I can just picture the scene in MTV’s hq when the second season of Laguna Beach set the effing place on fire. I’ve always loved the laguna, but I thought it was kind of niche programming, appealing to those of us who, say, watched all of the My Super Sweet 16 reunion shows. Twice. (New season premieres tomorrow at 10 pm. Just putting it out there). But lo, the laguna exploded, and it was good. I’m sure the morning the ratings rolled in they commissioned everyone to find The Next Laguna, something to hold us over between the season 2 finale and a time when LC will be able to doe-eye her way through “The Hills” (premiere May 24th) while Kristin starts nailing Jessica Simpson’s leftovers. Kristin, by the way, has the hardest working publicist in town, and made her way into Jane magazine’s “30 Under 30.” Granted, this list also included a female DPW worker in new york, but still. Mazel tov, Kristin.

The question remains– how do you follow up the laguna? Like catching lightning in a jar, no? What could people want to watch more than rich white kids? Skinny pretty people! Dur!

It took me awhile to warm up on 8th and Ocean. The first episode isn’t all that great, it mostly just introduced the “characters” and laid some groundwork. There’s the eponymous owner of the Irene Marie modeling agency, looking as though she had been tanned and weather-sealed by an old west saddle maker. There’s Vinci, the 6 figure arrogant male model who has trouble (a) stringing together an intelligible sentence and (b) getting out of bed before 11 am, despite his somewhat lax schedule of laying by the pool and nailing bitches. We also have Kelly and Sabrina, identical twins who starred in an Acuvue 2 commercial, who have the most intricate and manipulative relationship involving skin care and boob jobs that I’ve ever seen. Then there’s Teddy John, playa extrordinaire, who sets his sights early on Britt, a fresh-faced midwestern girl who was homeschooled (red flag!) before moving to Florida to refuse to do modeling shoots that involve wearing anything less covering than a nun’s habit.

During his pursuit of Britt, Teddy John manages to bag another female model in a hot tub, within 50 yards of where Britt looked on from her model apartment balcony. Clearly, he was able to do this with his talent for the spoken word:

TJ: You’re hot. Do you think I’m hot?

Chick: You’re a hottie. Wait, you hate that word.

TJ: You’re gorgeous. You’re a gorgeous-ie.

Kids, stay in school.

Sadly for Teddy John, Britt spends one of the early episodes in a church basement meeting of Pretty People for Jesus in which she declares the big JC both her “maker” and “husband.” Huh, how does that work, I wonder? Also, how do you find your way to said meetings? Are there some kind of markers leading you to them?

Oh, good. I can only hope that this meeting was taking place right next to Grammar Enthusiasts for Ganesh.