Ryan Atwood walked so Connell Waldron could run: An ode to the boys of 'The O.C.' and 'Normal People'

• Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for "Normal People" and "The O.C."
• Ryan Atwood was the romantic lead in 2003's seminal teen drama "The O.C." while Connell Waldron is the lead in Hulu's brand new series "Normal People."
• These shy-but-not-too-shy jock boys have an uncanny amount of characteristics in common, including their unusual smarts and love for necklaces.
• I find this similarity delightful.
• It also shows how "Normal People" is such a drastically different, and deeper, look at first loves and losses.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

This week, few things brought me as much joy as realizing "Normal People" hunk Connell Waldron is effectively a more evolved and powerful version of "The O.C." bad-boy Ryan Atwood.

I was in high school when "The O.C." first aired in the early-to-mid '00s. Creator Josh Schwartz pulled out all the stops when it came to over-the-top plot twists and will-they-won't-they love stories and triangles (and quadrangles).

While attempting to find joy through nostalgic entertainment, I've been rewatching Fox's "The O.C." and reveling in the high-drama of it all. So imagine my surprise when I decided to also start watching Hulu's new drama series, "Normal People," which is based on a novel of the same name written by Sally Rooney.

I admittedly haven't read the book yet, yet I found myself tracing parallel after parallel between two of the shows' main characters: Ryan Atwood and Connell Waldron.

Both Ryan and Connell are nice jocks with similar looks and a shared love of wearing necklaces

First, let's compare how remarkably similar the male leads of "The O.C." and "Normal People" are to one another.

In each series, we meet a boy. This boy has shaggy, dark blonde hair and blue eyes often held in a squint, like he's trying to figure something or someone out. He's in high school, but he looks like he's 20 (probably because, well, he's played by an actor in his 20s). This boy wears a necklace. We all love this necklace. This boy is literally both Ryan Atwood and Connell Waldron.

Both characters are even styled similarly in their shows for a few key scenes, like when Connell years the classic "hoodie-under-a-jacket" look that Ryan wears in the opening scenes of "The O.C." pilot.

And, of course, there's that necklace.

In "Normal People," Connell wears a silver chain around his neck from start to finish. This chain has become a sensation, with an Instagram account (@connellschain) closing in on 100,000 followers just two weeks after the show debuted on Hulu and BBC Three at the end of April.

In "The O.C.," Ryan wears a tight choker necklace for the first few episodes, too. Eventually, he ditches that particular piece of jewelry, swapping it for an iconic leather bracelet, but the choker is an integral part of his character for fans of the show.

Even the "Connell's Chain" Instagram account has made references to "The O.C." In a May 13 post, the chosen caption read: "Alexa, play Phantom Planet 'California' lol jk play 'The Chain.'" As any "O.C." fan will know, the song "California" by Phantom Planet served as the title credit music for the series.

Similarities between Ryan and Connell crossover into their character's backstories and personalities, too. Their storylines each start in their later high school years and kick off with an important romantic relationship blossoming.

Both boys are described in their respective shows as unusually smart, and they play high school sports. The girls they fall in love with both come from substantially more privileged households. They're both shown as "shy," stumbling around social situations, often substituting a grunt or just silence in place of an actual opinion.

But it's not a typical shyness. They're both just extremely guarded, coming to life around certain close friends. In Ryan's case, his guardedness comes from a lifetime of trauma and abuse at home. In Connell's case, his discomfort in many social situations is a result of intense anxiety and inward pressures.

And there's extra magic in moments when they both finally seem at ease. Their smiles are doled out in small, shy bursts, like they have a limited supply of them and wants to save each one for a worthy moment of sparkle.

Plus, for me, the comparison was cemented by each show playing Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" during at least one key emotional scene. If that doesn't scream early aughts drama, nothing does.

But 'Normal People' takes Connell's character to a much deeper place

Where "The O.C." started a generation's obsession with the shy-but-not-shy-jock trope, "Normal People" takes it to all-new heights — and depths.

