The OC: A Review
Thursday, February 28th, 2013So, I just finished watching The OC and, I must say, I was skeptical about the show near the beginning. I even got bored at certain points but, now that I’ve finished it, I realize how much I truly loved the show. For those who haven’t watched, it’s about a 14-year-old kid named Ryan, whose mother is an alcoholic and whose Dad and brother are in jail.
The show begins with public defence lawyer Sandy Cohen bailing Ryan out of jail (Ryan’s brother forced him to help steal a car) and, after seeing how hopeless Ryan’s situation is, he decides to bring him home. Sandy lives in Newport Beach, where everyone is extremely rich: they all have huge mansions and all the teenagers have their own cars. Soon, Ryan becomes part of the Cohen family and bonds with Sandy’s son, Seth, who is a social outcast until Ryan comes into his life. From there on, Ryan meets Marissa, who is a popular and attractive girl. Things get especially complicated as Marissa’s boyfriend starts getting into fights with Ryan. By the end of the show, you see how much everyone’s lives (including Ryan’s) have been impacted because of Ryan’s arrival to Newport.
This show does a believable job of presenting the class issues involved in having a “poor kid” move in with a “rich family”. Others have pointed out that it avoided the initial cliché by having Ryan and Seth become friends, but later episodes have shown that, in spite of their friendship and common interests (like comic books), there are still deeper issues of class and sexuality that show how different their worlds really are.
Finally, I was surprised to see that the writers were actually able to make me care about the problems of the rich characters! (The adults, anyway.) For too many nighttime soap operas, portraying the “problems of the rich” are just a way to get us “unwashed” types to sneer at the problems that money brings (“I wish I had those problems!”). In The OC, the writers actually explore questions of money, class, and love in the various adult couples in a way that brings Jane Austen to mind; we can relate to the struggles the characters are going through even if their day-to-day lives are completely foreign from our own.
If you haven’t watched this show or still feel skeptical, I suggest you watch the first 5-6 episodes. I’m sure you’ll be hooked.
I haven’t used this one enough to give you my personal opinion, but Google Drive bears a strong resemblance to Dropbox in that it offers the same essential features, such as cloud-based file storage and web-accessibility across multiple devices. Google Drive includes 3GB more of initial storage than Dropbox for free accounts, but you can earn up to 16GB of additional storage with Dropbox by referring it to others. I think the biggest advantage that Google Drive has over Dropbox is the fact that you can edit Google Docs through the app, which is great for collaborative work for your group project. If you’re really torn between the two, you can find a more in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the apps right here.
This one is only available on Apple devices. iBooks allows you to purchase books from the iBookstore, as well as download PDF documents using your Safari web browser for later or offline viewing. I’ve started to use iBooks on my iPad to download course slides, syllabi (I just wanted to say ‘syllabi’), and other documents in PDF format that my professors provide. I then organize all the documents into ‘Collections’ according to their corresponding class, from where I can read everything while studying for a test, or in order to keep up during lecture. It might come in handy, so I recommend downloading it if you don’t yet have it on your device.
