The House Where Wednesday Nights Lived
Every Wednesday evening and every Saturday afternoon for the better part of four years: blocked out, sacred, non-negotiable. I had the DVDs. I had the soundtrack CDs—all of them, including the ones that were mostly filler padding out a Death Cab for Cutie track. I had the kind of devotion to The O.C. that you’re mildly embarrassed to admit as an adult and completely unashamed of at the time.
Who didn’t want Sandy Cohen to adopt them? Who didn’t want to spend afternoons with Seth making elaborate plans that went nowhere, or find themselves in the soft-focus Newport Beach twilight with Marissa Cooper—all cheekbones and bad decisions—before eventually, obviously, ending up with Summer Roberts instead, who was cooler and significantly less likely to pass out on poolside furniture. Or Taylor Townsend, the manic motormouth wildcard who showed up in the final season and grabbed the wheel after Marissa’s exit with both hands. Taylor was underrated. I stand by this.
The actual house where the show was filmed is for sale. Six bedrooms, a pool, 600 square meters in Newport Beach, California, listed at around $6 million. You could buy it. You’d still need to find people willing to behave like Ryan, Seth, Marissa, and Summer to populate it, which is the harder part, but the architecture is there. The driveway where a lot of teenage drama happened is there. The bones are there.
California, here comes the invoice.