This week on The Deep Dive: Death Cab for Cutie and The OC effect, the quick rise and fall of Las Vegas’s watchful eye, Fortnite could have been a fad but then it learned how not to take itself too seriously, a rare modern-day teen movie that actually respects its audience, and you know that meme with the dog drinking coffee in a burning room? That’s today’s artists.

Also, there won’t be a newsletter next week, so take this time to catch up on your video essay backlog and The Deep Dive will be back on October 9!

MUSIC

How The OC saved indie rock 🎸 by Little White Lies (14:56)

All it took was one showrunner who cared about the music in their show’s scenes to launch careers, single-handedly alter the course of the industry, and solidify that show’s place in indie music history – don’t you just miss the 2000s? Starting in 2003, a little show you may have heard of called The OC introduced young audiences to Death Cab for Cutie, Rooney, and a dramatized version of what lies behind the Orange Curtain. In this video, Little White Lies uncovers the genius of Josh Schwartz and music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas’s partnership to create an iconic show with an equally iconic soundtrack. By the time viewers caught on to the fact that the show was dictating their music tastes, it had already built a new set and in-story location literally designed to platform the artists it was discovering. But is Death Cab thankful for the exposure The OC gave them? Yes, but also no.

BUSINESS

The Death Of The Vegas Sphere by Pinely (18:40)

After a few viral social media posts that showcased both the best (incredible concert visuals) and worst (huge light-up billboard in the middle of Las Vegas) of the Sphere, Sin City’s orb is starting to lose steam just one year after debuting as an eyeball. The reason? As it turns out, a 16K resolution spherical screen is pretty hard to maintain, use, and sometimes even enjoy, depending on where you’re seated. In this video, Pinely looks back at the past year to tell the story of the rise and potential fall of the Las Vegas Sphere and the tens of millions of dollars it’s now lost over the course of a couple of months. Will the Sphere survive? It’s hard to say. But it definitely isn’t going to be expanding anytime soon now that London has pulled the plug on what could’ve been its second eye-themed landmark.