"RIP Marissa Cooper, You Would Have Been So Good on Below Deck": The End of The OC's 3rd Season

***This episode contains spoilers for The OC and Traitors U.S. (season 4, episode 6). There's also a tiny spoiler for One Tree Hill season 3, episode 22. --In 2003, Fox aired The OC, altering the teen drama genre forever and spawning Laguna Beach, The Hills and the entire Real Housewives franchise. The OC launched Adam Brody and Mischa Barton into stardom and introduced much of the world to Death Cab for Cutie. Despite becoming a cultural phenomenon, The OC burned too bright too quickly. Mallika and Rachel dive into behind-the-scenes drama ending in a third season finale that essentially signed the show's death warrant — and cemented its place in pop culture history. --30 Sec: Our life this week as a season finale and what we're watching this week (The Last Frontier, The Pitt, Traitors) 9 Min: A cultural discovery about the parallels between Sylvia Plath and The Summer I Turned Pretty 13 Min: TV news (A Sofia Coppola show pulled from Apple TV, Matt Damon talking Netflix, Oscar noms, Alex Honnold's Taipei 101 climb)21 Min: The cultural impact of The OC 31 Min: Why this finale, and a 1-min season 1-3 recap 34 Min: How The OC turned into Desperate Housewives 45 Min: What happened in the season 3 finale 53 Min: Marissa Cooper’s death and Mischa Barton’s exit 59 Min: How the finale changed trajectory of the show and secured its place in pop culture history1 Hour 8 Min: Favorite lines/least favorite lines 1 Hour 13 Min : Two minutes of gossip (and then a little more gossip after that...)1 Hour 17 Min: Our finale rankings