Why Fox Canceled The O.C.

Ask your typical Millennial about “The O.C.” — the primetime teen soap that aired on Fox from 2003 to 2007 — and I’m willing to bet that the show’s iconic theme song, “California” by Phantom Planet, just started playing in their head. (This just happened to me, someone born in 1990.) Created by Josh Schwartz, the series starts out by introducing audiences to Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), a troubled kid from Chino who ends up in jail after stealing a car with his older brother. When Ryan meets his public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher), the big-hearted lawyer offers his aid … and when Ryan goes back home only to discover that his mother has moved and left him behind, Sandy takes Ryan to live with him in the affluent Orange County. Despite initial concerns from Sandy’s wife Kirsten (Kelly Rowan), Ryan fits in pretty well with the Cohens, immediately forging a friendship with her only son Seth (Adam Brody) … and when he meets the beautiful but also troubled girl next door to the Cohen family, Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), he finds that he might want to stay in “the O.C.” after all.

The series, which also starred Rachel Bilson (as Summer Roberts, Seth’s crush turned love interest) and Melinda Clarke (as Marissa’s absolutely unreasonable mother Julie Cooper), was extraordinarily popular when it first premiered in 2003 — so what happened? Why did it end after just four seasons? There’s a very simple explanation, actually: the show’s writers burned through plotlines like wild during the first three seasons, and when they killed Marissa in season 3, ratings plummeted … and never recovered.

The first two seasons of “The O.C.” are, frankly, a total delight. In season 1, Ryan adjusts to life in Orange County despite his rough-and-tumble background, ultimately dating Marissa … but when a personal situation with one of his oldest friends arises, Ryan returns to Chino, breaking Marissa’s heart. Not only does Ryan leave, but Seth also runs away from home after losing the first friend he ever made in the haughty county, leaving Summer — who he finally won over after years of pining — similarly alone and giving the season an excellent cliffhanger. Naturally, the two boys return to Orange County in the season 2 premiere, and that season, which features one of primetime television’s most groundbreaking bisexual stories (a romance between Marissa and recurring guest star Olivia Wilde’s Alex), mimics the upside-down “Spider-Man” kiss for a great moment between Seth and Summer, and ends with a scene so memorable that The Lonely Island designed an entire Digital Short around it, is absolutely incredible.

The tide turns in season 3, though — and as Josh Schwartz told Entertainment Weekly in January 2007, the writers’ room was simply running out of ideas. Because the show was both very funny and melodramatic, its creatives kept introducing wilder and wilder plotlines, and as Schwartz put it,”We were trying to keep pace so as to not get canceled, and it got overcooked.” This is, without question, best exemplified by the shocking death of Marissa Cooper (in a car accident) in the season 3 finale, especially because ratings had consistently diminished since the first season came out. (Where that season earned ratings as high as nine million viewers, the EW article notes that before season 4 had even begun, viewership had fallen to around four million.) Still, Schwartz — who added a new love interest for Ryan in season 4 (Autumn Reaser’s Taylor Townsend) — said there was some freedom in the cancellation, telling EW, “It was really creatively liberating, not worrying about ratings.” (A year later, ahead of the premiere of his next project “Gossip Girl,” Schwartz — asked what he would change about “The O.C.” — told Vulture, “I would say the whole first half of the third season was a total mess.”)

As great as it would be to see the actors from “The O.C.” reunite for something after the show ended back in 2007, it doesn’t seem particularly likely. In 2020, Fox entertainment head Michael Thorn told Deadline, “The ‘O.C.’ [revival] will not happen despite my deep passion for it to come back.” Thorn then went on to clarify, “No one is available, unfortunately. I would be lying if I said I didn’t ask every June.” Adam Brody, who earned a Golden Globe nomination in 2025 for the Netflix romantic comedy series “Nobody Wants This,” told E! News in 2023 that he would consider returning to Orange County as Seth Cohen under exactly one condition: “If there was a reason, like a really inspired idea? Yes. Other than that, probably not. No. And by ‘inspired idea,’ I mean lots and lots of money.” (A very Seth response, frankly.)

If you still need your “O.C.” fix in the 2020s, you could consider checking out “Nobody Wants This” to see Brody’s latest performance, binge Schwartz’s follow-up series “Gossip Girl” for more melodrama and betrayal (it also happens to star Brody’s real-life wife Leighton Meester as the show’s best character, Blair Waldorf), or go back and listen to Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke’s podcast “Welcome to the OC, B*tches!” (which takes inspiration from one of the pilot’s best and most memorable lines; the podcast later changed its name to “Beyond the OC,” with only Clarke at the helm). Also, whether you’ve seen it a million times or it’s been on your watchlist forever, “The O.C.” is currently streaming on both Max and Hulu.