. Yes, I loved the characters, and the story has some really thrilling moments that I could have never predicted, but you have to look past the surface to truly judge it fairly. And that's why it comes short of being a proper good show (which, to be fair, most shows aren't anyway).

So, what are these flaws I'm talking about? Well, basically every single episode bases its story line on one simple mechanic: One character tells their partner or friend a lie, and this is later discovered and creates conflict. Also, the plot devices usually arise from a character doing something really stupid, that makes no logical sense. Obviously, this is more noticeable when it comes from, say, Ryan or Sandy, than when Seth or Summer do it. Either way it's a sign of lazy writing, and very much along the mainstreamed and mediocre line of most similar shows. Not saying it's a deal breaker, but it definitely separates decent or good shows from great ones. No matter how much we like the characters, we can't just look past obvious flaws in a show, like so many people on this site do (just look at Friends, it's rated almost 9/10, which is absolutely absurd).

Another big plus are some of the turns in the overall plot or main story that we follow through a season. There are some really dramatic and touching moments that I though were very well executed. And I guess that is what lifts this show past just having great characters, and makes me think of it fondly and with assurance that I will remember it.

I recommend this to anyone who can withstand some bad writing and illogical turns to experience all the good that it has to offer, which again, can be said for a lot of shows.

I grew up in OC, and was living in AZ when this show came out. My AZ friends wanted to know if the show was like OC really was, so I started watching, and joked around "we have a LOT more fist fights than the show depicts" hehe.

But after watching the first couple episodes, just as an amusement, I did notice the writing was stronger than I thought it would be, and I got invested in the characters. I was only a couple years out of HS, so it did resonate.

It's not high-quality TV, it's typical Fox broadcast stuff, but I'd say it's at the high end of that typical stuff. I thought the first season of 90210 was decent as well, and I'd say they are comparable quality.

This was a show, everyone was talking about, when I was in high school. All the cool kids were watching it. It had something special. We all liked a certain character and we all wanted MORE.

Some epic moments throughout that were quite serious, especially to us teenagers. No spoilers, but if you know, you know.

Re watched this show for the third time. The first being when it as originally aired and I was about 15 years old, then in my 20s and now in my mid 30s. This show is very predictable and it starts off so strong and each season gradually gets worse. A lot of unwanted and unnecessary story lines but that's what happens when you're trying to keep up with such an original and unique first season.

It's well worth the watch though and a lot of young stars on the show, a lot of Twilight actors mixed in too. The music is good and it's very enjoyable, especially with the nostalgia hint. I enjoyed it and it took me back to my high school days.

The acting is mediocre. I have no idea why all the girls loved Ryan - he's so boring and barely talks but it's how it goes. Please notice all his high heeled boots he wears because he is so short, especially in comparison to Marissa / Misha. Seth and Rachel were always my favourites but I came to appreciate most of the characters with the exception to the few that are universally hated.

It is what it is, its no masterpiece but it's a standard teen / high school drama that covers all the issues you'd expect. I hope the next generation discover it and give it a chance too!

The O.C. (or O.C. California, as it's called in Germany) did get off to a good/great start. The characters were refreshing, they did work with/against one another and you had fun watching it. Even if you're not used to the lifestyle of the rich and beautiful. OK not everyone is rich in this series of course (but they do look "astonishingly" enough very pretty ...

Seriously though: What works kinda nice at the beginning starts to wear off ... Season 3 was weak, so it was no wonder, that the show got canceled. It was more of a wonder, that they even got the go-ahead for a (shorter) fourth series (finale). Or in other words: There's only so many problems that you can go through without them repeating themselves.

But enough about the bad things. The humor was always a big plus on the show and it worked out quite well. And it did exactly what it promised: Entertain it's target audience (and then some) -> teenagers (especially girls of course), and for that it receives my 7/10 points!

