I’ve hated myself all season for how much I adore this show. As have many I’m guessing. It hasn’t even been that good really, especially relative to the first season. Yet, something remains strangely addicting about it. Despite the fact that the entire episode is essentially served to us in next week’s preview, I still clock in every week and watch the fourteen or fifteen minutes of original content they ration to us.

Recently, I think I may have figured out why. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that Kristin is posing as close to nude as possible in Rolling Stone. I wouldn’t know anything about that. I also wouldn’t know anything about downloading the video footage of the shoot from Access Hollywood this morning. Nope, not me, don’t know nothing about that.

I think the reason why I haven’t tuned out is because their mistakes give me a chance to sit back and judge. While I critique them, I’m more self-aware now so I can grip the fact that some of these mistakes are not unfamiliar. I think that’s a big part of the draw, being a full blown hypocrite about mistakes that are self-apparent now but at the time were muddled. When I was 17, my dentist implored me to have my wisdom teeth removed. He swore they would cause problems at an inopportune time. Last week, 13 years later, I dreamt I was beaten in the face by a mobster who couldn’t shoot me despite emptying the chamber while I was trapped in a closet. (I’m extraordinarily nimble in my dreams.) Anyway, I awoke to an abscessed, infected wisdom tooth that decided enough was enough and wanted out.

Thirteen years ago, I thought I knew better. I thought I knew better than what I perceived to be an agenda driven adult trying to milk me for money. Now, I’m walking around with a Godfather cheek. The bright side is a few months back I checked “nay" on the dental insurance form to save eight bucks a month. Now, under a potent mixture of antibiotics and Vicodin, I watched LC explore a relationship with the town player last week. The conversation was romantic, cute and completely non-existent. I’ve seen better kisses in a fourth grade game of spin-the-bottle but it was obvious things were heading down a direction that would end with LC’s first emotional outburst. She knew what he was. Her friends knew what he was and how it would end, but she deluded herself into believing something else. She did what she wanted in the face of obvious facts. He threw out the “l” word and she bought it. I tried to evaluate her with extreme prejudice but it felt too familiar.

That’s what keeps my interest. It’s the joy of sitting back and watching kids make the same mistakes you made. I grimaced as Kristin was handed the key to a beamer and how happy it made her, how spoiled and shallow she seemed. Yet, when I graduated college I bought the most expensive car I could afford (or couldn’t afford as the case was) and proceeded to ring up debt beyond my wildest dreams which I still pay for to this day, hence my decision to pass on dental insurance.

While Alex was again kissing Jason after the prom, I cringed. When Jessica was delivering a speech to two uninterested guys at the prom about Jason’s lies, I sat back like Judge Wapner. This week, with pain medication wearing off, I watched LC, the most stable cast member mind you, catch a glimpse of a passing flirtation between Jessica and Jason. I watched it grate on her. And I watched as the harmless flirtation proved damaging as LC blew a gasket over Jessica’s behavior. And now, as always with youth, it’s the end of the world. It’s a raucous good time with conference calls and Dieter and his perfectly waxed eyebrows playing mediator. It’s going to drive every conversation in Laguna for weeks. It will probably absorb Jessica’s life for much longer than that which brings me back to my own plight.

Getting out of shower this weekend, I stubbed my toe on the fixture that holds the shower door. And when I say stubbed, I mean smashed repeatedly with a jack hammer to the point that it’s misshaped and almost indecipherable. I’ve left myself with a nub. The amazing thing is that while I was storming around the bathroom with blood pouring from my big toe (on our good towels as my wife quickly noted); I had completely forgotten that I looked like Alvin the Chipmunk. The excruciating pain in my tooth and my idiocy for foregoing dental insurance was forgotten in the face that I may never comfortably utilize footwear ever again. In that moment, I gained greater clarity into why I enjoy Laguna and into life itself.

At 30, I have complete grasp of a concept that at eighteen, I couldn’t possibly comprehend. It’s the notion that there will always be a bigger, bad-der problem waiting around the corner. On Laguna and in youth in general, the ability to understand that the current problem will blow over and another problem will step into its place is impossible. That’s part of being young. You have creative license to blow everything out of proportion with reckless abandon. Jessica never would have over analyzed everything Jason said or did had she known Alex was going to nearly beat her down in Cabo. She would have had bigger things to dissect. Kristin’s Dad never would have stressed over the decision to buy her a new car if he’d known she’d be doing a near topless photo shoot at 18. He would’ve been too busy crying himself to sleep.

Back when I had shameless fun, when I had the ignorance of youth on my side and when I had a full complement of toenails, I was the same way. Maybe not to this extent but in their defense, I didn’t have a camera crew tailing me around.

That’s the beauty of the show. You see a version of yourself, a good looking, rich version of yourself and you judge it. Thirteen years later and I’m still bogged down by the mistakes I made when I was their age. Yet, I have no problem complaining to my wife and co-workers about their glaring flaws. I once wrote that Laguna is great because it forced me to reminisce about a past I never lived. I wasn’t good looking. I wasn’t tan. I wasn’t rich or popular, yet these brats still managed to evoke nostalgia in me. I think even though I wasn’t any of those things, I was still superficial. I over-analyzed. I thought I knew everything. This may be slightly unreasonable but I’m starting to think that I maybe I did live this past. Not in this manner, but I pined over girls I couldn’t have, made big deals out of trivial conversations and blew any conflict totally out of proportion. All that and I really wanted a cool car.

What’s amazing is if I or these kids were given another chance, I doubt we’d do it any better. If Jessica saw how ridiculous she looked through months of grimacing, she probably still couldn’t stop. If LC saw the approaching doom she’d still probably hot tub with Jason. And again, I think I’ve gained the self-awareness to know the same applies to me. If reincarnated, I’d like to think I’d make better dental, financial and shower exiting decisions but I’m almost certain I wouldn’t.

Whether you’re pining over the wrong guy, splitting your toe in half or lugging around a mafia beaten tooth for two months until your dental insurance kicks in, mistakes are what make this show and life interesting. Imperfections are entertainment. As Sean Maguire from Southie said, “No, Will, that’s the good stuff.”

And tonight I think we saw that no matter how much the town dog swears otherwise, no matter how much the town drama queen lies and no matter how much Vicatin you’re under, impending disaster is clear to the unbiased eye. If you allow yourself to see it, it’s easily averted. But with TV appearances, record contracts and Rolling Stone magazine awaiting the shows biggest stars, why would you want to do a thing like that?