The season finale of The O.C. did it right.
First there were the presumed spoilers. Not to mention bringing back the Marissa 2.0: this time younger and bitchier. But then the show, with all its I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-goodbyes, I thought, It's all too obvious. Surely, they've got a surprise ending in the wings. The O.C., I soon discovered, is better than that.
The show isn't about the Big Surprise. That's for shows still actually doing the tired, worn-out genre. The O.C. is a self-aware revival of the genre. Not a satire, not a send up. Satires and send ups, too, have all been done before.
And I've got to tell ya, I'd come close to giving up on The O.C. But this episode rebuffed my doubts. It was perfectly self-aware with its I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-goodbyes, and with its unabashed replacement character: "Dad thought you'd need another daughter to worry about," says Kaitlin. Everything so stripped down to playing its part, I was reminded of the Lars von Trier movies Dogville and Manderlay - only without all the condescending pretension. This episode was, in fact, devoid of unnecessary artifice.
It was about the time in the show when Marissa suggested going back to the model house that I began to suspect they're really going through with this. They're making a circle, and they're saying, Hey, we're making a circle. Because the show isn't about shocking you, or even comforting you with pop culture references winking at you, letting you know you're hip, too. It doesn't have subtext; it is subtext. It is the footnotes and exegesis of a genre. And this series finale (among a few other episodes) brought that idea from an exercise up to sublime.
Good show.
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