THE OC: Making Us Smarter

Can everything that is bad really be good for you? Well, if you ask Steven Johnson he says, pop culture is actually making us smarter. In his book, Everything Bad Is Good for You is a book that discusses and tries to convince you that today’s pop culture is turning out to actually be good for you. Johnson states that television, in modern shows, the storyline has now been more complex than shows from years ago. The OC is a show that Johnson would say is good for you because of the complexity of the storyline and the multiple threading and the disappearance of flashing arrows make it harder for us to understand the relationships between all these characters and we have to use our own intelligence to figure it out.

The OC takes place in Orange County, California; where the houses look like resorts and there is always a party to attend with champagne and fancy clothes. The major storyline is that one of the families of Orange County takes in a kid from Cheno, a town that no one from Orange County really steps in to. If the kid messes up once, then he will go back to “juvie.” So, the whole time you are watching you think about the trouble he gets in and if he will ever have to leave to go back. But, that is just the major storyline. There are so many other ones to keep up with. The OC is a show of many main characters: Sandy Cohen; brilliant, a great father, a caring husband, an awesome friend, and he helps everyone he comes in contact with, even the ones that our not his favorites; Kirsten Cohen; a wonderful wife, a great mother, and a very talented worker; Seth Cohen; hilarious, a great friend, and usually confused about girls, but he is very intelligent; Ryan Atwood; quiet, and usually takes out his frustration with his fists, but he is very smart and a great kid, and he was taken in by the Cohen’s’; Summer; a great friend, Seth’s girlfriend, and very funny; Marissa; a great friend, in love with Ryan, has a troubled home life, and tries to be independent, but then realizes she needs her friends and family. There are many more characters, even some more main ones, but those characters always seem to be in the middle of everything. Each character has something to deal with but someone all hooked together, which is what you find out. When a new character is introduced, you kind of try to find out why that character doesn’t stick around or why they are placed in the episode that they are. Johnson calls this, “multiple threading.” In one of the episode there were sixteen different threads: They plan a trip to Mexico. Jimmy and Julie are getting a divorce. Luke hooks up with Holly. Seth overhears that Summer needs a ride to Mexico. Marissa says she is staying back home to spend time with her dad but he says to go because secretly he is moving out while she is out of town. So, Seth, Summer, Ryan, and Marissa ride together to Mexico. But, on the way they get in an accident because Seth and Summer were fighting about driving. They then have to stay in a crappy motel until the car is fixed. Seth and Summer sleep in the bed together and before Ryan and Marissa get back into the room, Jimmy calls Marissa and tells her about how he is moving out. The next morning Ryan and Marissa wake up cuddling, but didn’t kiss or anything. Meanwhile in Orange County, Sandy gets offered a new job and takes it, and Jimmy kissed Kirsten! Then she left right away. When the kids finally make it to Mexico they go into a club and Marissa catches Luke and Holly making out. Then Holly tells Marissa all the crappy stuff Luke has done to her. Marissa runs off and then Summer finds her at the hotel but Summer goes into the bathroom for a couple minutes and comes out to find Marissa and Summer’s step mom’s pain pills gone. They look everywhere. They finally find her in an alley where she was passed out. As you can see, there is so much to keep up with and most of these threads continue to the next episode.

Flashing arrows are used to point out when something is going to happen. Flashing arrows are used a lot in scary movies or adventurous. For example, the music of a movie when it is loud there is something about to happen. Johnson talks about the disappearance of flashing arrows in modern television and film. Now it is getting harder for us who are watching to figure out what will happen next without that music and the pointing to something in the background. In The OC there are no flashing arrows. Some might be mistaken with the thought of the Cohen’s door being a flashing arrow because it always shows the door handle when someone rang the doorbell, but you never know who is actually behind the door. In older movies or shows, it might have shown the viewers who was behind the door and then give a hint to the person about to open the door, but in The OC, you never know who it could be.

In television, Johnson also discusses social networks. Social networks are what The OC is all about. Orange County is a big social network and it is a very important one. Everyone is linked together but at the same time each person has their little relationships with someone that has another one with someone else and you have to keep up and think about it or you will get lost in the show. This brings Johnson’s point of character webs. Character webs shows how all the characters are somehow linked together. Johnson’s character webs are very complex and “represent a social relationship that you must grasp to make sense of the episode’s plot.” (Back of book). Because of The OC’s huge social network and there are many main characters: their character web would be very big and very complex. There are family ties that would have to be linked and then that person would somehow be connected to another person. In Figure 1 shows a character map of the main characters in The OC.

Figure 1

This character web shows which characters have relationships with other characters: Starting with Sandy; he is married to Kirsten, the father of Seth and adopted father of Ryan; Kirsten; married to Sandy, mother of Seth, adopted mother of Ryan, sister of Haley, daughter of Caleb; Seth; son of Sandy and Kirsten, brother to Ryan, dated Anna and Summer, grandson of Caleb; Ryan; adopted son to Sandy and Kirsten, brother to Seth, in love with Marissa; Marissa; the daughter of Julie and Jimmy, ex girlfriend of Luke, best friends to Summer.

So maybe, everything that is bad can be good for you. The OC is one of the shows that might be looked at as bad for you because of its drama and just because it is a TV show, but Johnson has proved that today’s pop culture could really be good for you. The way The OC uses multiple threading, the disappearance of flashing arrows, the use of social networks and the complexity of each storyline to prove what Johnson is saying, that we do use our brains to watch these types of complex shows, so we are in fact getting smarter. The shows that people love are the ones that are difficult to understand. There are very many fan sites dedicated to The OC. The show ended in 2007, but the site is still going strong because so many people loved the show. The site says, “This site will remain online at a tribute to the series and a place where you can find info on the cast.” The site keeps up with where the characters from the show are now and what they are doing. There are contests and just details about the show when it was still playing and also you can watch episodes. There are many members that have joined this fan site.


Works Cited
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good For You. New York: Penguin Group, 2005.
Network, Fox. The OC Online. 2004. 12 May 2009 . .