I clearly remember sitting at the collage table in the art barn at summer camp cutting out pictures of smiling white people with their seventh-grade daughters from water-soaked Brides magazines, and I suddenly had this idea: one last picture of my friend Ali. “If you marry Adam Brody, you don’t even have to change your name!” I told her, and we both were filled with envy. If you were a teenage girl in 2004, you more or less definitely wanted to marry Adam Brody, who was famous at the time for his role as the lovable, eccentric, awkward Seth Cohen on Orange County.
That day at the Art Barn was nearly twenty years ago, and since then I’ve come out as gay and more or less stopped dating gay men (unless I’m reading this for some reason, Nick Crow). However, my obsession with Brody hasn’t gone away — something I realized immediately when I saw him playing a sexy rabbi in the new Netflix series Nobody Wants This. Any handsome, pot-loving rabbi can inspire some hot-pastor-adjacent excitement, but Brody’s casting in particular is what makes Seth Cohen a major star of mainstream television (or NJB, as he’s known on Tribe) — which unleashed my much-anticipated millennial crush.
The impact of Cohen’s distinctive stutter and his obsession with comic books has been well documented. In a 2023 article for The Daily Beast, writer Kerensa Cadenas joked that Brody’s overly cute behavior “ruined a generation.” Sure, he’s far from the ideal boyfriend for the beautiful, clothes-obsessed Summer (Rachel Bilson), but he still charms audiences with his messy hair, weird T-shirts, and confidence that isn’t always earned.
In fact, watching the show now, I wonder if Seth Cohen’s appeal lies in his flaws. Many of us have grown accustomed to TV leading men who are basically John Waynes trying to pass themselves off as high school students, starting with Henry Winkler’s performance as Fonzie in “Happy Days” to every actor in One Tree Hill. Brody is also an adult playing a teenager (he was 24 when The O.C.’s pilot aired!), but he’s genuinely funny, a little irritable, and very interested in indie music — or, put another way, a recognizable, approachable guy, even under the umbrella of teen soap opera celebrity.
The attraction to the man who produced “Death Cab Mix” for Chrismukkah is pretty obvious, but I also wonder if my obsession with Seth Cohen might be a little (damn!) bizarre. After all, his long-term attraction on Summer was basically the equivalent of Jay Gatsby giving Daisy Buchanan the green light to woo her, and I wonder if there was some unconscious part of me that, even in seventh grade — the year an Abercrombie model was ripped from my magazine and placed on the bedroom wall when I built a shrine to her — felt like I was identifying with Seth’s desire for the girl of his dreams. Yes, Seth is my all-time favorite, but he… just has a way for me to stare at Rachel Bilson’s big brown eyes and glossy hair for as long as I want, with the safe excuse that I’m just learning how to be the kind of girl I like boys with capital letters?
The girls I used to sit across the table from in college are now in their 30s, and I hope we all let the soft creatures inside us act as they please. As for me, I’m now secure enough as a bisexual to admit that I had (and still have?) crushes on Seth and Summer, though I still get a little surprised every time Adam Brody is a nobody, because when “Wants This” came on the screen and he blushed so much and I giggled, I felt like I was trying to pay homage to a crush I had as a teenager that has stood the test of time. Leighton Meester, you are one lucky lady!
