Laguna Beach/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch
  • Contractual Purity: Audrina Patridge and Lauren Conrad, especially after rumors circulated about an alleged sex tape Conrad had made.
  • Critical Research Failure: The stock footage of Didsbury in Greater Manchester and the M60 motorway.
  • Designated Protagonist Syndrome: All of the lead female characters from each season tend to look bland when put beside the Ensemble Darkhorse female characters who are conniving and manipulative. Lauren is about as average as it gets compared to the over-the-top and scheming Kristin (who was the first cast member to parlay her role into mainstream success). Tessa (and, by extension, Raquel) look ineffectual compared to Kendra and Cami, and Chrissy (until she grows out of her shell) is quite bland compared to Allie and the other female characters on Newport Harbor.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: It happens to Lauren Conrad and Casey Reinhardt a few times.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks
  • Narm: Many times over; the episode where Christina (a reverend's daughter who sings in choirs) is invited to New York for an important theatre audition and botches it so badly that she doesn't get called back is an early highlight.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Has happened on very rare occasions. Its follow-ups contain some doses of it.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Chase Adams worked at a surf shop?
  • Self-Parody: The writers of the MTV Canada Laguna Beach Aftershow clearly knew when it launched that the series was a target of derision from viewers, and so they mocked the worst elements of the episodes (including the teenagers' stupidity and the questionable decisions made by the show's writers to beef up the drama) in every episode, as well as produced a series of Stupid Statement Dance Mix videos that ridiculed foolish comments made by the cast.