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The impact of Cohen’s adorkable stammer and addiction to comic books has been well-documented; in a 2023 article for the Daily Beast, writer Kerensa Cadenas joked that Brody’s all-consuming cuteness had “ruined a generation of people.” Sure, he was far from a perfect boyfriend to gorgeous, clothes-obsessed Summer (Rachel Bilson), but he still managed to reel viewers in with his combination of rumpled-haired, T-shirt-clad awkwardness and not-always-earned confidence.
In fact, looking back on the show now, I wonder if the appeal of Seth Cohen was his imperfection. Many of us had become accustomed to leading-man characters on TV who were basically John Wayne trying to pass as a high-school boy, from Henry Winkler as Fonzie on Happy Days to every single male actor who ever appeared on One Tree Hill. Brody, too, was an adult playing a teen (he was 24 when the pilot episode of The O.C. aired!), but he was also genuinely funny and a little bit whiny and really into indie music—or, in other words, a recognizable, even attainable guy, beneath the patina of teen-soap celebrity.
While the appeal of a guy who makes you Death Cab mixes for Chrismukkah is, and was, largely self-evident, I also wonder if there was a little bit of (gasp!) queerness wrapped up in my Seth Cohen obsession. His long-nursed crush on Summer is, after all, basically the aughts equivalent of Jay Gatsby reaching for the green light on Daisy Buchanan’s dock, and I wonder if a not-at-all-conscious part of me realized, even in seventh grade—a year when I created a shrine of Abercrombie models torn from magazines on my bedroom wall—that I identified with Seth’s longing for the girl of his dreams. Yes, Seth was my forever crush, but was he also…a means by which to stare at Rachel Bilson’s big brown eyes and shiny hair as much as I wanted, secure in the excuse that I was simply studying how to be the kind of girl that a guy I capital-L Liked might like himself?
