In 2003, three years before the CW network launched and started churning out hit series about rich, precocious, and pretty teenagers, The O.C.—perhaps the perfect teen drama—premiered on Fox. In Season One, millions of viewers watched the Cohens, a rich Newport Beach family, take in Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie), a troubled boy from the wrong side of town. Naturally, Ryan falls for Marissa (Mischa Barton), the hottest—yet deceptively thoughtful—girl in school. Their romance offers Ryan’s pseudo-adoptive nerd of a brother, Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), access to his long-time crush Summer (Rachel Bilson), Marissa’s BFF. As The New York Times put it, the show’s creator, Josh Shwartz, was “sneaking a truly smart show past the gatekeepers in the guise of something commercial and trashy and fun.” Even though the following three seasons weren’t quite as polished as the glorious first, when the show was canceled, in 2007, a petition with nearly 1,000,000 signatures urged Fox to rethink its decision. —Jensen Davis

Jensen Davis is a Junior Editor for AIR MAIL