Havrilesky's Guide to the Idiot Box

For those in search of slightly more substantive fare, the second season of "Weeds" premieres this week (10 p.m. EDT, Monday, Aug. 24, on Showtime) and damn, is it good. For more details, look for my review Monday morning on Salon. In the meantime, though, let me throw "Weeds" fans a little teaser by telling you that the theme song, Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes," will be performed by a different musician or band each week. The episodes I saw featured Elvis Costello, Death Cab for Cutie and Engelbert Humperdinck, and they were all fantastic, but I'm particularly looking forward to the versions by Ozomatli and Regina Spektor. It's official: "Weeds" is the coolest show on TV.

You know, if you're so uncool that you care about cool (which I am), and if "Weeds" is the coolest show, then "Laguna Beach" (premieres 10 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Aug. 16, on MTV) may be the most odious, revolting show on television. In fact, "Laguna Beach" is a program so abhorrent and vile that it can make you deeply ashamed to be a human being. Seeing these vicious little mutants milling about against a golden, glowing landscape, prattling on in their tedious native tongue about nothing in particular, driving around in their luxury cars, shopping endlessly for ridiculous, overpriced clothes, throwing wretched little parties, and stoking the fires of each other's worst impulses is like having your body hair tweezed off by an angry drunk. This show will suck the soul right out of your body and leave you rotting like lunchmeat in the sun. "Laguna Beach" makes "Big Brother" look like "Touched by an Angel." In short, it's a foul, reprehensible exercise in shallowness and spite that makes me feel angry, irritable and sick to my stomach every time I watch it. Needless to say, I can't stop watching it.

Of course, we all recognize that most teenagers are wretched little beasts with nothing of interest to say. We know very well that teenagers are designed to torture and punish everyone around them with the sound of their shrill, screechy, callow voices, squealing out their shallow, hurtful or just downright stupid thoughts. But what's truly disturbing about these creepy little freaks is that, even though they may be the most deeply uncool humans on the planet (if you're uncool enough to care about that sort of thing, which I am), they nonetheless share in the illusion that they're the coolest humans around, that the word "cool" begins and ends with them. Not only are they incredibly uncool to begin with, but they're also uncool to care so much about who's cool and who isn't, plus they think that they're the very coolest, which is the least cool thing of all! And sadly, studies have shown that no amount of belittling them, demeaning them publicly or smacking them right in the middle of their empty faces has the slightest impact on the delusional level of narcissism that flourishes in their teenage minds!

This is also why we're all a little nostalgic about our teen years. Even the shittiest teenage experience carries with it the vague glow of promise, or at least the notion that, no matter how crappy everything is, it would still look pretty good in a music video.

These delusions are part of what make teenagers so unbearable. And if you think average, everyday teenagers are scary, throw the little cads into a sunny, lustrous setting, give them big fistfuls of free cash and credit cards and shiny cars with leather interiors, and watch them evolve instantly into fiendish, self-serving demons more hideous than can be imagined.

Which brings us to the third season of "Laguna Beach," where we meet our brand-new heroine, Tessa, and her friend Raquel, or "Rocky" for short. Tessa was once friends with Kyndra, a catty wildebeest with triple-processed blond hair and big, dumb, bovine eyes, but their friendship fell apart when Kyndra began to surround herself with other mean-spirited cows and left the more mild-mannered, thoughtful Tessa in the dust. Those familiar with the first two seasons of "Laguna Beach" will immediately wonder why Tessa is the lead character, here, instead of Kyndra. After all, Kyndra, like Kristen and L.C. before her, is the vaguely glamorous ringleader of a big group and appears to have many of the inarticulate Neanderthal guys in the school at her beck and call. Or, as she so gracelessly puts it, "I'm glad that we have our boys. I love that we own them, basically."

Kyndra obviously belongs on top of the wildebeest food chain, as evidenced by her ability to conveniently ignore the fact that her crush, Cameron, the beefy dim-bulb who everyone has declared the hottest guy around, is hanging out with Jessica. (You might remember Jessica as the slightly irritating pushover who followed Jason around like a lost puppy last season.) Why Jessica, who has graduated from high school, is content not only to demean herself with a high school junior, but to compete for the guy with other high school girls, is anyone's guess. Oh yeah, it's all being broadcast on national television! I almost forgot.

Cameron's motivations are a little easier to parse. Apparently having spent the summer months alone with his Abdominizer, his brand-new six-pack abs are on full display, and it seems he's going to have a lot of success leveraging his overdeveloped man-titties for some grade-A booty and a lot of air time. The first order of business? Take Jessica on a romantic date to a restaurant, sit at the bar, and then watch the basketball game the entire time she's talking. Next? Go to a party at Kyndra's and spend the night with her. Dude! Way to pin the tail on the whoring sea donkey!

Keep in mind, Cameron the two-timing skeezer has already been referred to as "a good guy" by half of the women on the show, while all of the same women simultaneously lament that "Girls are so mean" and "Girls are sketchy" and so on. There's a double standard at play, to be sure, but there's also something else: The real drama here is between women, not men. Ultimately, men just aren't formidable enough or interesting enough to the girls to constitute worthwhile jousting opponents. Even the cameras seem bored with Cameron and the other chumpy high school dudes, limiting coverage to the same "So what's up?" conversations between two guys, as they limply throw the basketball around or play a few sloppy holes of golf together.

