What Goes On In Cabo, Stays In Cabo (and then is broadcast on MTV)

Have you ever wondered what the real OC is like? I mean the real deal, man? Well, look no further than MTV’s latest reality offering, Laguna Beach which provides a soapy look into the lives of several pretty, wealthy, and popular teenagers living in the titular town. Life doesn’t seem to be very hard for these kids. The biggest hardship seemed to come from a skinny girl named Jen who at the start of last night’s episode complained that someone had broken her flat iron. Apparently the cleaning lady had just been fired and Jen is like – you know – not used to cleaning up after herself. So she had left it out, and somehow it broke. Like OMG! Where is Lupe when you need her???Tonight’s episode centered around a Spring Break trip to Cabo San Lucas, a place where lazy parents send their kids and then act surprised when they return home drunk or with herpes. In preparation for the big trip, LC – aka fake Erika Christiansen (who in turn is fake Julia Styles) – and her aforementioned vacuous friend Jen headed to a bikini shop to check out the thongs and engage in that favorite pasttime of girls: catty character assasination. Oh, actually, before they did that, Jen displayed her talents for fakery with a sweet “Bye!” to a random (and clearly unpopular) girl. Paging Regina George. We have your replacement on line one.

LC and Jen browsed through swimsuits until Lauren (LC’s full, un-OC’d name) stumbled upon the Scarlett Letter of bikinis. You can’t buy that, Kristin has it! exclaimed Jen as viewers across America heard a “Dunh dunh DUNH!!!” in their heads.

Enter Kristin, the blonde, longer-nosed rival to LC. Apparently these two have a beef because they like totally love the same dreamy guy, Stephen. And in a very Anna/Summer twist, they’re both hooking up with him. As Kristin and her sidekicks Alex and Morgan (Pat, Terry and Chris were busy at the androgenous name club) went to a different bikini shop, we got a sense that this trip to Cabo was going to be a love triangle showdown. And in snobby girl world, that can only mean one thing: evil stares and rolling eyes.

In what I can only assume was an attempt to reinforce the rich girl stereotype, Kristin and Alex slipped into some tanning beds and proceeded to call each other on their cell phones. Man, how I would have loved to have seen a big cell-phone sized splotch of untanned skin on their faces. I don’t remember what they were babbling about because I was too distracted by Alex and her bizarre resemblance to Roz from Frasier.

Anyway, all the girls and the guys whooshed down to Cabo in a lovely airplane montage, but I couldn’t help wishing they had simply gone down to TJ and partaken in some Marissa Cooper pill popping activities. Seriously, I need to know if teenagers who find girls passed out in alleys call the police or simply hold them in their arms and look up to the heavens as if to say “ACTING!”

Nevertheless, the teens all galavanted around their Cabo hotel, soaking in the Pacific Ocean, the palm trees, and the warm weather. Southern California would be so much better if it had those things. Oh wait… Meanwhile, LC and Kristin’s dad chuckled to themselves in a quiet office as if to say “Oh, teenagers!” Somehow I don’t think LC’s dad said “My girl’s failing her classes, hahahaha.” Similarly, I’m sure Kristin’s dad didn’t respond with “Well, my daughter’s been sleeping with half the guys in her class. Oh kids these days, hahaha!” Yay parental neglect!

Down in Mexico, the girls primped in the mirror (aka the de facto confessional for this show) and gabbed about people behind their backs. Why does the drama always follow us, they asked. Um, that will happen if you’re creating it. With hair and makeup carefully in place, it was then time to mess it all up by going down to a rowdy bar and getting wasted. Kristin, in a lovely transparent trick to woo Stephen’s attention, jumped up on a pole and began her audition for “Girls Gone Wild”. Luckily for her, shallow gestures work on shallow people. Stephen assaulted her with a battery of witty barbs that went along the lines of “Slut! Bitch! You slutty bitch!” I love when drunk guys do that. “You SLUT!…that I sleep with.”

The next morning, Stephen articulately described his interaction with Kristin. “I was like zhzzz and then like zhzzz,” he said. His friends then asked if he was also like “brrrppp” or more like “vrreeee,” to which he replied “rrrrrrrnnh.” Stephen’s internal conflict was later complemented by a lovely little trip to some island where he surfed the waves in tranquility. Oh, the torment of Stephen. Will he ever find serenity?

Probably not. At dinner, he sat next to LC who doted on him like a caring mother. Feeling the need to drive up her maternal skills, Kristin decided that she too could feed a boy, so she turned to the dorky guy next to her and nearly forced a spoon of molé down his throat. “Who me?” he managed to say as she stuffed his face with Mexican fare. With the gauntlet thrown down, Stephen and LC simply left the table to go off and— well, I don’t know what they did. My satellite went out. I’ll just assume that something mildly scandalous happened and all the girls were a twitter about it.

This show has me asking just one question. Where is Seth Cohen? Okay, not him literally, but can we at least get some sort of culture clash here? All these kids are the popular “Welcome to the OC, bitch!” types, but surely not everyone at Laguna Beach High is pretty and cool and invited to posh events like the “Black and White Ball.” I mean, what’s a teen movie without the dorks and underdogs?

Oh well. I’m going to go listen to Hilary Duff and Avril Levigne now.