The cattiness started immediately on the third season of the MTV docu-soap "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County."

"And then there were the popular girls," says Tessa, the season's teenage narrator. "There's Cami, the Queen of Mean. She went out of her way to make my life miserable. ... That is Kyndra, the leader of the popular clique. We used to be friends, but she turned her back on me when I needed her most."

Those are fighting words in the hermetically sealed bubble of beachside affluence that is home to the calculating teenagers of "Laguna Beach." To employ one of their favorite phrases: So much drama.

But now that the show has slipped a bit in the ratings, and it has become clear that the new cast may not have the zing of its predecessors, several of whom have broken out on their own, will so much drama be enough?

When the show made its debut in 2004, it broke new ground in the reality genre and was an instant hit with MTV's coveted 12- to 24-year-old demographic.

It was not a contest like "Survivor," nor a contrived situation like "The Real World." Instead, it was an attempt to document the supercharged social lives of a clique of over-privileged schoolmates. On its heels, MTV is filming a Hawai'i-based reality show, "Island Fever," which ends filming on its first season this month.

The show was a stunning success for MTV, but it also made minor celebrities of its protagonists, Lauren, Kristin and Stephen, who, luckily for the show's producers, happened to be caught up in a love triangle as shooting began.

"Laguna Beach," which airs Wednesdays, is just past the halfway point of the season. Its producers are making decisions about how to proceed with the fourth season, which begins shooting in December.

Cami Edwards, now a 17-year-old senior, is miffed about being dubbed "the Queen of Mean" by Tessa Keller, but is aware that hyperbole makes for better television.

The show has exploited a rivalry between Tessa and Kyndra, playing up a short-lived love triangle between them and a boy named Cameron.

Now that she's been on TV and in magazines, Cami, who takes advanced-placement economics and hopes to attend the University of Southern California next year, isn't so sure she wants to go to law school.

During a recent interview at a snack spot on Pacific Coast Highway where some of "Laguna Beach" has been shot, as she fiddled with her hair extensions, she explained why it is so annoying to be depicted as one of "Laguna Beach's" resident meanies.

"I never thought the little things I say, like, 'Oh Tessa's annoying,' would be turned into 'Cami and Kyndra are mean girls,'" she complained. "Everybody says those little things. I mean, they're stupid and they're rude and, of course, we regret saying all that stuff now."

The current cast will be followed into Season 4, said executive producer Liz Gateley, probably with some additions.

Cami is looking forward to next season for her own reasons. "I want to be on the fourth season just to clean things up," she said. "Not that I wouldn't be myself, but I would go out of my way to . . . I don't know. It just really, really, really sucks. Tessa seems like this goody two-shoes on TV, and I am just sitting there watching it, going, 'If you only knew.' "