California: Welcome to The OC

“Driving down the 101, California here we come, right back where we started from” (Phantom Planet, “California “). Twenty-two years ago, I fell in love with a show not written for me, but one I identified with both then and now. The OC is easily one of my favorite TV shows of all time. When it first aired on TV, I was eighteen going on nineteen, I was in one of many life transitions. I was a year out of high school, still finding my place in the world. I identified with parts of the Ryan and Seth character experiences. I wasn’t cool, I’m still not cool, but I don’t worry about that as an adult. At the time the show aired, I related to the Seth character for those reasons, even though I’ve never been into the band Death Cab or graphic novels. I related to his longing to be with someone who was never gonna notice him. Yet, the Ryan character’s background was even more relatable to me. He came from a life of instability and well-meaning people took him under their wing. Over two decades later, I’ve rewatched the show and it got me thinking about the things in life that change and the things that don’t. 

When I was beginning adulthood, during the original airing of The OC, I was a loveable loser like Seth and emerging out of dysfunction like Ryan. Like both characters, I didn’t recognize how my context was influencing my path and luckily for me, different people came into my life to open the doors of change and opportunity. I went from a state of limbo between high school and college to a purpose driven education thanks to external support systems. I fell for my versions of Marissa and Summer as The OC was coming to an end (somewhat ironically). Thankfully, even in my context, things weren’t quite as tumultuous as the show. But, the chaos was relatable. Ryan feeling out of place was relatable. Seth feeling like he was too dorky and insecure to get the girl was relatable. Having lived through some similar chaos that the show portrayed, I rewatched it with different eyes. 

I still relate to how Ryan’s upbringing made him feel out of place and uncomfortable at times as he received support from people other than his family of origin and had to learn how to navigate a wealthier environment than he was from. I’ve never lived in opulence. However, I have almost exclusively worked in suburban environments, with greater wealth than I came from. A side effect of that is feeling a little out of place a lot, not knowing the rules of their world, and thinking about certain things differently. Ryan had to be less impulsive in his desire to punch people. I had to learn to be less impulsive with my words (it still takes work). Seth had to build confidence in himself, so did I. Ryan didn’t always know how to get out of his own way because of his past. I’ve had a similar struggle. It’s hard to believe that I deserve the success I’ve earned because how in the hell did I make out when a lot of people don’t? Seth didn’t know how to value himself and expected everyone else to elevate him or witness his challenge. In rewatching the show, Seth was supposed to be a nice guy, but he was an emotionally insecure jerk most of the time. I’d like to think I wasn’t that bad, but I know I’ve had my moments. Of the show's core characters, Seth, in my opinion, is the villain and not the nice guy as I rewatched the show. Am I saying that I think I'm the villain in my own story because I can relate to Seth? Sometimes. That kind of growth takes work.

Growth is kinda the point here, I still love The OC as a show, but I looked at it with a greater deal of maturity. Like Ryan, I will probably have to spend the rest of my life tempering some level of the complex trauma and how it makes me want to respond in certain situations. I've put in the work to make that possible. I will continue to do that so that I can be better about those things and much more self-aware. I know that when I feel like cutting people down to size verbally that it's because I feel wounded. I didn't know that about myself back in the day when I first watched the show, I hadn't learned a fraction of the tools that I've learned now. I didn't know what emotional intelligence was and I hadn't even begun to discover the concept of codependence, and how that impacts one's relationships in all facets. Like Seth in the show's final season, I've learned to take some personal responsibility for who I am, for my place in the world, for the mistakes that I've made, for the areas where I was in fact the a-hole, and recognize that it's not up to everybody else to make me feel whole. I have to do that for myself and while I won't live the fairy tale with my versions of Marissa or Summer because that was decades ago for me, I've learned like the show tried to do in its final season that time changes things. Life changes things and we never stay where we are forever.

One of the things that really stood out to me in rewatching the show is that we don't move through life's problems swiftly. People don't move on from death and loss, they don't move on from alcoholism and addiction, and they don't move on from domestic dysfunction in a neatly packaged episode week-by-week. Instead, we move forward and we carry bits and pieces of those things with us. Including those experiences that wounded us, that shaped us, that developed the character of who we are as a person. When The OC was first on TV, I didn't even have a career yet. Today, I'm 10 years into my second career, and a lot's changed since I first heard that familiar refrain in the opening lines of Phantom Planet’s California. Back in the day, the thought of cruising down the 101 brought joy and possibility for me. Today it just brings back memories. I think there's some things in the show that stick out in small moments. For instance, a caring adult saying that grief is probably always going to hurt and you have to learn to move with it. As one of the supporting characters put it, there are people out there who do not live in their wounds. They work to live in a state of stability rather than to fall back into the habits of instability. That takes work, that takes growth, and that's one thing that's kind of cool about watching a show that's decades old; you can see in the characters the things you still relate to, but that you've grown away from because you understand the situation differently.

My favorite character shift for the Ryan character is that he learned to trust the process and he learned through some of the hardest challenges possible that it's okay to receive the support of others. That's a hard lesson to learn. My favorite season of the show for the Seth character was actually the final season, which is objectively the worst season of the show plot wise, but the character showed the most growth and maturity  that they had demonstrated throughout the course of the show. I think another neat thing that the show demonstrates is how much life is about choices, even when circumstances happen to us, the choice of forgive somebody when they failed you time and time again, like they do with the Julie character, the choice to stop speaking to people when they failed you time and time again like they do with the Tray character. It's not like their faults were any worse than one another's per se, but the choice for how to interact with them was different, and I think that's one of the things that I like about the show. It illustrates that life is complex and that there's not always a perfect way to do things. Sometimes the right answer is a hard answer, sometimes what looks like the right answer is absolutely the wrong answer, sometimes doing what people expect of you will bring you to your knees, and sometimes not meeting any expectations prevents you from growing and you just repeat patterns time and time again. These complexities are all throughout the show. Life is no different than that. Sure, I have a better chance of going to a charity gala now than I ever did in my twenties and the odds of that being a near weekly thing like it was in The OC are pretty much impossible for me. What is possible is growth and change.