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119 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An astonishingly disappointing season - can it rebound in Season 4?, July 29, 2006
December 1, 2006 Addition: I wanted to add a note responding to my own question in my original headline: Can it rebound in Season Four? The great news is: Yes! If there were an Emmy given for "The Comeback Show of the Year," THE O.C. after its first five episodes would have to be a leading candidate. I will be honest: I initially tuned in just to verify that THE O.C. in its 4th season was as bad as it was in its 3rd. I was going to watch two or three episodes and then give up on it. The great news is that it has completely returned to form and is now as good as it has been since it first started. This was not expected! The main reason is has been so good has been that it has gotten back to enjoying the characters, instead of introducing a string of unlikable ones that no one can stand. So far this season, not a single irritating new character! I was afraid that they would make Caitlin into the new Marissa, but so far she hasn't been too bad. The biggest surprise has to be Taylor. I assumed that she would no longer be a part of the show this season, but they not only have brought her back, they've made her vastly more intersting and sympathetic than I would ever have imagined. She is actually now a character I like. Who'd a thunk it? Right now the show is as strong as it was in Season One. One of the best turnarounds I've ever seen a show make.
The third season of THE OC was an almost unbelievable come down from the first two fun seasons. The things that made people enjoy the show the first two seasons were largely pushed to the side, while the more irritating features of the first two seasons were brought to the fore and made the center of the show. On several occasions both I and my good friend who also watches the show debated about whether we were going to stop watching it. There is a point where the displeasure is watching the show threatened to overwhelm any pleasures it brought. Then, after a season of one unpleasantness after another, the show ended on a shocker. Normally one would require a Spoiler warning for this, but unfortunately Mischa Barton herself spoiled the ending by announcing on national TV a few days before the season finale that her character was going to die on the show. Why she did this has been debated. Was she trying to hurt the show? Was she just being stupid? Whatever the reason, what would have been one of the most shocking endings in recent TV history was common knowledge even before it aired.
What went wrong in Season Three? Well, the same things that went wrong in Seasons 1 and 2 but that played a smaller role each year: the introduction of exceedingly unpleasant and irritating characters who dominate the course of the show's narrative. In Season One this was mainly restricted to Oliver, one of the worst characters I've ever seen in a TV show. My guess is that the show's creative team misinterpreted what made the show popular in Season One. Instead of the fun alchemy between the younger members of the cast along with the narratives centering on the adult cast members--which I think was about 99% of the reason people liked the show--they imagined that the chaos injected into the show by Oliver's character was what people loved about it. My own belief is that people liked the show DESPITE Oliver and the chaos he created, not because of him. I'm sure the show's producers imagined that Oliver was a character that viewers loved to hate, instead of merely hating him, which was the actual case. So, in Season Two, the show's producers and writers gave even more characters that we merely hated (instead of loved to hate), the unlikable Alex (who was unlikable not because she became Marissa's lover but because she was merely unlikable) and Trey, Ryan's older brother.
Because the producer's misunderstood what people were liking about the show--people liked the main characters, not the situations generated by the minor, intensely unlikable characters who upset the show's chemistry--they flooded the third season with terrible characters. It started early on in the rehab facility, where we were introduced to the duplicitous Charlotte, a role on which they wasted the wonderful Jeri Ryan. Luckily, Charlotte didn't stay on the show very long, though she was extremely unpleasant while she did. Also early in the season was the terrible Dean Jack Hess, another thoroughly unlikable and wildly implausible character who seemed to have a personal vendetta against Ryan and Marissa. He too disappeared fairly early on. But by then we had been introduced to Johnny, a semi-professional surfer at the public school Marissa was forced to attend after she was kicked out of her private school (her dismissal being merely one more of a host of unbelievable developments). Now, in Johnny's defense, he was not for the most part a terrible character. But his crush on Marissa and Marissa's ongoing inability to do the commonsense things to protect her relationship with Ryan was part and parcel of the stupidity on the part of all the major characters that almost caused the show to unravel. But even with all these irritating characters, the show's producers weren't done. Taylor Townshend was not really a character but a cartoon of a character, someone determined to take over as the school's social leader with the departure of Marissa and as Seth's girlfriend. Now, I will concede that she did become less unlikable as the season went on, and I liked that the show tried to turn her from a bad to a good character. But throughout she remained intensely annoying. There were numerous other unpleasant characters, but the crown for the title of King of the annoying characters of the third season clearly belongs to Vollchek, Johnny's surfing competitor, petty thug, briefly Marissa's lover, and all around annoying guy. He is also the guy who causes Marissa's death. While he doesn't come up to the annoying level of Oliver, he is close.
