"I think our show is very different from Orange County"
About this Quote
A defensive flex disguised as modesty: Josh Schwartz’s “I think our show is very different from Orange County” is less about geography than brand survival. Coming from the producer of The O.C., the line reads like a preemptive strike against the easiest, laziest take: that teen drama set amid wealth is automatically interchangeable, another sunlit soap about rich kids being hot and miserable.
The intent is gatekeeping-by-contrast. Schwartz is trying to protect a show’s identity before critics and audiences flatten it into a zip-code aesthetic. “Orange County” isn’t just a place; it’s shorthand for a whole media package: tan privilege, gated-community neuroses, shopping-center glamour, and the sense that problems are self-inflicted but still cinematic. By insisting on difference, Schwartz is telling you where not to look for meaning.
The subtext is also a little anxious, because “different” is doing a lot of work. He’s signaling that the show’s engine isn’t merely affluence but tone: perhaps more self-aware, more character-driven, more culturally literate, or simply less congratulatory about its own sheen. It’s the move TV makers make when they know comparisons will happen anyway, and they want to control the terms.
Context matters: mid-2000s TV was a churn of regionalized lifestyle fantasies (and their reality-TV knockoffs), and “Orange County” was quickly becoming a genre. Schwartz’s line is an attempt to keep his work from being swallowed by that genre label before the audience even hits episode one.
The intent is gatekeeping-by-contrast. Schwartz is trying to protect a show’s identity before critics and audiences flatten it into a zip-code aesthetic. “Orange County” isn’t just a place; it’s shorthand for a whole media package: tan privilege, gated-community neuroses, shopping-center glamour, and the sense that problems are self-inflicted but still cinematic. By insisting on difference, Schwartz is telling you where not to look for meaning.
The subtext is also a little anxious, because “different” is doing a lot of work. He’s signaling that the show’s engine isn’t merely affluence but tone: perhaps more self-aware, more character-driven, more culturally literate, or simply less congratulatory about its own sheen. It’s the move TV makers make when they know comparisons will happen anyway, and they want to control the terms.
Context matters: mid-2000s TV was a churn of regionalized lifestyle fantasies (and their reality-TV knockoffs), and “Orange County” was quickly becoming a genre. Schwartz’s line is an attempt to keep his work from being swallowed by that genre label before the audience even hits episode one.
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| Topic | Movie |
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