The O.C. is still dead, and now so is Marissa Cooper

As we all know, the O.C. died a long while back. True, it pretends to still be alive on FOX every Thursday, but that is not the O.C. we once knew. That is something different. Something horrible. In fact, I can't think of any other show in history that spun it's first 6 really good episodes into 50 episodes of worse garbage than the O.C. Many of us held on to "Welcome to the OC, bitch!" for the last few years hoping that glory would return. It never did. Honestly, we should've known the show was dead as soon as Oliver showed up and Luke left. What I'm trying to say is, I buried this national tragedy 8 months ago and haven't looked back.

However, a new development has emerged. I heard whisperings that Mischa Barton, poor, untalented Mischa, was going to be killed on the season finale. As you know, when the show was good, Mischa's Marissa Cooper was the craptastic character we overlooked as we loved what we believed to be the next 90210. And then when the show got bad, "Coop" was the worst part of a terrible series. So this news was something encouraging, and I started to hope that much like Jesus, the O.C. would rise from the dead and be the messiah we once believed it to be.

So I did something I vowed never to do again: I watched the O.C. I've thrown out a lot of Mischa hate here, and I've prayed for the death of Marissa Cooper on many a night. So this was kinda like a dream come true, and I just had to see it happen.

On a side note: Mischa's character was killed off because she reportedly wanted to leave the show to focus "on her movie career". Holy fuck. Her movie career? Is that supposed to be a joke? Mischa, honey, you know to be in movies you have to actually act and stuff. Movies are weird like that. And let me officially be the first compare this maneuver to the career strategies of Shelley Long, Luke Perry, and Julianna Marguiles. Seriously though, that drives me insane. Why would anyone put her in a movie? Do they not watch the show? Do movie producers just read US Weekly and throw those people into movies? Cause sometimes we just like to see those people in magazines to make fun of their unattractive boyfriends and gangly bodies, but we don't really want to see them on a giant screen "acting".

I watched the show, eagerly awaiting the extinction of "Coop". But something weird happened. I got sad. No, not because I have the maturity level of a 3rd grader and my hate of Mischa is really how I show love, no, I do have the maturity level of a 3rd grader but my hate is just more hate. I got sad because I forgot how embarrassingly bad this show has become. The episode was shit. Really stinky, smelly shit. It's so sad, because it used to be so cool. Plus, Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson and Peter Gallagher and even Ryan Atwood are really good. It's just...the writing. These people do not know what they are doing and it is so fricking frustrating. They don't know how to make dramatic moments without using a punch in the face or a 17 year old dying. Take a lesson from 90210, sometimes good drama is just Steve Sanders meeting some hot girls who are using him to steal his Corvette.

But let's get to the death. First of all, how many kids have died or been shot or overdosed at this high school in the last 6 months? Aren't the authorities concerned? Secondly, a car accident? I haven't seen a death that clever since Mitch Leery dropped his ice cream cone in his car and drove straight into oncoming traffic on Dawson's Creek. That's the best you could do? And third, as someone on the internet wrote, couldn't they have not killed her and next season just have characters randomly say "I got a postcard from Coop, she's doing great!" That's hilarious, and better than forcing yet another death on the show.

But the biggest reason that I was sad was because it was a total bastardization of not just the show, but TV in general. Let me explain. The whole reason TV shows like this are enjoyable is the suspension of disbelief. On some level, we think that we are watching real people in real situations. That's what draws us in. And the moment that realness is taken away, it's no longer fun to watch because if it's not real then we have no stakes in what's going on with the characters. Sure, you can kill people off every week, but at a certain point, we stop caring because there's no way in hell that this is what it's like for a group of affluent people living in Orange County. Killing her off was like a Ryan Atwood punch in the face telling us - this is all bullshit.

So instead of enjoying watching Mischa eat it, I got sad. For the show. The only thing that made me feel better was thinking about how Mischa thinks she's going to have a film career. Now that's real. Real funny.