As a result of this endless parade of unlikable characters and stupid behavior on the part of the main characters (except Summer, who seems to be the only character immune to occasional idiocy--her aside, there were numerous occasions when you wanted to smack all of the major characters aside the head and yell, "Will you get a grip!"), fan discontent grew and grew and ratings of the show fell precipitously. After the end of the season there were rumors that FOX was so displeased with the show that they considered canceling it. In the end, they agreed to bring it back for 16 episodes, starting it much later in the season's schedule and running it without repeats, with the possibility of adding additional episodes if the ratings recover and if it turns out that people watch the show with Marissa off the show. It may well turn out, however, that the terrible Season Three was the beginning of the end for THE OC.
My central complaint with the show--even more than the parade of awful guest characters--is that the show more and more abandoned what made the show fun in the first two seasons: the interplay between the central characters. I hated Oliver and Trey and Alex and Vollchek and Johnny et al. but loved Sandy standing up for his principles, the wonderful interplay between Summer and Seth, Ryan and Marissa's mutual attraction despite their backgrounds. Everything else I put up with so I could enjoy that part of the show. But more and more this all retreated to the background. To be honest, pretty much the only reason I continued watching the show throughout Season Three was to enjoy the improbable relationship between Summer and Seth. As unhappy as I was with Season 3, I will probably at least start off watching the show in Season 4 just to see how they are doing. But my interest in the show is at this point on life support.
No question that the single biggest development in the entire run of the show was the death of Marissa. As much as some fans want her to come back, she is definitely dead and definitely won't be back. Mischa Barton's departure from the show seems to be a mutual decision. As the show's highest profile character (she has appeared on numerous magazine covers the past three years), she has undoubtedly been contemplating leaving TV for the movies for some time, a move accelerated by her well-publicized financial obligations owing to a break up. Even if she and the producers wanted her back, she is already tied to several movies projects and unable to do so. There are many fans who watched the show just to see if Ryan and Marissa would get back together. For them her departure could be fatal to their interest in the show. But the fact is that almost all of the horrible characters I noted earlier were connected to the show via Marissa. Almost all of the worst things in the show were narratively tied to Marissa. So, there is a real chance that the show could develop in different and better directions. But I am fearful that the writers and producers will continue in the direction the show has gone, bringing in one awful character after another, having the main characters engage in self-defeating or self-destructive behavior. When I first started watching the show, it was largely because of elements it shared with a show like THE GILMORE GIRL (on which Adam Brody was a character). I was hoping for a comedy with dramatic subplots, but instead the show has descended more and more into melodrama with less and less comedy. But I'm hoping that in Season 4 they can shift the focus more onto Summer and Seth and thereby emphasize the comedic elements that made the show so much fun in the first two seasons. But, I'm prepared to be disappointed.
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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not at its best, but still an addictive show, December 5, 2006
Okay, so season three of my favorite primetime soap opera, The O.C., wasn't nearly up to snuff with the spectacular first season and the slightly less spectacular second season. But, despite that, I still tuned in every Thursday night and when the DVDs were released, I bought them and relived the season again.
