Sun sets on 'The O.C.'

That ever-so-faint cracking sound you hear? A few teenage hearts are breaking -- and a few vicarious-living, Peter-Gallagher-loving adult hearts, too. After four seasons of melodrama, aggressively bared midriffs, and Chrismukkah jokes, Fox's once-hot teen series "The O.C." is ending. The last episode airs Feb. 22, apparently with the revelation that someone in Newport is pregnant. (My counterintuitive guess? Julie Cooper. Or, better yet, Kirsten Cohen.)

It's a sad death, really, coming partly at Fox's own hand. Yes, viewers had drifted away, tiring of the earnest alcohol-recovery plots, the tepid flirtation with lesbian love, and Mischa Barton's relentless pout as an anorexic damsel in distress. But just as "O.C." producers got wise, killed Marissa, and remembered that their job was to have fun, Fox moved the series into hospice mode -- as in, a time slot opposite "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI."

But let's not pout, ourselves. (As Summer once would have said, "Ew.") Just take a few minutes to remember the show's enduring legacy. It launched the geek-chic movement -- or, at least, cemented it in pop culture. It helped turn TV into a promotional vehicle for hip alt-rockers. It toyed with desperate housewives long before they were a thing. It introduced Gallagher's eyebrows to a new generation. And it pioneered a special form of TV acting, in which dialogue was mumbled so quickly as to be incomprehensible -- and yet, much of the time, you had the sense that it was funny.

Funny -- that was key. Creator Josh Schwartz once told us he had hoped the show would be "the first amoral teen drama." And maybe "The O.C." lost its way when it tried to tap too deeply into its moral core. But even in the dark days, we weren't too far from a Seth Cohen wisecrack; this was the rare Teen Issue drama that wasn't afraid of mocking itself. And we'll miss that, in the end -- along with the comic books, the fistfights, the fancy clothes, and the poolhouse view of a rich little world.

JOANNA WEISS