Let’s go back … back to the beginning.
In 2004, MTV debuted a brand new reality present a couple of group of teenagers dwelling in an prosperous Southern California seaside city. Laguna Beach, which ran for 3 seasons, was an aspirational look ahead to millennials who didn’t have each day entry to jaw-dropping views of the Pacific Ocean and sprawling Tuscan Mom-coded mansions — and whose closets weren’t crammed to the brim with Chanel, Dior, Billabong and Quiksilver.
But beneath the black-and-white events, journeys to the nail salon and stellar pop-punk soundtrack was a specific storyline that stored millennial viewers tuning in week after week. It was a query that divided teenagers and tweens throughout the nation in the early aughts: Should Stephen be with LC or Kristin?
“This was really the first high-profile show that focused on high school kids,” Danielle Lindemann, a sociology professor at Lehigh University and creator of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, instructed Yahoo. “[Teens and tweens] could really see themselves or it could be aspirational for younger viewers. They love it, you know, watching it and seeing the glamorous world of these older kids.”
The majority of Laguna Beach Season 1 — and an honest quantity of Season 2 — revolved round the love triangle that was Stephen Colletti, Lauren ‘LC’ Conrad and Kristin Cavallari. Laguna followers undoubtedly know the lore, however forward of the twentieth anniversary particular, The Reunion: Laguna Beach, out Friday, permit us to refresh your reminiscence.
In what felt like almost each episode, an age-old query was posed to Conrad and Cavallari by their respective associates: “So what’s going on with you and Stephen?”
Colletti and Conrad have been childhood associates who first connected when he and Cavallari have been on a break. Conrad was at all times pining for Colletti, who was at all times pining for Cavallari, who was actually simply involved with prioritizing her autonomy as a highschool senior. Colletti and Cavallari have been on-again, off-again for many of the present, however it was clear that they have been, at one level, very in love. Colletti typically ran again to Conrad and the consolation of that situationship at any time when Cavallari’s curiosity in him waned. Obviously, the back-and-forth was complicated for Conrad, who, for the longest time, solely had eyes for Colletti.
From left, Conrad, Colletti and Cavallari at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards.
(Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock)
While their glamorous, SoCal way of life wasn’t relatable for all teenagers, the messiness of their relationships was. Crushing on an unavailable man? Talk a couple of highschool ceremony of passage.
“It’s relatable in the sense that you have two people within a friend group who like the same guy,” Lindemann instructed Yahoo of the Conrad-Colletti-Cavallari love triangle. “This is something we’ve all seen in our teenage experiences, but now you’re seeing it splashed across the screen. It tapped into youth culture in a very real way and a way that we hadn’t seen before.”
What went down between Conrad, Colletti and Cavallari appears like a cautionary story of kinds — a reminder of how terribly awry issues can go if you ship combined alerts. When Colletti and Cavallari’s relationship took a rocky flip in Season 1, he brazenly flirted with Conrad and, on one event, went as far as to slut-shame Cavallari for dancing on a bartop in Cabo. The duo finally reconciled round the time of Colletti’s highschool commencement and stayed together until he left for college. But when Colletti and Cavallari have been damaged up in early Season 2, Colletti loved a romantic dinner-jacuzzi date with Conrad, which left him too preoccupied to reply any of Cavallari’s cellphone calls.
Conrad and Cavallari typically appeared to search out out about the different’s involvement with Colletti from, nicely, everybody however Colletti. Who might overlook that point Colletti, a freshman at San Francisco State University, went again to Laguna for Valentine’s Day so he might take Cavallari out to dinner, which he did not inform Conrad about when he confirmed as much as her home with flowers and sweets the subsequent morning?!
It’s price noting, nonetheless, that a lot of what we noticed on Laguna Beach was both fabricated or exaggerated by producers. Healthy communication amongst youngsters simply doesn’t make for juicy reality TV.
“When it comes to the love triangle, [the producers] from the jump made it seem like Lauren and I were just straight up having this affair out in the open when I never cheated on Kristin during our relationship,” Colletti told Entertainment Tonight in March. “Lauren and I never did anything like that.”
“You and I never really had any beef, really,” Cavallari instructed Conrad on an episode of her Back to the Beach podcast, which she cohosted with Colletti, in 2022. “I mean, obviously, there was like a little truth to what happened with the three of us. But I felt like MTV coming kept it alive and made it way worse than it ever would have been.”
Conrad reiterated Cavallari’s sentiments in an interview with People revealed final week: “I don’t think anyone realized they were going to pin us against each other in that way. When we were living our lives, it never felt like ‘you against me.’ But that was clearly something that came out of the show.”
From left, “Laguna Beach” forged members Stephen Colletti, Kristin Cavallari, Morgan Smith, Christina Sinclair, Trey Phillips, Lo Bosworth, Lauren Conrad and Talan Torreiro.
(Roku)
Twenty years faraway from all of it, the discourse surrounding this Laguna love triangle — and the pitting of ladies in opposition to one one other — nonetheless feels as related as ever. Case in level? The latest Summer House drama that erupted between Amanda Batula, West Wilson and Ciara Miller.
“I think you see that ‘rooting for a side’ now, where people get so invested in these people’s lives [and] they form these teams,” Jack Balderrama Morley, managing editor of Dwell and creator of Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV, instructed Yahoo, referencing the Batula-Wilson-Miller controversy. “I think that has roots in scripted TV like The O.C. and other soaps and melodramas that people were watching before and where people would get really invested.”
Conrad and Cavallari at “The Reunion: Laguna Beach” after occasion.
(JC Olivera/Variety through Getty Images)
Laguna Beach set a precedent. The present proved that fandom might transcend and even thrive exterior of scripted tv.
“I think it really was the reality show that transitioned [fandom] from like, a scripted series to a reality series, and then [it] just gets so messy because it’s real people … and you have so much more access,” Morley stated. “It took that weird parasocial relationship and brought it into the real world, which is so dangerous.”
In 2026, all appears nicely in the Laguna Beach lady world. The present’s as soon as rabid millennial fan base has considerably mellowed out — and what was as soon as the juiciest onscreen feud of 2000s reality TV is now a factor of the previous. Just ask Cavallari.
“It’s been really nice to have this time to get to know her as an adult,” Cavallari recently said of Conrad. “There’s definitely been a reconnection and I just respect her on so many different levels.”
