Episodic Classics: The O.C., “The Showdown,” ”The O.Sea,” ”The Dearly Beloved” | Season 2, Episodes 22, 23, & 24
Never forget how good things were this season, because Season Three's coming
I know it’s hacky, but I’ll say it one more time: After 24 long, messy episodes, The O.C. Season Two goes out with a bang. It ends with, arguably, the shot heard around the pop culture world, as there still remain people who have seen the Saturday Night Live sketch riffing off how this season ends without having ever actually seen the end of “The Dearly Beloved.”1
For everything that follows (and as a result of the choice for Marissa to shoot Trey), it’s an ending that feels just as right for this season as Ryan leaving for Chino (and Seth sailing to “Tahiti”) did in the first. Well, it feels right for this season heading into a post-Trey world or even as an act of defiance for how this season began. Because remember—and I know how hard that can be in a 24-episode season—this season was supposed to be an evolution of the show, with “less spectacle” than the first season and a slowing down of the storytelling. That mission statement essentially flew out the window with every other new element (sans Zach and Atomic County) this season, which made for another component of this season’s messiness. But as I have done throughout this coverage, I still defend The O.C. Season Two: it sticks the landing in terms of having a solid, memorable finale and in creating a promise of an interesting immediate future. It’s not its fault that Season Three ended up being such a disaster. In fact, while I can place plenty of blame on Schwartz for the messy nature of Season Two, as we’ll see (hopefully—don’t forget to comment and share this coverage) with Season Three, executive interference could always make things so much worse, alongside Schwartz’s fear of the cast as a result of network-mandated inferior material.