liquidcelluloid-1 Network: MTV; Genre: Reality/Drama; Content Rating: TV-PG (some language and suggested sex involving teens); Available: DVD; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4); Seasons Reviewed: 2 seasons Any adult that voluntarily watches MTV's pseudo-reality series "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" is going to get exactly what they expect. The show hones in on its target demographic and gives them exactly what they want in a glitzy package. For me to sit here high and mighty and decry MTV for feeding the ego of a handful of Orange County families - taking a group of spoiled in-crowd teenagers and turning them into basic cable TV stars for being everything that has made their life so easy up until that moment - would be irrelevant to the show's audience and its cynical producers.Those corporate stooges here are creator Liz Gateley and developer Adam Davolla. "Laguna Beach" is trash. But it's hyper-stylized trash. Cameras capture events with angles impossible to have taken all at once and show is shaped into a such-as-it-is narrative structure. And there in lies the rub and, you might argue, the evil genius on MTV's part. The show falls in a surreal valley for the viewer: to technically polished to be real, yet so frivolous, so lazy, about so little, that who in their right mind would go to the trouble to fake or script it.Supposedly the seasons were shot over the course of 6 months, the people, situations and "drama"… are real - as real as the real orange county (take that Josh Schwartz). The "drama" is all inconsequential relationship entanglements that the characters voluntarily bring upon themselves. Those characters - a group of barely distinguishable sun worshipers who continually swap partners amongst their own incestuous group, then gossip and cry about who is with who now. They do nothing in the world but sit in the hot tub, shop, party and gossip. The girl's vocabulary consists of saying everything is "cute" and the guys have almost no vocabulary at all – struggling to grunt out monosyllabic expressions amid blank stares and silence. Aren't they cute? But even if the bubbliest teenage girl doesn't mind being pandered to, if they step back and look at it they might realize that "Laguna" violates law of inevitability # 1 for why reality shows don't work: real people are usually not very interesting – and it doesn't matter how many times they go to Cabo, how many times their car stalls in the street, how many times they get cheated on, or how many beach bonfires they go to. Having been pampered their entire lives has prevented the "Laguna" gang from growing a sense of humor. The guy's idea of a practical joke is to dress up in a bear costume and crawl into a tent, or don ski masks and stalk outside a girl's poker party smearing fake blood on the window.The bear costume comedy genius: Stephen (Stephen Colletti), who is presented through the show and the eyes of LC (Lauren Conrad) and her friends as God's gift to women. They sit around for hours talking about this guy and with feet-sweeping one-liners like "You're a hottie with a body" how can they not. The other series "stud", particularly in season 2 is Jason, whose half of the conversation is consists of sitting in silence and answering questions with questions. My favorite is when he says he's mad at his girlfriend for the look on her face. She responds "How do I look?" and he goes "You tell me". His jerk tactics work like magic on every girl on the show. In season 2 their world revolves around him.The star of the series is Kristin (Cavalleri) – and arguably LC. Both of whom serve as narrators. Both are the poster children perpetuating MTV's narcissistic lifestyle. Kristin is the "player" of the group who gets away with it with a laugh and a smile from all her friends because she's a girl. Lauren plays the nice girl role that falls for all the jerks, knowing that they are jerks, and ends every first date in the hot tub. I'm all about anti-heroes, always have been. The kids of "Laguna" led by Kristin are prime examples – but there is no way MTV had that in mind when stitching the show together. Instead of ironically mocking them, the show is a slobbering celebration of their life. But it's a life where the girls spend most of their time sitting around being victims to apathetic dudes with a reputation for cheating who then cheat on them. Giving Kristin and LC a complete pass for similar piggish behavior, the inevitable message shaped by "Laguna Beach" becomes simply: boys suck.I'm going to have to admit total lack of comprehension with the show's storyline. The kids of "Laguna Beach" appear to graduate from high school and leave for college twice. The show has a morbid fascination to it, like watching a snake eat a rat or driving past a nasty head-on collision. But if you were able to read this review, you know this much.The show might have worked by putting an ironic or satirical eye on their antics. But MTV wants these kids to be role models to melt the minds of a generation of girls so they will expect nothing more in their entertainment. Without giving away plot lines, Lauren does something completely random and out of character in the final few episodes that gives her a dramatic arc. It's almost as if she's making a play for a spin-off… * / 4

faiz_far_east I don't understand why people like this drama. I mean this is like an awful drama that i'd ever seen. No one say "like" for a billion times. They always say ..... like ...... like......like! Our ears will always remember the word like! i hate this drama. it doesn't make any sense! I would never want to see this drama again. It just make our teenage people have dirty thinking! The drama told us nothing! No message, no moral values! I can't see anything good in this drama! The girls were playing as dirty girls are so "new"! They don't know how to act properly! And again, always say "like" for a billion time more like trillion! Giving this drama a 1/10 is so not right! I mean literally if there is, I could give this drama a 0.000001 out of 10! I really mean it literally. Or much more less than that!!!! What kind of a drama and actors!

ckld07 This show is funny because you pretty much see your own life, even though you are not as rich as the characters are. Even though the "reality-ness" of the show is uncertain, it does not really matter, because, hello!!, it's just a show. It's so funny how many people, who seem to have experienced a lot of rejection during high school, and even until today lol sorry, get annoyed with the show. I mean, fine, the show is fake and just shows lives of seemed to be spoiled rich kids. But I think, the lives and experiences shown in the show are not that out of this world and unvaluable. Many ordinary people experience hooking up with someone or hanging out with friends. I think what viewers have to do when and after they watch every episode is to look at the big picture and see how much fun and true it is. People tend to trap themselves inside this bubble of the stereotypical notion of hating the "rich, spoiled kids". I think it is unfair, especially when they have not really seen a whole episode of the show or even understand what every character portrays. Viewers need to think and be critical of the morals shown in the show, and not be unfair in calling this "trashy".

KingHater This program could be an ingenious strategic weapon, were it created by terrorists to facilitate the eventual disintegration of the moral fabric of America."Laguna Beach" and its ugly sister show, "The Hills" comprise a layer of bile accumulated atop an age of media diarrhea that is severely damaging the values system of a generation of kids. The mere concept of delivering "fabricated reality" to a youth demographic before they are adequately media-literate and intellectually equipped to make such a critical distinction presents a set of truly frightening possibilities...and the fact that it's justified as mindless, harmless fun is arguably the most cynical and insidious part of it.The fallout is that we're going to see a lot of severe depression and a marked lack of ambition in the forthcoming generation, when the crushing blow of reality takes hold - a reality in which their media-fed perceptions of automatic entitlement to celebrity and wealth are challenged.Were I a parent, I would honestly consider putting a content filter on MTV so as to spare my kids the surgery-free frontal lobotomy provided by this type of content. In fact, I would sooner buy my kids subscriptions to the Spice Channel than let them watch this crap.