While the third season was a bit of a letdown in a number of ways, I will say that a month into the fourth season, The O.C. has regained its form and is shining. It's just too bad that it is up against the two strongest shows on television, CSI and Grey's Anatomy. Despite all that, season four is looking to be the best season since the phenomenal first season.
My opinion on why the third season was a bit of a letdown is the fact that creator Josh Schwartz seems to have taken a back seat in this season. He was the one with the vision for the show and its fantastic inaugural season and without him in his prominent position (or so it seems), the show wasn't quite the same.
Unfortunately, the show continued to introduce unlikeable characters in the third season, much as they had in the first two seasons. This takes away from the great relationships that make the show so good, the Sandy and Kirsten, Summer and Seth, Ryan and Marissa and Julie and her man of the week, storylines.
Season three picked up a short while after the shocking season two finale left off. As we left them, Marissa (Mischa Barton) had just shot Ryan's (Ben McKenzie) brother Trey (guest star Logan Marshall Green) as the two brothers fought. Fearing for Ryan's life, Marissa pulled the trigger just moments before Seth (Adam Brody) and Summer (the absolutely gorgeous Rachel Bilson) walked through the door.
Trey had been nothing but trouble since his arrival in Newport Beach in season two. He had betrayed Ryan and the Cohen family, attacked Marissa and gotten into a boatload of trouble. The gunshot didn't kill him, but left him in a coma. Marissa's role in the shooting was questioned, as Julie Cooper (Melinda Clarke), still reeling from the death of her second husband Caleb Nicol at the end of season two, tried to pay off Trey to implicate Ryan and spare Marissa. The ploy didn't work and Trey rode off into the sunset on a Greyhound bus.
But, the implications from the shooting lived on, as both Marissa and Ryan were expelled from the Harbor School. While Ryan was readmitted, Marissa spent most of the season at Newport Union, the local public school, where she met even more people that would play a significant role in the rest of the season.
The start of the season also found Kirsten (Kelly Rowan) in rehab, where she had been admitted at the end of season two, as Sandy (Peter Gallagher), Ryan and Seth tried to cope with her out of the house. Kirsten met Charlotte (guest star Jeri Ryan) in rehab and she would also play a big role in the early part of the season.
The Marissa-Ryan story line again took some strange turns, as has been the case in the first two years. Her banishment to Newport Union found her hanging with new friends, particularly surfer Johnny (guest star Ryan Donowho), which brought out a little jealousy in Ryan. The two were on and off for much of the season, with Marissa hooking up with bad-boy Volchok (guest star Cam Gigandet), a former friend of Johnny's, after Johnny fell off a cliff to his death in front of Marissa, Ryan and Marissa's younger sister Caitlin (guest star and future series regular Willa Holland). His death also led to the introduction of his cousin Sadie (guest star Nikki Reed). Sadie and Ryan had a brief relationship, but his acceptance at college kind of turned things around as she headed off into the sunset. Marissa eventually returns to Harbor, thanks to a little help from an unlikely ally, Taylor Townsend (guest star and future series regular Autumn Reeser, who is Summer's top competition for most beautiful woman on television).
While Marissa was at Newport Union, her mother Julie was searching for a way to get back on her feet. Caleb's will left her with no money and because of that, her attempt to reunite with her former husband and Marissa's dad, Jimmy Cooper (guest star Tate Donovan) failed and Julie was forced to move into a trailer park, while Marissa bunked at Summer's house. Of course Julie wasn't down for long, as she quickly became cozy with Summer's dad Neil (guest star Michael Nouri) and the two became engaged near the end of the season. Julie and Kirsten also started a high end match making business that remains part of the show in season four.
With Kirsten in rehab, the management of the Newport Group is left to Sandy and he finds himself caught between his morals and big business as he strives to build a new hospital. Kirsten's return home isn't all roses either, as she brings Charlotte to town and with that comes a whole load of trouble, as she tries to bilk first Kirsten and then Julie, out of money. She ultimately fails and disappears without a trace, thankfully. The hospital deal eats into Sandy's time and causes a lot of stress on his marriage. His decision to back out of the deal at the end of the season shows that he is back to the old Sandy.
