Monday 31 July, 2006

The killing of Marissa Cooper

As a still-kind-of-a-fan of The O.C. I was thrown to see Channel 10 building up to Marissa's death by announcing it, (you know the kind of thing 'Marissa will soon be dead. How will she die'). I assume the logic behind this was the fact that the actress who plays Marissa, Mischa Barton had intimated as much in an magazine interview and so the top-secret aspect of it was blown. But there is a difference between people having heard rumors and it being stated out and out by the station that is going to screen the show. Anyway, she died in the final episode of the third season last Tuesday. It was well done, if you call being realistic and moving and distressing well done, but I am left feeling uncomfortable with the way Josh Schwartz (the producer) and his team have punished this character. You have sex, you drink and that's right girl's, you end up dead. I know that it's a soap opera trope but none the less . . . I'd thought the show was more intelligent than that.

Anyway,as I was brooding on such thoughts I read an article (that I now can't find) that the show has such intelligent dialogue you forget, at times, how stupid the plotting actually is. Which, I think, hits the nail on the head. Here's Schwartz (via this article) on the subject. ' I don't know how many people outside of the industry knew [that Marissa was dying]. A lot of people were surprised. People had been speculating for a while that it was going to be her, so whether it mitigated the finale or whether it drove more people to watch it, I don't really know. . . . as we looked down the barrel at the end of the season, it just felt like that's where the show was pushing us. The show kind of paints you in a certain direction. And it was the kind of thing that will drive us into next season as the kind of cataclysmic event that will force some people to leave and some people will not be able to leave. It has a huge effect in terms of how it drives into next season.'

But what shocks me was the Schwartz did not watch the shooting of the death scene because it was 4.30 a.m. in the morning. Clearly the guy is no Joss Wheddon. As for his statement that, 'It was a real loving way to send this character off,' it's hard to see how mangling someone in a car accident could be considered an act of televisual tenderness.

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