Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: September 28, 2004
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, “A Black & White Affair” (season 3, episode 2). [Stream on Amazon Video.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: That MTV didn’t need any lessons in the reality genre by 2004 would be a massive understatement. From The Real World to Road Rules to The Osbournes to Newlyweds, they had defined and redefined the genre many times over. But with Laguna Beach in 2004, MTV embarked upon their next reality revolution: the docu-soap. Partially an attempt to capitalize on the Orange County craze of the middle of the decade — primarily The O.C. but also the movie Orange County and of course The Real Housewives of Orange County — Laguna Beach debuted after a series of promos that assured you that no matter how high the production values were, what you were going to see would be reality. The opening title card made it even more clear.
GOT THAT?
The opening minutes of Laguna Beach are fascinating for several reasons. The first are those production values, which are honestly stunning and far beyond anything that reality had produced up until that point. Second was the narration, with Lauren Conrad speaking as a kind of omniscient and all-knowing presence while talking about the events of her own life that were ostensibly about to unfold before you. Lauren straight up tells is that she’s speaking from some point in the near future, alluding to various “drama” that is about to occur, and reminiscing about her senior year of high school in the way only a freshman in college can. I don’t feel like I’m being overly hyperbolic when I say that this framing device gives Laguna Beach an almost literary air. The only way it could have been better is if Lauren’s best friend Lo, the true Nick Carraway to Lauren’s Gatsby (which would make Stephen the Daisy Buchanan, which in your heart of hearts you know is so right, you want to cry), would have done the narration instead.
This first episode introduced the cast of characters:
- Lo, Lauren’s best friend and expert toenail-painter
- Christina, preacher’s daughter and aspiring terrible singer
- Morgan, riding out a virginity subplot that was written for her a decade earlier
- Tre, “I guess you could say he was the serious one … but he also had the best party house in Laguna”; perhaps history’s greatest ambassador for the Trucker Hat Era
- Talan, “he’s a junior, and he’s hooked up with most of the girls at our school, twice”
- Kristin, junior, wearer of chokers, starter of drama, hater of Lauren, girlfriend of Stephen
- Stephen, a long, dreamy, 17-year-old sigh in human form
- Lauren, our narrator, whose friends call her LC
There it was. The cast for one of the most perfect seasons of reality TV ever. Which is remarkable considering nearly half that aforementioned cast added basically nothing to the mix (though, honestly, making fun of Morgan and Talan for being useless is a big part of the appeal). Like most reality shows of that era (and this one, really), there’s a sense that they have to sell the opulence of these characters’ lifestyles, but past all the black-and-white party planning and talk of checking into hotels to put bubble-bath in their jacuzzis (sigh), there was an irrepressible relatability to the fact that these were just dumb high-schoolers going through dumb high-school drama the way we all were/did. MTV was smart enough to catch that particular lightning in a bottle and package it with some primo dramatics.
Laguna‘s most lasting legacy these days is that it’s the show that birthed The Hills, which would be MTV’s true docu-soap contribution to society. But some of us, the discerning ones and the dreamers, have never truly left Laguna.
