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There are few non-fiction genres that I enjoy reading quite like behind the scenes of something. I read a fair amount of self-improvement type, parenting, time management, etc. and I appreciate so much of what I've gotten out of those but none of them are quite as fun to read as the history of a show I know so well.
Years ago I made a list on my phone of my top 10 favorite tv shows and top 10 favorite movies. I do not know why I felt the need to do this besides the fact that I do LOVE a list. I haven't updated my movie list since 2021 or my tv list since 2022 but looking at it...my top 5 shows would still be the same: Friends, The Office, Cougar Town, The OC, and Hart of Dixie. I have read and really loved books about Friends and The Office and I even told Matt that I really wanted an oral history of The OC so basically I manifested this book into being.
I can't talk about this book without first talking about my history with The OC. It came out the summer of 2003 as I was going into my junior year of college when it started and I cannot over emphasize what a BIG deal it became. I distinctly remember my favorite accounting class having a big discussion about it every Thursday or whatever (I think it was a Tuesday/Thursday class?) every week after the new episode. Everyone (except apparently me) was watching this in the first season.
I picked it up somewhere in the spring of my senior year when I was home for spring break and the rest of my family was at school or work. Matt's break didn't line up with mine so he mostly wasn't available either so I spent the daytime hours that week watching the first season of The OC on DVDs that I checked out from the library, one disc at a time. Somehow Matt got me to start watching it even though he wasn't around when I was going back to season 1. I think maybe we watched some season 2 VHS episodes him and his sister had recorded off the tv and then I had to go back and catch up. The big season 3 finale aired while we were on our honeymoon and I had to watch the VHS recording when we got home. (VHS recordings apparently played a big part in my The OC experience.)
The show went off the air in our first year of marriage but it was still one I could pickup and watch reruns of once I owned the DVDs (I still own all 4 seasons!). It's not a purely comfort rewatch like Friends and The Office but it so perfectly nostalgic for the end of my college years and transition to adulthood, even though it was largely about teenagers (largely played by actors older than me). When we went to Southern California in 2010 we stayed in Redondo Beach largely because that's near the pier where they filmed The OC beach scenes. We even ate pancakes at the diner where the kids ate pancakes in the show.
All this to say, as soon as I heard about this book, Welcome to The OC bu Alan Sepinwall in conversation with Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and the Cast & Crew...I knew I was going to read it. It's the book I picked Matt to give me for Christmas (I love him dearly but we both don't trust him to pick out books for me. Although if he knew this existed he probably would have picked it for me.). I was already listening to The OC rewatch podcast with two of the cast members (Summer & Julie on the show) and was enjoying hearing the behind the scenes and I was definitely up for more.
The book covers how the show got made with a 27 year old show runner (SO YOUNG), how excited people were about it, the casting process, how most of the "teenagers" were already in their 20s. I had heard large parts of this before between different oral history articles and the podcast but this was a slightly more unbiased retelling.
A large part of the book is just covering how the show was started and the first season. The first season had 27 episodes which could be a show's entire, full run now, over multiple season. They burned through A LOT of story without a lot of thought of how that might affect future seasons of the show. And 27 episodes is A LOT of episodes to make especially while most of the cast is shooting to super stardom at the same time.
The other large focus of the book is the problem that was season 3, widely considered to be the worst season of the show. The BIG cliffhanger at the end of that season got a lot of pages. So many pages. Although, I think, that death really revitalized the show for the final 4th season. But killing off a main cast member is a big decision and this was heavily covered.
Much less time is given to possibly my favorite season - 4, the final one. It does feel much more light hearted and goofy than any of the previous three but you could also tell that many of the actors were just done with being on a tv show. However, those episodes are pretty delightful and some of my favorite to pop in for a rewatch. After how detailed earlier parts of The OC were covered, I was a bit let down by how quickly the end was wrapped up. Really feels like it could have been fleshed out a bit more but maybe the book rushed through it because that's pretty much how it happened in real life too.
The OC doesn't have the cultural staying power that something like The Office or Friends does but it was a huge show among the age group we now call Millennials when it was airing 20 years ago. Sure, it's dated (flip phones!) but the coming of age story is something we can all resonate with to some extent, even if we aren't didn't do it in sunny Southern California. If you watched the show with any regularity, I highly recommend this book. Even reading about some of the tougher times, it really was just so much fun to pick up and relive.
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