The O.C. - Oct. 28, 2006

ON SCREEN:

THE O.C.
THURSDAYS; FOX, CTV
BOTTOM LINE: TIME MARCHES ON, EVEN IN ORANGE COUNTY.

Passing The Torch

Producers are promising a reinvented and rebooted version of The O.C. this season. That’s just as well. The old gang was getting a little stale.

By Eric Kohanik

There’s a lot that has gone on since the last time we checkedin on the gang at The O.C.

And, gosh, you can’t help but feel sorry for some of them.

Take that fish-out-of-water former bad boy, Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), for instance. When last we saw poor Ryan, he was rushing to the aid of his beloved Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), who was involved in a horrifying – and, it turns out, fatal – car mishap.

Gosh, and all this after all the joy and laughter of everyone having just graduated from Harbor high school.

Bummer.

Time does march on, though. And as the fourth season of The O.C. opens this week, the joys and sorrows of their journey through high school are becoming a fading memory for the crowd of young adults.

And so, it’s time for some retooling.

The O.C. has actually gone through an interesting journey. The series premiered on Aug. 5, 2003, and immediately became one of that year’s hottest hits.

That heat cooled down pretty fast, though, with the show gradually sagging in popularity as it got bogged down with a growing number of characters and soapy subplots.

But that’s all going to change this season, promises executive producer Josh Schwartz. His creative team has been busy refocusing the series on its core ensemble.

“I believe our fans will find this focus on our core characters and their relationships really satisfying,” Schwartz declared in a media release trumpeting the show’s return. “The show has been reinvented; rebooted. Personally, it feels like The O.C. is back.”

Translation: the fans were finding the old gang was getting kind of stale.

As the “reinvented” and “rebooted” season opens, Sandy and Kirsten Cohen (Peter Gallagher, Canada’s Kelly Rowan), seem happier than ever. As for Marissa’s mom, Julie(Melinda Clarke) – well, she’s not so happy.

Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson) is now a student at Brown University in Rhode Island, where she has turned into a loopy tree-hugger, thanks to a mentor named Ché (Everwood grad Chris Pratt, who will stick around for a few episodes).

As for Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), he has become a lonely guy, working at a comic-book store, watching golf with Dr. Neil Roberts (Michael Nouri) and hanging out with the Newpsies.

Loser.

Anyway, there’s some other retooling in store. It’s clear that a torch is being passed.

Autumn Reeser (as Taylor) and Willa Holland (as Marissa’s sister, Kaitlin) are now series regulars. And watch for pop star Chris Brown to show up this season as a band geek who befriends Kaitlin at Harbor.

Will romance follow suit for them?

Hey…this is The O.C., after all.

The World Series - Oct. 21, 2006

ON SCREEN:

2006 WORLD SERIES
VARIOUS DAYS; FOX (U.S.), ROGERS SPORTSNET (CANADA)
BOTTOM LINE: A SIGNIFICANT MOMENT IN THE FALL TV SEASON.

Playing hardball

Sports playoffs always wreak havoc with TV schedules. But the annual baseball break also gives networks a chance for other kinds of gameplay.

By Eric Kohanik

Baseball playoffs finally settle into World Series mode this week. And that’s a significant moment– not just for baseball, but forthe TV season in general.

In many ways, sports playoffs are always areal pain in the neck for those of us in the TV business. Playoffs tend to wreak all sorts of havoc with network schedules and individual TV series.

Every spring, for instance, hockey playoffs wipe out CBC’s entire primetime schedule for almost two months (something CTV really ought to consider should it actually attempt to snag Hockey Night in Canada next year).

Baseball playoffs have a different sort of impact on the TV landscape in the fall. They tend to ruin any sort of momentum that new shows have struggled to build up in their first few weeks of existence.

That’s why Fox – the network that owns American TV rights to baseball playoffs and the World Series – launched its new season earlier than everyone else again this year. It rolled out the return of Prison Break, alongwith the premieres of such high-profile newcomers as Justice and Vanished, way back in August. The move was supposed to crank up enough story momentum and viewer interest in those shows to help them survive the ritual of being benched for baseball’sfinal onslaught.

It’s a strategy Fox used with Prison Break last year, and it worked well enough to try it again this time around.

In Canada, meanwhile, the impact of baseball playoffs and the World Series is a little different. Television rights here belong to Rogers Sportsnet, an all-sports cable outlet that would probably rely on televising tiddlywinks tournaments if it didn’t have baseball.

But baseball playoffs still affect Canadian broadcast networks such as Global and CTV, which are generally addicted to having American shows from networks like Fox on their primetime schedules. They have to scramble a little to fill in any gaps caused by the annual “baseball break.”

Fortunately, the scramble starts to subside this week, with such Fox series as Prison Break, Standoff and Happy Hour gettingback in the groove with new episodes. By month’s end, things everywhere will be back to normal. Or, at least as normal as things can get in the TV world.

The baseball break also gives all networks a chance for some other key gameplay. It’s the time when American networks assess how their new shows are doing and deteRmine what schedule tinkering needs to bedone to improve things.

If there are cancellations to be made, this is often the time for those to surface. In fact, CBS’s Smith has already bitten the dust, while NBC’s Kidnapped moves to Saturdays and will end after its 13-week run.

Watch for a slew of casualties to come.