The core relationship in season three was the Summer-Seth storyline. With college on the horizon, Summer worries that Seth's desire to get as far away from Newport as possible will pull them apart. But, when Summer aces her SATs, much to Seth's surprise, the two apply to Brown together. Seth doesn't get in and not wanting to stop Summer from going, he breaks up with her. Of course, this devastates both of them, and comes to head at prom, where Summer tries to drink away her problems. Seth, determined to win back the love of his life, heads to Brown for student orientation, bound to find a way in. While there, he runs into Anna (guest star Samaire Armstrong), a blast from the first season past. While they can't concoct a plan to get Seth into Brown, Anna finds an alternative in the Rhode Island School of Design, and then proceeds to help Summer and Seth get back together again.
As mentioned, this season continued the introduction of characters that just aren't likeable. Volchok and Charlotte come to mind as the two worst offenders. Johnny played the role of Oliver in season one, the person who came between Ryan and Marissa. Thankfully, all the characters were written out of the show at the end of the season or at the beginning of season four.
The shocking finale (though it wasn't as shocking as it could've been had Mischa Barton not gone on television and told the world that she was being killed off), brought viewers back to the first season, as Ryan carried Marissa away from the burning car, much like he carried her out of an ally in Tijuana two years earlier. The effects of her death are felt strongly in season four, as the main characters try to carry on without her.
This set had some interesting bonus features. The making of the Subways music video was a short piece on the band's appearance on the show. What's in a Name was an interesting feature showing how Josh Schwartz uses people he knows and staffers on the show to name characters on the show. There is a solid gag reel, a making of an episode featurette and an interesting take on commentary. Viewers listen to Schwartz and other staff members talk about certain scenes in two different episodes. It's not one whole episode of commentary, but it is still interesting to hear some behind the scenes stuff.
While the show itself hit a bump in the road during season three, the DVD set was well done and the packaging was significantly better than that for season two. Now if only the ratings would pick up for an excellent season four, things would be all good in The O.C.
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17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
After what seemed like forever The O.C. season 3 is coming to DVD this October, August 2, 2006
The O.C. Season 3 is just as good as the first two seasons. I like the fact that the show is not just about kids in high school, but also their parents and family and how they all interact. The cast is really good and believable enough to either make you love them or hate them. The show is very emotional at times and it is very addicting. I think what scared me away before I ever saw an episode was that I figured The O.C. was just another show about rich kids in California like Beverly Hills 90210 and/or Melrose place. The show is so much more than those other shows and has just the right amount of drama mixed in with just the right amount of heart. I highly recommend The O.C. for anyone who likes must see TV. This Complete Third season of The O.C. will be released on October 24th, 2006 just in time for the premiere of season 4 in the Fall. This 7-DVD set will contain all 25 episodes (1089 minutes) presented in widescreen and will be in Dolby Surround audio along with French and Spanish subtitles, and english captions.
The Bonus Features are
* Making of The Subways music video
* What's In a Name?
* From Script to Screen - The Party Favor
* Gag Reel
* Pass The Remote - Scene surfing commentary
Below is The O.C. third season episode list
52 The Aftermath
53 The Shape of Things to Come
54 The End of Innocence
55 The Last Waltz
56 The Perfect Storm
57 The Swells
58 The Anger Management
59 The Game Plan
60 The Disconnect
61 The Chrismukkah Bar Mitz-vahkkah
62 The Safe Harbor
63 The Sister Act
64 The Pot Stirrer
65 The Cliffhanger
66 The Heavy Lifting
67 The Road Warrior
68 The Journey
69 The Undertow
70 The Secrets and Lies
71 The Day After Tomorrow
72 The Dawn Patrol
73 The College Try
74 The Party Favor
75 The Man of The Year
76 The Graduates
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