Fifteen Hours in Newport Beach

I’m wrecked. Haven’t slept, the weather outside is genuinely decent for once, and none of it matters because André, Lisa, and I just burned fifteen straight hours watching The O.C.—4pm to half past seven in the morning, nearly the entire first season in one sitting.

It started because André hadn’t seen it. I couldn’t let that stand. He resisted at first, the way people resist things they’re about to love—muttering about screenwriters and sets and all the usual defenses. Then Marissa had her overdose in Tijuana, then Oliver turned out to be an absolute little shit, then Seth’s whole situation with Summer got complicated in that specific way that makes you forget you’re watching TV, and André’s skepticism quietly dissolved somewhere around episode seven. We all go through it. That’s the trick of the show.

The O.C. is real. It lives somewhere between the sun-bleached melodrama and the genuinely good jokes, and it gets into you whether you planned for it or not. I’m drunk, exhausted, and my spelling is somehow still holding up. I’m calling that a win.