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The O.C.–a four-season-old teen soap that helped launch the careers of such youth-adored bands as Phantom Planet, Rooney, and Bob Seger–died yesterday of audience apathy.
Ever since its introduction in August 2003, The O.C. featured an endless assortment of shaggy-haired white-guy guitar bands, some of whom (The Killers, the Walkmen) performed on the show’s fictional live venue, the Bait Shop. It also introduced a new form of lazy-critic musical shorthand, in which any rock group that sounded vaguely like Modest Mouse would be reviewed with the following sentence: “Look for them on The O.C. any day now.”
“My God, I can’t believe it’s over,” says Death Cab For Cutie singer Ben Gibbard, whose band was referenced on the show an average of twelve times per episode. “I look forward to never, ever being asked about that show again. We’d been around for six years by the time that thing came on! It’s not like they invented us.”
Gibbard paused before adding, “Seriously, though, I knew they were in trouble when they introduced Alex in season two.”
Sun Setting On “The O.C.” Next Month [Reuters]
The only reason I watched The OC was for the music. I discovered some decent bands watcing that show like The Album Leaf and dios Malos. But after that upside-down Spiderman kiss in season 2, even I couldn’t take that crap any longer.
The best song I ever heard on The OC was a fantastic cover of Alphaville’s “Forever Young” by a band called Youth Group.
The O.C. was far better than people give it credit for. Peter Gallagher’s character was an East Coast lefty Jewish intellectual who found himself married into a wealthy, semi-psychotic family in an insanely conservative beachfront community. The friction between Gallagher’s Sandy Cohen character and the villainous father in-law, Alan Dale’s Caleb Nichol, made for some great social satire closer to South Park than the empty-headed comedy that pollutes most programming. The show suffered briefly when Nichol was killed off, but has been surprisingly consistent since. They did seem to drop the ball on good soundtrack music this past season however.