With the pending arrival of “Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County,” we’ll welcome a whole raft of new OC reality-show stars. To celebrate, the Watcher has named the Eight Greatest OC Reality Stars. We’ll unveil one a day through Aug. 15.

NO. 4 - LISA TUCKER, “American Idol” season five, “Star Search”

We first saw Lisa in 2003, when at age 13 she made it to the finals of the junior-singer competition on “Star Search.” That alone would have earned her consideration for this list, but it was her appearance three years later on the cultural phenomenon known as “American Idol” that put her near the top.

Lisa made it through the semifinals by showing remarkable facility with grown-up songs such as Jennifer Holliday’s “I Am Changing” and Tiffany Taylor’s “Here’s Where I Stand.” The most competitive “Idol” finals ever proved a tougher challenge, though. Lisa slipped into bottom three the first two weeks and left in the third.

Today, at the ripe old age of 18, Lisa is still singing and acting professionally.

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The countdown so far:

NO. 5 - JESSICA BOWLIN, “The Bachelor” season five

NO. 6 - KAYSAR RIDHA, “Big Brother 6,” “Big Brother All-Stars”

NO. 7 - SARAH JONES, “Survivor: Marquesas”

NO. 8 - LAURI WARING, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 6:15 am and is filed under TV: Reality shows, The Watcher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.