When I think of season 1, which was a whole phenomenon and blew out of the water, what MTV advertised as the « real O. C. », back in 2003. It's a round number, like eight. And when season 2 is paired with it, it soon falls to maybe six. But if I were to add seasons 3 and 4, then the whole series would drop to five. So I'll settle with seven. The first couple of seasons were huge, and those that made The O. C., the best teen drama of early 2000s, back when One Tree Hill was struggling to get to where it did, soon after it began. The cast was packed with up and coming young actors and movie veterans. Like Dawson's Creek did on its first year, it reinvented the genre, adding it the right amount of self awareness, to give it more edge and originality. And pop culture references, for the fun. That goes without saying, the soundtrack was a big part of the show's qualities for me. It introduced me to new favorite bands and artists like Jem, Sufjan Stevens, Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie, or The 88. While comforting me in my love for others. I used to buy one, sometimes two CDS of albums heard on the show, each weeks. And stopped at season 3 because there, the music stopped being this good as well. Watching each episodes when they dropped was a ritual for me, and its song selection, which spawned six official CDS, perfected my taste for the indie scene. It even had great musical guests invited to perform, at the show's nightclub at one point, The Bait Shop. As I was saying earlier, the whole series appeal lies in the first year. It has the best and most iconic episodes, and everything looked so fresh and ready to take on the world there. Unfortunately, season two, is where the writing strayed, and even creators admitted some storylines, were added to give those ratings a push. So after one of the lead characters died, in maybe what appeared to be the worst season of the series, the final season never recovered from this departure, and the show was canceled (?) the following year. I think it's one of those series I've watched the most, first when episodes « aired », and then on DVDS, with all my relatives and friends. And even though it is flawed, the fact that the second half don't live up to the first's excitement, and that some of the acting from a couple of the female cast members, was cringeworthy to say the least. It didn't take away from it's guilty pleasure charm. It is the teen drama that introduced me to my first soap opera and singers and songs, I listen to on a daily basis, as well as making the genre popular again on TV, and giving the go-ahead to a lot of more or less, good « copycats ». So maybe now you can understand why I'm so conflicted about its rating?...

At first glance this is a typical 'fish out of water' teen 'drama' where Ben McKenzie's character comes of age using his poor but honest perspective to provide his newly acquired. spoiled rotten, superficial new class mates with a deeper perspective. Mostly, he fails. He adapts and his faux gravitas fails whenever it matters. He's speechless at all the wrong times. Misha Barton is the true victim here. She's beautiful, tragic and doomed. Abandoned by her extraordinarily venal, crooked and weak parents she takes it upon herself to undermine her own happiness and well being by becoming the primary care giver to a series of implausible and obviously damaged beyond repair characters. Her character never twigs on any of it despite the blatant absurdity. This failure and the fact that no one, even her closest friends, ever bothers to notice or discuss it show how determined the show runners were to destroy her. The show runners obviously are using her as revenge for being rejected by the beautiful girls when their nerdy selves were humiliated and rejected by the Misha Barton types when they were in high school. It's a shame. The whole show revolves around Marissa Cooper's insensible neurosis which is in direct contradiction of the considerable attributes the show insists she possesses. This show is ruined by the naked hostility of the show runners to strong, beautiful, young women. They are the worst sort of self indulgent, superficial, misogynist twerps writing today. Misha Barton, the actor, was abused and misused by these insecure, vindictive cretins. Appalling.

I wish I could rate this series while pretending that season 4 never happened, but since I had to torture myself and watch every episode of that season, I can't not include it in the review. I'm not going to include any spoilers, but disregarding the crazy plot twist that happened at the end of S3 which nobody liked, season 4 was just BAD. It was very rushed, the writer must've been on crack while making it, because the plot twists just got sillier and sillier til nothing made sense anymore. It was like a rip off version of the OC. It became redundant and the couples were just on and off on and off til I just didn't care anymore. It felt really sad to see them ruin this show with that last one, because everyone really enjoyed those first 3 seasons. And while it's a given rule that every show HAS to get worse after the first season, this was like the extreme version of the rule. I genuinely love the characters, summer and seth, sandy, ryan, I will miss them, and I think watching this show is worth it (if you wanna see a bunch of dramatic teenagers date like 5 different people per season), it was a bit overdone in that aspect, but it gives you that good early 2000s feeling. Anyway, December is near, so merry Christmukkah to the Cohens.

So I really have only seen season one but I absolutely love the show. I like how all the characters are so different but they have enough similarities to all be friends. Some characters really get on my nerves, like Oliver, I HATE HIM. I know that he leaves the show but I hated his character so much. Marissa also gets on my nerves, she's very narcissistic and whenever Ryan is just looking out for her she throws a fit and breaks up with him. Then she acts like she has to be rich for her life to be normal, get over it, some people have it worse than you. I also don't like Anna, she's not that bad but sometimes she just gets on my nerves. Other than that I really like the show!

Yes, so I liked OC. There's the hot, troubled guy (for the Russell Crowe/Colin Farrell girls). The lovable, intellectual guy (for the Ed Norton/Tobey Maguire girls). Then there's the melodrama, which all girls love. My only problem is that FOX has painted itself into another corner with the homogeneous cast. I'm sure they'll throw in a hot black guy (a la 2 Fast 2 Furious, for the Tyrese girls) when the hot, troubled guy needs a friend from "da hood". All I'm saying is that when a show's idea of diversity is blondes and a couple of brunettes, that's not a good sign. So suspension of disbelief won't be attained with this show. It's ok, though. I'll settle for summer eye candy.