The O.C. is an American teen drama television series that originally aired on the Fox television network in the United States from August 5, 2003, to February 22, 2007, running a total of four seasons. The series, created by Josh Schwartz, portrays the fictional lives of a group of teenagers and their families residing in the affluent seaside community of Newport Beach, in Orange County, California.
The series centers on Ryan Atwood, a troubled youth from a broken home who is adopted by the wealthy and philanthropic Sandy and Kirsten Cohen. Ryan and his surrogate brother Seth, a socially awkward yet quick-witted teenager, deal with life as outsiders in the high-class world of Newport Beach. Ryan and Seth spend much time navigating their relationships with girl-next-door Marissa Cooper, Seth's childhood crush Summer Roberts, and the fast-talking loner Taylor Townsend. Story lines deal with the culture clash between the idealistic Cohen family and the shallow, materialistic, and closed-minded community in which they reside. The series includes elements of postmodernism, and functions as a mixture of melodrama and comedy.
The series premiered to high ratings and was one of the most popular new dramas of the 2003–2004 television season. It was widely referred to as a pop cultural phenomenon and received mostly positive reception from critics. However, ratings declined as the show went on. The low ratings led to its cancellation in early 2007, even after an online petition that gained over 700,000 signatures. The O.C. has been broadcast in more than fifty countries worldwide, and re-runs are now shown on Hulu, SOAPnet, Really, Channel 4 and MTV (Latin America).
Read more about The O.C.: Plot, Cast and Characters, Themes, Complementary Media
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“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)