"The O.C." starts out with Ryan's arrival to the eponymous Orange County (Newport Beach, to be precise) in Southern California. His status as an outsider is the core tension of most episodes, but Ryan is not the sole dramatic focus of the show. "The O.C." is a roller coaster of inter-family fights and multiple teen romances and lavish look at the lives of rich and powerful families of Southern California.

The literal girl-next-door, Marissa Cooper, is Ryan's main love interest for the first three seasons, but he juggles several other hook-ups. We're told early on in the show that he's had plenty of sex and sexual partners by the age of 17, but almost never see that side of him in action. It's not even until the third season of the show that he even has sex with Marissa, his first great love.

Ryan is also significantly more angry and violent than Connell. Though his intentions are often noble, he's very quick to throw a punch. Rewatching the series now, it's wild realizing how many times Ryan's anger issues and self-destructive behaviors get in the way of his own happiness, and how not a single adult thinks to get him more professional help.

"Normal People," with its 12-episode run (and each episode coming in around the 25-minute-long mark), is a much tighter story. From start to finish, Connell and his great love, Marianne, are the sole narrative focus. The show spans several years and follows Connell and Marianne from high school to college and their on-and-off relationship.

This singular focus means we get to see a much more nuanced characterization in Connell than we ever do with Ryan. His character is given the space to unfold in a more natural way, and he's all-the-more lovable for it.

He and Marianne have sex for the first time in the second episode. The nearly eight-minute-long scene shows an incredible amount of care between Connell (the experienced sexual partner in the situation) and Marianne (who hadn't had sex before). It's practically a masterclass in consent and shows a tender and thoughtful side of Connell that's almost excruciatingly endearing.

Connell may be prone to frustration in a way that echoes Ryan, but he's never violent. He's shown growing more and learning how to better communicate and process his own feelings and relationship to Marianne. The series comes to an emotional head for Connell when he falls into a deep depression, and a friend advises him to seek out therapy. (You know who definitely could have used some therapy? "The O.C.'s" Ryan Atwood.)

Whether it's through the device of that therapy or the many quiet, intimate conversations he has with Marianne, "Normal People" manages to show a lot more of Connell's internal life and thoughts than we ever saw with Ryan.

There's also a lot more nuance in the phenomenal performance given by Mescal, who can bring Connell from content to despairing in a single scene with breathtaking empathy.

Connell is an improvement on Ryan thanks to the maturity and sensitivity with which his character is handled, and the quiet way we're allowed to sit with him in longer conversations. We get to see him guarded and around friends in school, and also stripped down (literally) and vulnerable when he's with Marianne.

While 'The O.C.' moves at a lightning-fast pace, 'Normal People' gives us the granular details of one simple and heartbreaking love story

It's not that McKenzie wasn't capable of a similar performance to Mescal's, but simply that "The O.C." wasn't as deep of a show. "The O.C." was my generation's introduction to soap-opera-levels of drama. Ryan didn't have time for therapy or eight-minute sex scenes, there were too many bananas storylines going on for that.

The similarities between their characters, which are so apparent in the pilot episodes of both shows, start to fall away once you see how many over the top storylines were packed into "The O.C."

"Normal People" was only ever about Connell and Marianne and both of their growth individually and as a couple. Watching the Hulu series, especially back-to-back with "The O.C.," is like seeing the rest of the iceberg beneath the surface of the shy-jock trope.

What "Normal People" offers is an intimate and thoughtful look at the way life tends to rip your inner-self to pieces. It's about the growth two people often need to experience before a relationship can work and the importance of learning to say the things that are often buried too deep beneath anxiety or nervousness or fear or desire.

"The O.C." was a fantasy version of the brooding, self-destructive, exhilaratingly cute brand of love. But "Normal People" pushes far beyond that, and reflects on the achingly deep, literally life-changing love some of us are lucky enough to find in real life.

It's brilliant to see the scope of the story Ryan and Marissa never had in "The O.C" play out in "Normal People"; the way knowing a person (and being known by them) alters the way you move through the entire world.

So here's to Ryan Atwood, the teen heartthrob character who laid the perfect groundwork for a generation of millennial women to fall in love with Connell Waldron. Your shaggy hair, blue eyes, and perfect choice of jewelry will always be in our hearts.