Caffeinated Clint
FOX series will end this season
Retail sales of wife beaters are about to go down a notch.
FOX has decided to – not surprisingly, since ratings had dipped dramatically of late – to cancel “The OC”.
“‘The O.C.’ season four finale will also be the series finale,” said Josh Schwartz, the show’s creator and executive producer. “This feels like the best time to bring the show to its close. Thanks to the hard work of our cast, crew and writers, we have enjoyed our best season yet, and what better time to go out than creatively on top. …For a certain audience, at a certain time, ‘The O.C.’ has meant something. For that we are grateful.”
For a show that started out so wonderfully – the writing, the performances and the storylines were all very solid – it’s a bit of a bummer to see it end so soon; but more so, to see how fast it took a dive in terms of creativity and ultimately, popularity. I think what happened was, well, when the show became less about ‘rough outsider trying to fit into rich community’ and became a show about ‘adopted son and his friends all experiencing on-off-on-off relationships’, it lost something. Granted, this season has been a little bit better – but it’s a case of too little, too late.
“The O.C.” has fallen in the ratings every year it has been on the air. The first season in 2003 averaged a 4.2 rating among adults 18 to 49, according to Nielsen Media Research. The second averaged 3.3; the third 2.7. Seems you all prefer Dr McDreamy over Ryan Atwood these days.
So what can we expect in the final episode? Explosion, perhaps? Marriage? Caleb returning from the dead? Madison returning to tell Ephram that he’s a father? Hawkeye and co. leaving the battleground?
“There will be a pregnancy”, series creator Josh Schwartz tells Michael Ausiello. “There will be a most unexpected new love triangle. There will be some new animals that need saving. There will be some hallucinatory dreams. And there’s going to be a fight for the love of a certain woman. And there’s going to be some surprises for the Cohen family, and some really big decisions for everybody to make. The finale is going to deliver real closure to these characters. It’s going to be the finale we had always planned to do.”
There’s one network out there that believes there may be a bit of life left in the old New Port Group, though. That’s The CW – home of “Gilmore Girls”, “Smallville”, “Veronica Mars” and “America’s Next Top Model”.
Schwartz says, “never say never”, but for the meantime, “I feel like because this season [is so strong], I would love to go out creatively on top.”
If this is indeed the end of “The OC”, then the cast will be OK…. I think. They all seem to have enough on the go; particularly Adam Brody (Seth), whose production company (well, despite the fact that their “Revenge of the Nerds” remake has gone belly up) is going from strength to strength at the moment. Ben McKenzie (Ryan) was quite good in “Junebug” too – and has a plum role in the new Al Pacino film “88 Minutes” – so he should be able to find work. Rachel Bilson also proved recently – in “The Last Kiss” – that she’s more than ‘Summer’, and if it isn’t the lead in “Wonder Woman”, then it’ll definitely be something. Peter Gallagher hasn’t done a film in a few years, but now that the show is ending, he’ll have time to return to it – and you know he’ll find it easy to get work. Surely someone’s hankering to do a “Summer Lovers” sequel, right?
On this note, we’ll give Jimmy Cooper the final line:
“Your mother has to wake up every morning and be Julie Cooper. That’s punishment enough.”
Told you it was gold in the early days.
