Reception
The pilot episode of the season gained 7.5 million viewers and was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for best episodic drama. As the season progressed, ratings picked up with 8 million viewers tuning into for the third episode and 8.6 million viewers watching the fourth installment. This resulted in FOX initially ordering an additional six episodes. The season was split into two parts, the first consisting of seven episodes shown weekly, which averaged 8.43 million viewers. This was followed by a seven week hiatus, in which FOX announced it had ordered another five episodes, bringing the total season to twenty-seven.
The time-slot for the second half of the season was originally planned for Thursday nights, but facing competition from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS and Will & Grace on NBC it was moved to Wednesday nights at 9:00 p.m. instead. Overall season one was the highest-rated new drama of the season among adults aged 18 to 34, averaging a total of 9.7 million viewers. The show picked up four Teen Choice Awards and was nominated for another two, as well as getting nominated for the Outstanding New Program TCA Award. In the UK, its two showings a week averaged 1.2 million viewers, and it was one of the highest rating Sunday daytime programs, also attracting fans to E4 on Monday nights. It was also well received in Australia, picking up a Logie Award for Most Popular Overseas Program in 2005.
However, the show did come in for some criticism. San Jose Mercury News criticized the plot and the casting saying that "the storylines usually involve the obligatory three-episode-arc drug problems or lost virginity with dialogue designed to keep a dog up to speed", and that "Whoever at FOX thought Benjamin McKenzie (Ryan on "The O.C.") could pass for anything younger than 25 should be fired". A DVD review was critical of the repetitive plot stating that "the Ryan-Marissa fol-de-rol gets tiresome as it devolves into relentless bad timing", while Entertainment Weekly did not think the acting was always up to scratch, stating "it's unfortunate to have all this potential for arm-flinging drama invested in Barton, an actress who can be as flat as a paper doll". It was also denounced for excessive brawling and glamorizing underage drinking.
Read more about this topic: The Secret (The O.C.)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)