Newport Harbor: The RealOrange County, often referred to simply as Newport Harbor, is an MTVreality television series, documenting the lives of several teenagers of affluent families in Newport Harbor, a seaside community located in Orange County, California, United States. It differs from the usual reality show in that it is structured as a traditional narrative than a straightforward observant documentary style. The series premiered on August 13, 2007, and concluded on January 2, 2008. The series was created as a successor to to avoid cancelling the series for lack of a fourth season plotline. However, Newport Harbor proved to be unsuccessful and was cancelled after two seasons.
Development
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County was initially developed as a documentary of teens living in the wealthy, beachside community of the same name. The first two seasons were successful, which led to the creation of the spin-off, The Hills, though the third season's ratings took a massive dip after the original cast left the series and was replaced by a set of current high school students. With a lack of interest in casting for the fourth season, MTV and the producers considered relocating, scouting numerous other wealthy Southern California towns, including San Marino, Anaheim Hills, Rancho Santa Fe, and Malibu before deciding to base the show in Newport Harbor, an area of the city of Newport Beach. This series was labeled a "love story show", since it seemed most of the series was based around Chrissy Schwartz and Clay Adler. MTV decided to pull the plug on Newport Harbor due to under-performance of ratings. The show was officially cancelled on January 2, 2008.
A special bonus episode aired before Crush... Interrupted. Entitled Get to Know the Cast, the episode lasted 12 minutes and featured all cast members apart from Sasha.
Season 2 is a special set of four episodes. The kids of Newport Harbor are returning home for the holidays from college. This is a special appearing for four weeks which means four new episodes of the cast coming home for Thanksgiving/Christmas break. This special showed Chrissy's new college life at UC Santa Barbara and her interactions with her newfound college friends and sorority sisters. People in college are a lot different from high school people and one college student in particular, named Billy has caught Chrissy's attention. Chrissy's long distance boyfriend Clay back in Newport Beach was starting to fade away gradually when she started to hang out with Billy more. Clay and Grant decided to do a surprise visit to Santa Barbara and attended a college party and caught Chrissy with Billy. After talking to Clay, both she and Clay have decided to take a break. However, upon returning for Thanksgiving Chrissy realized she regretted breaking up with Clay. In the last episode, Chrissy was able to win Clay's heart back and gain back his trust for good. These episodes are in fact depicted as Season 2 according to MTV. After only 2 seasons, the show was canceled.
DVD release
The website Amazon.com had struck a deal with many companies to produce DVDs of certain shows, through the CreateSpace service. Using a concept similar to print on demand, Amazon made the discs, cover art, and disc art themselves. The complete series was released on Amazon's website on August 29, 2008, in a three disc set. Both seasons are also available for digital download on iTunes.
After the show
Cast member Clay Adler committed suicide on March 26, 2017, at the age of 27. He shot himself in the head while in the desert with friends. According to TMZ, Adler had struggled with mental health issues in the past.
