The Good

This show captures a microscopic section of a place in Orange County, CA that is located on the beach.

The Bad

The people on this show are a horrible representation of Orange County.

Laguna Beach: The Complete Second Season is a "reality" show that chronicles the lives of Kristin, Alex H., Jessica, Jason, Alex M. Taylor and the rest of cast members as they live their lives on camera. We see them cruising the beach, going to parties, shopping, working (or what passes for work) and basically just showing one side of the multifaceted area that is Orange County, CA.

This three disc set is pack with 17 episodes on two discs, and the entire third disc is devoted to a slew of bonus features to give you everything you could ever want to know about these people. Fans of Laguna Beach should be very excited to own this.

Features

Deleted Scenes

Playing as one long clip, I just quickly scrolled through these because I felt the shows themselves got the point across. Still if you must see more footage of parties, shopping and other pedantic rituals, I am sure that you will enjoy what they have put together here. I think I might have liked this better if the scenes had been more interactive.

Cast Interviews

These are interviews with all the major cast members like Alex, Taylor, Kristin, Jason, LC, etc.. They all discuss what it's like doing the show, the other cast members, handling fame, Jason and Jessica's relationship, etc.. I thought these were sort of redundant because if you watch the show than you generally know all of this.

Featurettes

This section contains Laguna Guide to Love, Fight the Slide 2005, Behind the Season 2 Finale (with the cast members), Seventeen Magazine Photo Shoot and Cosmo Girl Magazine Photo Shoot. I chose to check out the Fight the Slide 2005 section because I remember when the mudslides happened in Orange County. Also, Stephen shoots these in an interesting way because he cares but he's also detached at the same time. For fun, I checked out Laguna Guide to Love and was treated to what these characters look for in a relationship. I find it interesting that people would act the way they do on this show, but in the Special Features that goes double.

Laguna Memories

Comprised of Cast Home Videos and Photo Albums, we are shown older footage of who these characters are. This is done with both video and pictures, and consumers have a range of options in terms of who they wish to look at and what they wish to see. Aside from thinking this show is the antichrist, I do give the creators of this DVD credit for putting together such a strong mix of features.

Highlights

Girls are Vicious and The Two Triangles make up this section. Truthfully, if you don't have a lot of time, this section gives you a nice thumbnail of what this show is all about. We see the girls being catty, the guys trying to be tough and what I think is odd, is that didn't movies like Some Kind of Wonderful show just how dorky this class of people is? I guess they listen to the singing, they just don't hear the song.

Casting Tapes

Like the Deleted Scenes, these too are cut together in one long take. We get to see older images of these characters before MTV has given them their makeover. If you think about that, why should they look any different? Isn't this a reality show? What is most interesting is how refined the characters are now as opposed to how they appear on these early tapes.

Video

Widescreen. It is the high quality video look of this show that makes me wonder just how much of a "Reality Show" it is? First off, it looks really good which isn't the problem. Everything just seems too convenient. These characters seem to always have things happening and it just feels staged. As if they are playing types as opposed to being themselves.

Audio

Dolby Digital. Considering all the characters, the shooting conditions and the various locales that the people recording this show have to be in, I was highly impressed with how good the audio was. They have also spiced up the soundtrack by mixing in popular music, so that everything keeps itself in line with the feel of MTV.

Package

The cast of Laguna Beach: The Complete Second Season stands all dolled up against a fiery ocean sunset on this front cover. If this doesn't turn you off, nothing will. The back shows one image of a character going into the water in a bikini. There is a description of the show, a Special Features listing and technical specs. The three discs are packed into three slim cases, with different characters from the show displayed on each cover. The back contains more cast images and descriptions of the show. Inside are episode listings and descriptions for all 17 shows.

Final Word

I find it hard to put into words how much this show bothers me. I give it a lot more credit than The O.C. which like Laguna Beach, only shows one small section of what is a very diverse county. What I cannot fathom is why some industrious TV producer hasn't made Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove or Santa Ana into a show? Talk about areas that are ripe for documentation! Also, with the audiences from those areas making up the audiences for the aforementioned shows, I think we are looking at programming that could do very well in prime-time.

While this show almost made me sick with the way these characters carried on, fans of Laguna Beach are going to very much get what they pay for with this Second Season.

Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County was released .