That Narrator in the Third Season of ‘Laguna Beach’ Is, Like, So Lame

Michael Muller/MTV

From left, the court nobility in the third season of “Laguna Beach”: Kyndra, Kelan, Lexie, Rocky, Cameron, Tessa, Chase and Cami.

I’m concerned about the narrator of the third season of “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” Is the new girl up to the job?

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Michael Muller/MTV

Cameron tops the list of Kyndra and her alpha girls on “Laguna Beach.”

It’s an exalted post, the starring role, and not suitable for anyone with bad nerves. MTV’s bellwether verité series started in 2004 with diligent Lauren telling her tale; driven by an unusual conviction that she could turn her platinum will into daisy charm, she grimly pursued her Girl Scout merit badge in reality exhibitionism.

Jocky Kristin came next. Breezier and more self-assured than Lauren, Kristin didn’t care about merit, and instead played the second season of “Laguna Beach” as if it were N.C.A.A. lacrosse. (These days, while Lauren has kept plugging away at a simulated career on MTV’s spinoff “The Hills,” Kristin has skipped out on “Laguna” and embraced celebrity for its own sake on red carpets and in the pages of Life & Style.)

And tonight we welcome Tessa as Kristin’s successor, the top girl of this third “Laguna Beach” go-round. Tessa has long, matte black hair, small features and a nice, freckly tan. She’s perfectly proportioned and physically confident. All of that’s well enough. But there are two catches. First, she has a creaky voice that sounds like temporary audio; she cannot carry the voice-over. Second, and worse: she’s not popular. For “Laguna Beach,” that’s downright ominous.

The conceit of the first two seasons was that we were in “the real Orange County,” among the spray-tanned narcissists and overdressed shopaholics at the summit of the bourgeoisie. All the usual yearnings — for beauty, money, health, leisure, ocean views — were the controls of the experiment in “Laguna Beach,” so that what was left to bedevil the show’s teenaged characters was only that universal misery: love. Without too many moving parts, the action was easy to follow, a boon to the inventively shot reality series, which could have too easily lost focus and become a desultory art documentary.

You see my concern: that Tessa’s exclusion from the ranks of haughty Kyndra and scheming Cami, the big dogs here, is going to suffuse the drama with status anxieties that have no place on “Laguna Beach.” The adolescent outsider story is a favorite of fiction — writers like to recreate their own freaks-and-geeks experience of high school — but it’s hard to find new angles on it. The innovation of “Laguna Beach” has been to present hermetic court intrigue with its own logic, sidelining entirely the scullery maids and pageboys who have no chance at the upper ranks. Leave it to someone else to tell their sad story.

Tessa, MTV’s Web site says, has been confined to a hospital with health problems. How very not “Laguna Beach.” She’s also lost her friendship with Kyndra; it seems unlikely that they’ll ever reconnect. Kyndra, for her part, is unlikely to care about either health problems or social justice; she’s a mean girl of the highest order, with a Joan Collins manner that would seem to belong to someone twice her age. You can see how Tessa might strike her as sniveling.

If only Kyndra were in charge! On tonight’s episode, Tessa is scheming to steal the guys who have been deputized to Kyndra’s alpha girls. (The dimmish Cameron is at the top of their list.) She and her off-brand posse don’t seem to stand a chance.

“Laguna Beach” will keep its fans, but it might not earn new ones this season: Tessa simply introduces too much reality to the otherworldly fantasy of perpetual sunshine that has driven the show so far. Besides, she’s boring. Sure, sometimes, as in movies and novels, unpopular girls are secretly noble, sophisticated and brilliant, but sometimes — we have to admit — they’re just uncool.

LAGUNA BEACH

MTV, tonight at 10, Eastern and

Pacific times; 9, Central time.

Created by Liz Gateley; Gary Auerbach, Tony DiSanto, Ms. Gateley, Mark Ford, Kevin Lopez and Dave Sirulnick, executive producers; Adam DiVello, development executive for “Laguna Beach.”

# posted by Brian @ 1:56 PM