The OC: The Complete First Season

Warner Home Video, $69.99

Flying off shelves like so many beach-blanket fist fights, The OC DVD set is your ultimate source for data like: How many OxyContins does it take to level a debutante? Is a MILF more inappropriate when she’s your girlfriend’s mother? And don’t they have paternity tests in the OC, bitch? More importantly, it lays to rest age-old stumpers like: Can you or can you not see Summer’s butt when she unceremoniously dumps a post-party, wasted Marissa on her lawn in the pilot? While it’s great to have all Capt. Oats’ cameos assembled in one volume, the set itself lacks for the truly OC‘d. Extras are little more than some unaired scenes, pedestrian commentary, and ads for the show’s music. There’s also an excruciating yet strangely compelling featurette of producer McG hanging and rapping with real teens from the coastal community. (“I had sex one time in high school – with a girl who thought I was Anthony Michael Hall.”) Sure, there are Easter eggs, but any fan worth their brine has already seen ’em. Not exactly the stuff to make a girl walk out of her seaweed wrap. Here’s a message to Warner Bros. video: Know this – sliding by with marginal extras because other self-aware, semihip TV shows with loyal audiences told you to is stupid and it’s weak, and those are two things you can’t afford to be anymore.

This article appears in December 10 • 2004.

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