Ode to The OC

So that's it then. No more quality Seth/Ryan time. No more Cohen family traumas, or Julie Cooper shenanigans. No more leering over Taylor Townsend.

Because I have seen the final episode of The OC. It has finished. Expired. Over. Done and dusted.

But by god, it was awesome, wasn't it?

Let's back up a bit.

Yaz and I had long-standing plans to make the final episode a bit of an event. Some quality Tim/Yaz time, you could say. In fact, you could actually go so far as to say that The OC was an important part in defining our friendship; yes, we'd known each other for a year or so before it started, but a common love for The OC made us firm friends while quite possibly alienating everyone else around us as we slipped into OC-talk at every opportunity. I mean, I almost gave up on the series after the first episode (fool!), and it was Yaz who convinced me to give it another shot (phew!).

Anyway, for a long time we used to text each other throughout the episodes with sarcastic comments; that tradition died out though when my monthly phone bill quadrupled, then I got a mortgage, then I got cable TV and was able to watch it on E4 ahead of the terrestrial screening. This latter point also gave me the opportunity to taunt Yaz with texts such as "ooo, best episode evah - shame you won't get to see it till Sunday," and " I can't believe what I'm seeing!" and "you're a bitch."

So, yes, Tuesday's screening of the last episode was something special, not least because I realised that if the show was ending Yaz and I will have very little left to talk about in the future, so we might as well kill the friendship at the same time. She laughed at that, in that nervous sort of way that people laugh when they sorta realise you're not kidding. Anyway, I was going to wear my regulation Ryan Atwood grey hoodie and wifebeater in celebration of the event, but the hoodie was in the wash, and it was a tad too chilly for a wifebeater. But no matter! To Feltham we went for a pre-OC Nandos!

Now, I haven't been to Feltham in years, despite the fact that it's spitting distance away. This is mainly because it used to be a complete dive, heaving at the seams with chavs, and I generally like to get back to my car to find it still has four wheels. Or, actually, to find that it's still where I left it. Feltham has, however, been undergoing a bit of a regeneration recently, and actually appears to be reasonably… OK. Admittedly there's still a load of chavs around, but the overall atmosphere is nicer, and it has an awesome new Nandos (which I expect the chavs'll wreck within a month or two). So we spicy-chickened it up, popped to Asda, bought two chocolate and vanilla Gu puds, and drove back to mine for the gala screening.

OK. I'll admit that this episode had A LOT of ground to cover in order to wrap up the many storylines that have weaved through the series since it started, and the moment the words "six months later" flashed up I kinda got the feeling that they may have taken the easy way out by trying to resolve things with throwaway lines. But in Josh Schwartz we trust, and the pre-credits teaser contained revelation after revelation, with a couple of surprises thrown in for good measure.

I'm not going to wade through the episode scene by scene; suffice to say that it was vintage OC, and to my mind at least, it managed to wrap the entire series up in a very satisfying way - almost as if they knew it was only going to run for four seasons from the start, and certainly to the point that I'm not sitting here whining about wanting a follow-up TV movie or something. For once I feel that a TV show has followed a natural course and I'm content to leave it at that, which surprises me, because I thought it would leave me gagging for more. That's not to say that I wouldn't want to see more if they suddenly announced that this axing thing was all a big lark and they actually are making a fifth season, because I would. But I kinda feel they told a complete story. Have I made that point enough times yet? No. OK, well, it was one of my favourite TV shows ever. THE favourite TV series ever if you take Star Trek out of the picture. Damn. Why do all my favourite shows get axed?

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I was going to round this up with a youtube clip of a Schwartz Report' from T4. If you're not familiar with The Schwartz Report, the basic gist of it was that the presenters of T4 dressed up as OC creator Josh Scwhartz and ripped the series a new one in an incredibly funny low budget fashion. They were hilarious, and would've made fine additions to the DVD boxsets. Unfortunately, no one's bothered to upload any to youtube (damned lazy kids of today!), so I'm going to veer off on a tangent.

Phantom Planet, whose song 'California' was used as the theme tune to The OC, are one of my very favourite bands, and over on their blog they used to do short video clips that were always great fun. Now they've uploaded some of them to youtube, and this one is perhaps my favourite; if it doesn't melt your stony, stony heart you *must* be inhuman (the song that plays over it isn't theirs, it's by Simon Dawes, and it's quite, quite beautiful).