Newport After Marissa

The season four promo photos for The O.C. are out, and they confirm what the season three finale already made pretty clear: Marissa is gone. No Mischa Barton anywhere in the stills. Whatever thin hope existed that the car crash was a fake-out, a stunt the writers would walk back in the premiere—it’s finished.

I knew it was coming. The finale telegraphed it hard enough. Still, seeing the cast photos without her is its own kind of blunt confirmation, the way reading an obituary makes a death land differently than a phone call does. The show is moving toward a younger generation—Kaitlin, new Newport faces—and it will either find its footing or it won’t. The O.C. without Marissa is a structurally different show. Whether it holds together is something I won’t know until November, when the US run starts.

I watched the FOX trailer. Same California light, same architecture of money and teenage misery. I’ll probably keep watching. I always do.