"As The O.C. started up again, I started to feel myself potentially getting pulled away"
About this Quote
Nostalgia is rarely neutral; it has suction. Josh Schwartz frames The O.C. less as a show you watch than a current you can get caught in, and that choice of language tells on him. “Started up again” evokes a machine being rebooted, an engine turning over, the familiar hum of a world designed to run smoothly and keep running. The passive momentum matters: the show isn’t something he actively returns to, it restarts and he notices his own attention begin to slide.
The key word is “potentially.” It’s a producer’s hedge and a creator’s self-protection. Schwartz is acknowledging the power of his own product while maintaining a posture of control: I might be pulled away, not I am. That’s the subtext of someone who understands how TV works on the brain because he helped engineer it. The O.C. was built on propulsion - cliffhangers, hyper-quotable banter, emotional spikes timed like a pop song. Saying he could be “pulled away” is a sly admission that the apparatus still functions, even on its maker.
Contextually, this sounds like a moment from the streaming era, when rewatch culture turns old series into always-available portals. For a producer, that’s both flattering and faintly alarming: your past work can ambush your present life, reasserting itself with the intimacy of comfort viewing. Schwartz’s line lands because it captures a contemporary anxiety - not that art moves us, but that it monopolizes us, gently, one autoplay episode at a time.
The key word is “potentially.” It’s a producer’s hedge and a creator’s self-protection. Schwartz is acknowledging the power of his own product while maintaining a posture of control: I might be pulled away, not I am. That’s the subtext of someone who understands how TV works on the brain because he helped engineer it. The O.C. was built on propulsion - cliffhangers, hyper-quotable banter, emotional spikes timed like a pop song. Saying he could be “pulled away” is a sly admission that the apparatus still functions, even on its maker.
Contextually, this sounds like a moment from the streaming era, when rewatch culture turns old series into always-available portals. For a producer, that’s both flattering and faintly alarming: your past work can ambush your present life, reasserting itself with the intimacy of comfort viewing. Schwartz’s line lands because it captures a contemporary anxiety - not that art moves us, but that it monopolizes us, gently, one autoplay episode at a time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work-Life Balance |
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