Abusing close reading skills

So last night on The OC the writers deployed their, at this point, very old meta-joke about The Valley. In the world of The OC, The Valley is the OC, the TV show all the kids on The OC watch that’s freakishly similar to The OC. So last night a random character was on the phone with her dad, allegedly a writer for The Valley, and she was all, “Well dad what did you expect to happen to the ratings when you’ve been milking the same old love triangle for three seasons?” (Those aren’t the words she used, but the meaning she achieved). The OC writers are attempting to poke some fun at themselves here, by making a meta-analogous joke about their own show, which is sliding in the ratings. The problem with this joke is that the show has not lost viewers because of triangles. The OC doesn’t even have triangles. It has lost viewers because it sucks.
The OC’s problem is with pairs, torturously boring, prolonged, badly acted pairs. Leave triangles alone. They are a pretty shape. Since jettisoning the Anna component of the Summer-Seth relationship back in season one, the writers have never managed anything resembling a love triangle. They have pairs, and then some poorly written interloper we know is only there for a couple of episodes, mostly just to keep said pairs apart, enters and leaves. See Oliver, Teresa, Lindsay, DJ, Volchok, Sadie. None of these people contributed to a triangle in the proper sense of the word—a romantic configuration ripe with tension for which it’s possible to imagine multiple outcomes. Rather The OC has moments where Ryan and Marissa are with other people, we all realize how much better that would be, but then, Ryan and Marissa just end up back together, for no clear emotional reasons. Ryan and Marissa are the most boring couple on TV. An actual triangle would help them enormously, but that’s not what’s been written.
The Valley exists on The OC, and has since the first season, so the writers can pen pomo, meta commentary about their own show without actually breaking the fourth wall. The Valley is The OC. A joke about The Valley that does not have meaning for The OC is a bad joke, since the real viewing audience only knows about The Valley vis a vis The OC. Dig? If the writers wrote some joke that was like, “Dad, what did you expect to happen to the ratings for The Valley when you decided to make it about a terrorist conspiracy?” that doesn’t scan. Or actually, that joke does scan, but only because the idea of The OC sinking to such tactics is kind of hilarious. And would maybe help it… So a better example would be, “Dad, what did you expect to happen to the ratings for the Valley when you decided to make it all about a happily married couple?” In a weird way, this scans too, as some kind of meta commentary on why The OC scribes have chosen not to make Sandy and Kirstin happy. This though, “Dad, what did you expect to happen to the ratings for The Valley when you decided to make it all about old ladies?” doesn’t make very much sense—it’d be weird and you’d spend a bunch of time wondering how this is actually a joke about The Golden Girls, but you wouldn’t figure it out because it’s not a joke about The Golden Girls, it’s just a bad joke. Point is, jokes about The Valley have to be jokes about The OC (and they are really easy to make).
The joke that actually was on The OC last night suggests that the problem with the show, or one of the problems with the show, is that they have had the same love triangle for three years. But as discussed, that’s not the case. So either the writers are so unaware of what they’ve put on screen that they think they’ve written proper triangles or the writers are so arrogant that they think the same thing.
To their credit--pretending it doesn’t matter if you call them triangles or pairs-- the triangles actually are what’s wrong with The OC. So boring. This brings us to the other, more major problem with this joke. It’s great the writers on The OC are self-effacing, but they have trouble with personal responsibility. Making jokes about milking the same triangle for the past three years does not excuse you for actually milking the same triangle for the past three years. If that sucks, and it does, it’s the writers’ fault. Instead of making jokes, why don’t you try writing something original? In this episode, after breaking up a couple weeks ago, Ryan and Marissa are back on track for a reunion. Ryan’s beating people up for her again, they’re eating breakfast together, she’s protecting him and vice-a-versa. Snoooooze. Now it’s possible, if the spoilers are true, that Marissa is gonna bite it at the end of next week. In which case the writers are actually doing something different and this was a kind of pre-joke. But I don’t have a lot of faith, at this point, that they’d do any better without Marissa (though, granted, axing the worst actress on prime time TV from your show has gotta help).