![]() Soon, TV executives couldn’t get enough of Orange County. Far more important, it also got better-than-decent ratings, with more than 9 million people (most, apparently, between the ages of 10 and 20) watching Luke and Ryan rumble on opening night. “The O.C.” debut received decent-to-strong reviews. And the 1996 blockbuster “Independence Day” felt the need for fighter pilots from El Toro Marine Base to wipe out some space aliens.Įven on the night that “The O.C.” premiered, two 2002 movies – “Better Luck Tomorrow” and the aptly named “Orange County” – were still playing in dollar theaters, each telling semi-realistic stories about slices of county life. In 1986, “Gleaming the Cube” centered on late 1980s skate culture in Orange County. The 1949 noir non-classic “The Reckless Moment” featured a murder on Balboa Island. Long before that debut night for “The O.C.” all or parts of the county had been a subject, directly or indirectly, of countless movies and TV shows, as well as steamy novels (“Laguna Heat”), twangy EMO songs (“Mission Viejo”) and so-so attempts at fine art. So maybe proximity is why Orange County has always seemed to punch above its weight, pop culture-wise. The distance between the geographic center of Orange County ( The Outlets at Orange, if you’re wondering) and the symbolic center of Hollywood ( TCL Chinese Theatre) is exactly 37.3 miles. In theory, all that “welcome” stuff served the narrative, giving viewers a smash-cut straight into the heart of “The O.C.,” a story mostly about teens (who looked to be in their mid-to-late 20s) told mostly for teens (who wished they were in their mid-to-late 20s), set in (though almost never filmed in) a gloriously swanky version of Newport Beach. ![]() ![]() Then, to help any viewers still struggling to grasp that intricate message, Ward stood over Atwood, flexed a little, and said:Įven by the standards of TV melodrama, “The O.C.” was a complex beast – gleefully tongue-in-cheek, soapy, teen-tastic, kinda lame (Season 3 didn’t work), simultaneously White-centric and multicultural. That iconic TV line – no, really, Google it if you’re not easily offended – was uttered by the character Luke Ward right after he kicked the ribs of recent Chino transplant Ryan Atwood to end their get-to-know-you beach brawl during the premiere of “The O.C.” 20 years ago on Fox. ![]()
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