Its Beef Week at HuffPost Culture. Fight us.

A pretty, short-haired blonde a junior at the local high school rolls her eyes as she watches a room full of senior girls dance on hotel beds in black minidresses. Shes been over this party before it even began, and is trying to get her boyfriend, Stephen, to leave so she doesnt die of boredom.

I like how were all wearing black and Kristins wearing white. How ironic! an older, girl-next-door-type exclaims as she glares at the junior, whos now loudly announcing her departure.

Their beef is clearcut: the older schoolmate, Lauren Conrad (aka LC), is best friends with Stephen and thinks his current significant other is the wrong girl for him. Kristin Cavallari , on the other hand, isnt a fan of the BFF, and is hellbent on staking her claim to Stephen.

At least, thats what the 2004 MTV reality series Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County led us to believe.

To this day, Gary Auerbach , an executive producer who developed Laguna Beach through his company Go Go Luckey, would like us to think the greatest feud of early-aughts reality TV played out organically. In a recent interview with HuffPost, he continued to deny claims that the show was scripted.

I know people like to think its a scripted show, and I think most shows have since then gone more into a scripted reality arc, but we really didnt plan it that way or do it that way, he said.

Cavallari disagrees. She and Conrad have never been as big of enemies as they wanted it to seem, she told HuffPost during a Build Series segment in April . Its just one of those relationships that loves to get played out, but its not quite as it seems.

So how did MTV manage to turn what might have been a slight rivalry into a bankable primetime attraction? The process involved comforting nervous parents after Janet Jacksons MTV-produced wardrobe malfunction, consulting with one-hour TV drama writers to learn the ropes of storylines, and persuading a hotel in Cabo San Lucas to let cameras inside a famous high school spring break destination .

It added up to a reality TV formula thats been co-opted and reproduced across networks from Bravos Real Housewives of Orange County (which premiered in 2006) to Es Keeping Up with the Kardashians (2007).

And that formula required a beef.

Laguna Beach took the television landscape by storm when it debuted. It capitalized on the success of The O.C. which saw bad-boy outsider Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) infiltrate a click of spoiled, rich Orange County kids in 2003. MTV, aware that its target audience was the same as Foxs hit teen show, concocted an offshoot, highly sellable idea: a drama-reality series that followed the real kids of the O.C..

We actually cast the show in the high school, Auerbach said, and we were going to film it there and outside of it, but it was right at the time when MTV produced Janet Jacksons [Super Bowl] halftime show and the town wasnt that happy after that.

The school pulled out because parents were freaking out about cameras being in the classrooms, Cavallari said. But MTV had found all of us, so they didnt care. They said, Great, were still going to do the show. I think we filmed for like eight or nine months on the weekends, and it was crazy.

In fact, according to Cavallari and some of her castmates , their presumption was the show was going to be True Life: I Go To School in the Real Orange County. They didnt realize what it would turn into.

There was so much that we shot for a long period of time, Stephen Colletti that Stephen told Us Magazine in July , and there was a bit of a shock to what the show wound up being.

What it wound up being is one of the most successful reality shows of the 2000s , with the Season 1 finale drawing almost three million viewers. The sunburnt love triangle between Cavallari, Conrad and Colletti boosted the ratings, as loyal shippers tuned in Mondays at 10 p.m. to see which blonde would be winning in the seemingly choreographed fight for Collettis college-bound heart. From the West Coast to the East Coast, Team Kristin and Team LC shirts went on sale in Hollister stores across the country.

I was surprised it got to that place, Auerbach said. But what wasnt surprising was having a lot of fans that were into it... You never expect how fans will take things. I guess now with fanfiction we see the epitome of what that can be.

But Cavallari maintains that the outcome was the opposite of unexpected for the production team. She and Conrad have never been great friends, but producers pushed the love triangle tension into something bigger than it actually was.