The O.C. Officially Out of Juice

Melinda Clarke and the cast of “The O.C.”

Well, it’s finally happened: The once beloved teen soap that made stars out of Rachel Bilson and Mischa Barton and gave a renewed lease on life to Melinda Clarke before it lost touch with what made it popular will air its last episode on February 22.

What went wrong? From Entertainment Weekly’s much spun epitaph:

“When [The O.C. worked,” says [creator-executive producer Josh] Schwartz, “it was something you hadn’t seen before.” When it didn’t, an audience-infuriating nut named Oliver materialized, as did gratuitous girl-on-girl action. And in a semi-shocking development last May, the lead female character died in a car crash. “We were trying to keep pace so as to not get canceled, and it got overcooked,” admits Schwartz. Yet he defends those widely derided story lines. “People still talk about them, for good or ill. When we didn’t do anything, people would be like, ‘Why hasn’t anyone gotten drunk or gotten in a fight?’” Adds Benjamin McKenzie, who broke out as punch-happy bad boy Ryan Atwood, “At some point you’re going to have feelings about doing the same thing over and over again. Around the third season, we reached a slow point. That was hard.” Even harder were three time-slot changes — the most fatal being a switch from American Idol-driven Wednesday to ultra-competitive Thursday. Once Grey’s Anatomy moved onto its block last fall, says Schwartz, “we kind of knew what was going to happen.”