I imagine Review readers rarely watch The O.C., but everyone seems to have heard the show was cancelled.
I’m afraid I have never seen a full episode myself, but a philosophy professor of whom I’m quite fond brought up the show during a dinner last semester. I was under the impression that a Ph.D might inhibit one’s ability to enjoy a teenage soap opera, but a student had recommended the show and he had watched with considerable devotion.
He chuckled about the antics of Summer (the popular girl) and Seth Cohen (the geek). “One episode, Summer realizes she’s in love with Seth Cohen,” he said, “and she’s so surprised by this, but I wasn’t. It was Tolstoy!”
This professor proceeded to compare Anna Karenina to The O.C. in many of his classes thereafter.
I think there’s something to this. Perhaps we could each devote an hour of our Thursday nights to War and Peace after the show is gone for good? Fifteen-year-old girls could sport “Mrs. Pierre Bezukhov” t-shirts (hey, it worked for Jane Austen), and we could all joke about Napoleon’s latest invasion over coffee Friday mornings.
There must be a way to harvest the time Americans find for weekly television shows and apply it to classic literature.