Get Real

When I went to Orange County in June, one of the other press people on my trip was a reporter from the Boston Herald. While I was there to check out a hotel, she was on specific assignment to experience "The Real O.C." The story she wrote about the trip finally ran today, just in time for the show's season premiere.

Want to know about the "real" O.C.? Here's my take on it.

Basically, there is no "real" O.C. Take the Bait Shop, for example. We were taken to the Newport Pier to see it, or at least where it would have been if it actually existed. The building that is supposed to be the Bait Shop, the one used for the exterior shots, is actually in Santa Monica, about an hour away. The Arches? Not the glamorous restaurant shown on television. It looks like a side of the road, run down shack, with a convenience store attached. Our tour guide tried to convince us, unconvincingly, that, for example, Newport Harbor High School was the location for the show's "Harbor High" (it's not) and that Ryan and Marissa shared their first kiss on a ferris wheel at the Balboa Fun Zone (they did kiss on a ferris wheel, but at the homecoming carnival). Nice try. The whole tour was basically filled with locations the characters would go to if they were real — not places we'd recognize from the show. And the locations that do exist, like The Arches, were less than exciting. What a bummer.

Despite that, I'm quite excited for the season premiere tonight. :-)