Meanwhile, though, what the ladies of "Laguna Beach" truly savor is not the booty or the conquest itself, but the notion of having "won out" over the other ladies. Naturally, then, the three-headed hydra of doom herself, Kyndra, hardly feels remorseful after a night with someone else's guy. "Are him and Jessica still together?" she asks her too-cool-for-school friend, Cami. "It doesn't matter," Cami responds, affecting that air of indifference that, however transparent, seems pretty effective on her tribe. "Does she like him?" Kyndra persists. "Because if she does, that makes it more fun!" Ah, the breathtaking sight of a Bad News Jane, taking her first shaky steps in a quest to become a ruthless, backstabbing slut muffin!

Are these girls really that sketchy, though, or are they much smarter than they look, smart enough to know that the producers and the audiences at home want a catfight more than anything else, perpetuating that age-old story about how women are nasty and merciless to each other? Or is the main narrative here about how rich teenagers are malignant predators? What's worse, an obvious double standard, a bunch of truly nasty girls, or the idea that some normal teenagers of average nastiness are willing to play up their basest urges in order to please the sick, aging voyeurs (like me) at home on the couch?

Regardless of the true nature of its subject, one thing is for certain: "Laguna Beach" is so repugnant and contemptible, watching it is just like sticking your head into a bucket of lukewarm split-pea soup and then wandering, blind, over the nearest cliff.

In other words, it's a very special show for the masochists among us. Strangely enough, though, renowned masochist Morgan Spurlock, who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size Me," has created a show that's the polar opposite of MTV's teen-reality purgatory: "30 Days" (9 p.m. EDT Wednesdays on FX). Unlike "Laguna Beach," a reality show that gives you the temporary illusion that most people are really stupid and sick and rotten to the core, "30 Days" is a reality show that broadens your horizons while reviving your hope in humanity. In fact, watching "30 Days" is sort of like lying at the bottom of a cliff, covered in split-pea soup, when a good Samaritan wanders by, wipes off your face, gives you a ride to the nearest diner, and buys you a cup of coffee and a big slice of hot cherry pie. Mmm, pie!

Now in its second season, "30 Days" takes average people and places them in situations that are likely to open their minds or at least change their perspectives. During the first season, host Spurlock and his girlfriend tried to live on minimum-wage salaries for a month, and the results were terrifyingly bleak: They couldn't afford to pay their rent or feed themselves, and their jobs were so tiring and awful that they came home grumpy and mean, with serious back pain, to boot. Last season, the show also sent a Christian to live with a Muslim family, sent a straight man to live with a gay man in the Castro, and put the concerned mom of a drinking teenager on a monthlong alcohol binge.

This season the show is tackling even weightier fare. The premiere episode focused on Frank George, an anti-immigration activist who was sent to live with a family of illegal immigrants. Although George remained staunchly opposed to illegal immigration, he grew close to the family over the course of the month. After visiting the ramshackle homes and awful conditions that the family left behind in Mexico, he recognized that the family didn't have much choice but to seek out another life -- it was a matter of survival for them.

In upcoming episodes, atheists clash with Christians and pro-lifers take on pro-choice activists. One of my favorite episodes, though, (airing 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 16) introduces Tom, a former football player with stress- and anger-management issues, to some New Age methods for relaxing and expressing his emotions. At first, the producers thrust Tom into some seriously alienating situations, including an awkward ritual featuring middle-aged women chanting, "We all come from the goddess, and to her we shall return!" while Tom looks ready to crawl out of his skin. Tom's girlfriend, Misti, is less than pleased with the whole thing, clearly equating the word "spiritual" with some kind of voodoo that will steal Tom's soul and bring God's wrath down upon them. (That's "Laguna Beach" that does that, Misti, not New Age religion.) Misti also seems a little bit jealous of Tom's female life coach, who spends all this time talking to Tom about his emotions and giving him advice about letting go of his anger -- the same advice Misti has been trying to give him for years, only now, suddenly, Tom is listening.

But when Misti finally meets Tom's life coach, she really likes her and changes her mind about the whole thing. And you really have to hand it to the producers for finding Tom in the first place -- he, and most of the other guinea pigs willing to engage in this elaborate social experiment, are really open-hearted, lovable people. Even though they might seem reticent and closed-minded at first, their eyes are usually opened by their exposure to other people's lives and perspectives. "It's just been wonderful for us," Misti tells the life coach. "I mean, we're so much happier, and he is so much happier." Aww.

If you miss the whole season of "30 Days" -- and you really shouldn't -- don't you dare miss the sixth episode, in which Spurlock gets sent to prison for almost a month. If you're lucky enough not to have any sense of what life in prison is like, brace yourself -- it's not nearly as relaxing or as interesting as it looks on "Prison Break."

While the last sweltering days of summer wear on as slowly as this very long column does, don't be fooled: You only have a few short weeks left to savor the most ludicrous and vacuous TV programs of the year. Even as you anxiously await a whole new slate of shows, eager to see Michael C. Hall playing a murderous forensics expert (Showtime's "Dexter") or to catch Aaron Sorkin's "Sports Night"-like drama about a "Saturday Night Live"-style skit show (NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"), I want to urge you to live in the moment. The sweet nectar of summer TV is still yours for the taking! Don't let the cool winds of autumn blow through before you indulge in your share of foolish summer fare.

From 'I like to watch', the delectable Heather Havrilesky's weekly review of all that the idiot box has to offer, exclusively available to salon.com premium members.