Why Did I Waste My Time?

As some of you know, Hillary and I had a rather passionate love affair with The O.C. last summer. Watching the first two seasons on DVD, we would go through several episodes a night. The first season was brilliant - over-the-top drama done with (what seemed to be) a self-aware tounge-in-cheek humor. The second season was not quite as good - beginning a ridiculous trend of supporting characters moving away - but it still finished strong. Watching the third season in real time, we saw the rather slow and painful spiral into absolute crap. By December, we were done.

Last night, however, I decided to tune into the finale, mainly because of the rumors that Mischa Barton's character, Marisa, would die of a drug overdose because the actress was desperate to get off the show. This may not seem like a good reason to tune into a show, yet sounded so ridiculous I had to see it. It wasn't a drug overdose - but a car crash - and I really could have just tuned into the last couple minutes. Instead I watched the whole thing and, surprisingly, the show had become even more dreadful than it was 5 months ago. The acting was poor, the jokes fell flat, the attempts at sentimentality were crap and the music sucked. The death was shameless and exploitative as well, complete with Ryan carrying her dead body to the sounds of yet another cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallejuah." As it turns out, Barton gave the whole thing away on Access Hollywood hours before.