It is quite an alarming phenomenon to see so many college students enraptured by the lives of rich, snotty high schoolers - but this seems to be the role that the Fox show "The OC" is fulfilling across campus every Thursday night.
With its third season under way, "The OC" is juggernauting its way into the weekly rituals of more and more Ball State University students.
To find out why, I decided to do what any good columnist would do to learn more about the show: I watched Fox and took extensive notes of my impressions of the show, entirely based on the promos shown during "Family Guy."
In order to bring those of you who don't watch the show up to speed, I will offer you descriptions of it based on the notes that I took.
Basically, a bunch of high school kids (played by actors who are too old to be in high school) argue and have sex with each other while their parents (played by actors too young to have high-school-aged children) are busy arguing and having sex with each other.
That seems to be the general gist, at least.
However, I do have a few more excerpts from my notes that highlight some additional intricacies of the show's plot:
Ryan appears to be misunderstood because his upper-crust elitist peers fail to identify with his troubled past ... but it's probably just because he has terrible body odor from constantly wearing leather jackets in southern California.
Kirsten is struggling to overcome an alcohol addiction while maintaining her status as a powerful business woman, loving mother and loyal wife. Only in Orange County could addicts be such productive multi-taskers.
In Delaware County, you're not addicted until alcohol causes you to lose the job you got so you could keep paying for the habit in the first place.
Peter Gallagher has the largest and most horrifying eyebrows I have ever seen in my life. I bet you can see those things from outer-space.
I'm now half tempted to watch an episode just on the off chance that Ryan gets lost inside one of them and has to stage a leather-jacketed battle with the mysterious winged creature guarding the eyebrows if he ever wants to see the light of another OC day.
Many of these plot details might sound fresh and innovative to you, which is why Fox was originally going to run the show under its working title: "How Many Times Can We Make a Hit Show by Recycling 90210 Episodes?" For marketing purposes, Fox decided to shorten the title to "Melrose Place All Over Again" but finally settled on completely condensing it to a simple abbreviation that would state the show's most basic premise: Overdramatic Cliche.
Now, I'm not saying the show should be cancelled simply because its entertainment value rivals that of waves of steam drifting off of fresh yak droppings on a mid-summer afternoon.
I'm not saying it should be cancelled at all.
It is simply my contention that college students should not be relying on the lives of high school students to bring excitement into their own.
As Ball State students, we have the freedom to go out and do things that are a lot more fun than what the characters on "The OC" do.
We may not have the ocean, but we do have a Wal-Mart ... and its like I always say: If you can't surf, you might as well do some mullet-hunting.
Now, turn off the television and spend some time catching up on life in the DC.
Write to Lance at
lmvilliancou@bsu.edu
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