【eroticism is godly】

Welcome toSummer Cooldown,eroticism is godly our weeklong tribute to all things cool in pop culture. Through our role models of chill and our misguided attempts to emulate them, to the DGAF heroes so defiantly uncool they’re ice cold, we’ll attempt to define the undefinable and celebrate the characters and questions that shaped us. 

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When The O.C.premiered in 2003, Ben McKenzie's Ryan Atwood was the very picture of classic cool. A brooding bad boy with a heart of gold, he had the leather jacket, the tight white tank top, and the mean right hook. Guys begrudgingly admired him, girls openly swooned after him, and it all made perfect sense in the familiar logic of teen dramas.

But it wasn't long before Ryan found himself upstaged by a completely new brand of cool, in the form of his best friend and adopted brother Seth Cohen.

Seth fit the archetype of the nerdy sidekick to a T. He was socially awkward and sexually inexperienced, and prone to rambling about comic books or video games or Star Wars. He was an outcast at school, which made him an easy target for bullies like Luke. Unlike the nerds we'd seen onscreen in the past, though, Seth wasn't just likable, but downright aspirational.

That's not a flaw of The O.C.'s, but further evidence of its influence.

In part, this was thanks to Adam Brody's good looks and charm; only on TV could someone so conventionally appealing be cast as a misfit. And it was thanks as well to a writers' room -- led by showrunner Josh Schwartz, himself a self-described Seth Cohen type -- that supplied him with all the wittiest retorts and the most memorable scenes. (Who among us is not still swooning over that Spider-Man kiss?)

The other thing Seth had going for him, though, was timing. The character burst onto the scene at the precise moment that so-called "geeky" interests went from niche to mainstream -- after the blockbuster successes of X-Menand Spider-Manand two of the Star Wars prequels, but before the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thronesbecame pop culture's most dominant forces.

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At the time, Seth felt like validation for the geeks of the world. It wasn't that he was the first pop-culture hero to be into these things, or even to make them look fun. The guys of Mallratsand High Fidelityare basically grown-up Seths; the younger Freaks and Geekscharacters could be '80s versions of him. But he was the rare one to do so within the confines of a teen soap, a genre built around impossibly beautiful young people tangled in irresistibly dramatic scenarios.

Seth was positioned as one of those attractive leads, with the steamy storylines to match, and his nerdiness as fundamental to his appeal. His interest in superheroes and Star Wars, his quick, anxious energy, his pop culture references, his quirky t-shirts -- these made him stand out in a sea of sun-kissed water-polo players and Juicy Couture-clad rich girls, as something more interesting and unique and relatable.

Seth (Adam Brody) and Summer (Rachel Bilson) in The O.C. Credit: Warner Bros Tv / Kobal / Shutterstock

It didn't matter that his Harbor High classmates still considered him a loser. Those of us watching at home knew better, and in time, so did people like Marissa and Summer and Luke -- you know, the popular kids. And after all, it was his personality (self-aware, snarky, but sweet) that most closely matched the show's tone; to love The O.C.was to love Seth Cohen.

Sure, Seth had his flaws. He was frequently a terrible boyfriend and sometimes a terrible friend, given to indecision and jealousy and self-absorption. He could be insufferable about his tastes, to the point of imposing "Seth Cohen starter packs" on his girlfriends. (Everyone who's crushed on Seth has dated a Seth, and everyone who's dated a Seth knows this move.) And even as one of TV's pioneers of geek-chic, his self-deprecation about it sometimes tipped over into self-loathing.

Seth Cohen walked so Abed Nadir and Ben Wyatt and Chidi Anagonye and MCU Peter Parker could fly.

As a harbinger of things to come, however, he was perfect. To put it in terms he wouldn't understand because he is from the '00s, Seth Cohen walked so Abed Nadir and Ben Wyatt and Chidi Anagonye and MCU Peter Parker could fly. He may not be singlehandedly responsible for the changing role of geek culture within mainstream media, but he was one of the most significant embodiments of it.

SEE ALSO: Chrismukkah came early: Every season of 'The O.C.' is now streaming online

Rewatching the series now, from a time when every moviegoer is a lore expert and every TV viewer a fan theorist, it's strange how strange everyone else seems to find Seth's hobbies, and surprising how surprised he is to meet others, like Anna or Zach, who like the same things. In 2019, even your grandma could go toe-to-toe with Seth about superheroes. It's rarer to find someone who hasn'theard of Comic-Con.

That's not a flaw of The O.C.'s, but further evidence of its influence. Seth Cohen helped create a world in which geekiness is respectable, admirable, marketable, desirable. He showed how it could be cool, and in doing so, made it cool. And what do you know -- we're all Seth Cohens now.

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