Dear God, When I Grow Up I Wanna Write Scripts for 90210...

For a long time, being a normal teenager and all, I watched 90210 religiously, despite my father's wordy protestations about it rotting my brain and ruining my values. It took him only one episode to notice that Brenda was a bitch, and that was in the first season. For me, the thing that always rubbed wrong was the picture of Van Gogh's Sunflowers in front of the bookcase. Not that I think hanging a picture of van Gogh in a living room is thoroughly blasphemous. No, it was more the lapse of logic. After all, if a picture is hanging in front of the intersterces of adjacent shelves, how do people find a way to Reed Richards their arms around to get to the books? Not sure, and damn irritating.

Nevertheless, 90210 was one of the classics in tv history; a marvelously logical conclusion to all the teen movie craze that was the 80s breeding ground for endlessly entertaining yet puerile films. It really went downhill was the weezers grew up and headed off to college. Like we needed to know what they did apres teenage-dom. The series started to burn deep after Scott Scanlon shot himself, and hit its peak with Emily Valentine, still cooler than Chloe Sevigny. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The reason why I'm drivelling on like a sick suburban toasted cheese is because I've just dropped back down the hatch, into teenage suburban land, with the show that makes all other teen drama/teen comedy shows go albino in comparison. Yup, the O.C.

So, you're asking, why now?

1. I live in France, we just got the O.C. this season, in V.Francais, no less, and how can you translate all of Seth Cohen's drivel into zippy Parisian patois? What happened to all that coffee-bagel slacker sun when it gets transversed onto concrete foggy damp baguette land? It doesn't translate. Hence, never got hooked, not after the pilot, where I was intrigued (by, sigh, Ryan and his hunky white shirt). But, nope, didn't cut the mustard. However, just got the V.O. versions of the O.C., and baby, just call me old red eyes because this sugar can't stop watching them, one after the other, like eating pork rinds at the drive in.

2. I resist. I'm good at resisting. I can hate people, fictional characters, popular sitcom freaks, after 3.4 minutes. I stopped watching Ally McBeal because of Ally, who makes me what to choke. I never watched more than 10 seconds of Felicity, because who can pity a little Princess White Girl who's as boring as day old pancakes. And, I now have a complete ban on films starring George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Whoopi Goldberg, for more than obvious reasons...they're related, and thus incestuous.

3. Seth Cohen reminds me exactly of my ex-boyfriend's best friend, Josh, the talkaholic self-obsessed Jewish Aunt Mamie, who I always thought was the best walking sit-com in the world. The guy could talk his way around a potted cactus. Josh and Seth are more than a little alike, and when Seth is running around obsessing about how not to be self-obsessed but instead more altruistic, albeit in the most earnest and honest possible way, I shivered with intense memories of the labyrinthine Mars one way journey that is Josh's mind beam. However...suddenly, I start to like this show, because, I used to find Josh really really funny, even if you wanted to slap him compulsively for no apparent reason.

Which explains the last 3 days, where, thanks to a little help from digital friends, I have managed to turn into a cooing squeaking teenage girl everytime Ryan puppydogs after Lindsay. Yuck!

But, what is the deal with the O.C.? I'm sure there are other more qualified, more tv-obsessed pop culture maniacs out there who can give a thoroughly well-argumented theses on the cible-zeitgeist that is Josh Schwartz's full blown Athena. I only have really one thing to say. How far we have gone, in television land, that we have been able, finally, to spawn the perfect amalgamation of daytime soap with Pretty in Pink. I'm in heaven...

Though I do think they're overplaying this whole Lindsay-incest thing. HELLO? It wasn't incest, it still isn't incest, and if it was incest, they'd still be rabbitting like mayflies on their birthday. Incest is really excellent, like pedophilia, when it's shown on the TV without the heavy taboo. And aren't we more worried about Marissa's dad getting a boner everytime his gorgeous daughter swans around in her nightgown?