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Why does the OC have to be 'quality', just because you enjoy it?
Well, look at it another way: what do you think the people who make The OC are trying to accomplish? The least over-idealised answer possible is "get viewers, and keep them". How is this achieved but by making people enjoy watching it, and keeping them entertained, and ensuring that they invest in what happens to the characters? This is clearly happening, so the show succeeds in its aim. Your point seems to rely on the idea that other shows - Angel, or Six Feet Under, or The Sopranos - have other aims, which I'm not sure is provable. Angel might seek to keep its viewers invested and interested by subverting genre expectations and throwing in outrageous plot twists. Six Feet Under might seek to keep its viewers invested and interested by making them cry buckets, or recognise characters or situations as being very similar to ones they have encountered. The Sopranos - well, it does several of the above, or it makes for unsettling viewing, or it makes you watch it for the food, or... D'you see where I'm going with this? These are methods. They are very good, satisfying methods. But I do not think that there is a clear gap between these shows and something like The OC as result, except where there is a difference in how much I enjoy watching them. I do not think that it matters if Six Feet Under is Good For Me, or intended to be so.
And yes, I do find it very odd that some people choose to distinguish between the art/entertainment they like and the art/entertainment they think is actually any good. There's no art or entertainment I like that doesn't have some kind of redeeming feature, no matter how goofy or cheesy it may otherwise be... So if on the whole the "I like it" outweighs the "I think it's silly", then something is good. Okay, I'm getting a little too repetitive here.
I find it odd that you classify Adam Brody's adlibs as somehow separate from the process by which an episode of The OC was produced - as if Brody was not cast on the basis of comedy, as if he had nothing to work with in the character of Seth as written, and most glaringly of all as if the director, editor, producers etc had simply not noticed these adlibs, and thus allowed moments of genuine creativity and quality to slip through, rather than choosing to go with the takes in which Brody made adlibs, or choosing which adlibs to keep and which to ditch, or actively encouraging them, for instance... This example seems to me to be symptomatic of precisely where our attitudes differ, but I can't quite articulate why. |
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