The OC & Arrested Development Almost Crossed Over (Here’s Why It Didn’t Happen)

The OC almost crossed over with Arrested Development. Both shows premiered their first seasons on Fox in 2003, but outside of airing on the same network and taking place in the same setting of Newport Beach, California, they couldn’t have been more different.

The OC was a teen drama created by Josh Schwartz, which initially managed to combine youthful angst with winking commentary on familiar television tropes. Centered around the character of Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) as he’s adopted by the wealthy Cohen family, the series slowly built its audience and delivered impressive ratings over the course of season 1. Arrested Development, on the other hand, was a comedy focused on the dysfunctional Bluth family. The show, created by Mitchell Hurwitz, and famously narrated by Ron Howard, was a critical darling during its original run. At one point however, Hurwitz wanted the melodramatic teens of The OC to make an appearance on Arrested Development. Here’s why that never happened.

The crossover was scrapped, ultimately, because Schwartz believed the idea for the crossover was too meta. He explained this during a retrospective interview with Uproxx, saying: “We debuted in the same season on FOX, and Mitch Hurwitz asked if our actors could come on his show to play themselves as the stars of The OC. I was worried that was one layer of meta too many, so I said no.” While it might seem like Hurwitz pitched the crossover out of the blue, The OC already had a bit of presence on Arrested Development.

Arrested Development season 3 featured the recurring joke of Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) objecting to various characters whenever they’d refer to Orange County by its initials. “Don’t call it that,” he’d quickly protest. Some fans have theorized that because Michael’s wife, Tracey, has died of ovarian cancer, those two letters have a particularly negative resonance in Michael’s mind. Regardless of the intent behind the joke, it does provide the groundwork for how a crossover could have worked. Another aspect to consider is that the cultural saturation of The OC’s central cast would have made them easy to parody.

McKenzie and his co-star, and on-screen love interest Mischa Barton, had gained a reputation for allowing the early success of The OC to go to their heads. Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson, who played Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts, respectively, were not immune from becoming the subject of gossip either as their off-screen relationship drew a lot of attention in the early aughts. It would have been fun to see the foursome playing exaggerated, fictionalized versions of themselves. Alternatively, they could have been presented as entirely amiable and level-headed, simply reacting to the regular absurdities of the eccentric Bluth family. It’s impossible to say how the crossover would have played out, but Hurwitz and Schwartz had a lot of avenues to collaborate on an unforgettable episode.

It’s understandable that Schwartz passed on the chance to have The OC crossover with Arrested Development. The teen drama had its own struggles to contend with, falling into a creative slump after a strong start. Schwartz’s has admitted that his series, which began on an optimistic and relatively light note, went too far in the direction of tragedy. This overemphasis would, years later, lead to one of SNL’s most memorable digital shorts. Still, with the help of hindsight, The OC and Arrested Development have experienced a resurgence in popularity. Both have benefited from being discovered by new viewers, in addition to critical analysis that has looked at the two shows through fresh lenses. It’s one of the reasons that the proposed crossover counts as an interesting, potentially missed opportunity.

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Abdullah Al-Ghamdi
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Abdullah Al-Ghamdi joined Screen Rant in August 2019, focusing on movie and television news. In January of the same year, he wrote a 3500+ word piece on why Primo Colón is underrated. He considers it his finest work. When he’s not arguing for the merits of his favorite wrestler, he can be reached at: [email protected].

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