Kids Today: The Hills: One Last Season! (With Lauren, At Least)

So, after watching The City starring Whitney Port for the past several months, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about a return to The Hills this spring. With The City over and no new episode of Gossip Girl until April 20, I thought I could return to an old favorite. The Hills season 357 began Monday night with two back-to-back episodes, and boy were they full of surprises! Actually…very little has changed. I’m not totally convinced that anything has changed. Spencer’s still a total jerk, Heidi still puts up with him, Lauren is still a drama queen, and for some reason Audrina is still there.

The best part of The Hills premiere was the day long Hills marathon leading up to it, complete with commentary from MTV featured musicians and celebrities commenting on their favorite part of The Hills and why they think it’s lasted so long. Someone made the point that this is a whole new breed of celebrity, saying that with Kate Hudson you don’t get to see into her bedroom, but with LC and Heidi, you do. That seems to make sense, however…these people didn’t start out as celebrities. I am not seeing into the secret life of my favorite actors and actresses. I’m seeing into the private lives of people I otherwise wouldn’t care about at all, except for the fact that I’m a voyeur for whom the line between reality and entertainment has been dangerously blurred. I love stalking people I knew in high school on Facebook, so it makes perfect sense that I’d love to stalk some strangers on the MTV. I don’t feel like these people’s success can be attributed to the public’s lust for intimate celebrity footage, however, since their very celebrity depends on the fact that we got intimate with them. We didn’t see them first in a movie or magazine and then wonder “what is this person REALLY like?” We got to see what they are really like as we got to know them as celebrities.

Rather than grasp for words to describe what this new breed of celebrity really is…I’ll go through some of the two-episode premiere’s highlights. For one, Heidi and LC are still somehow involved in each other’s lives. Now, if this was unscripted, Heidi and LC would so not care about each other anymore, and I bet their paths wouldn’t cross very frequently. Sure they live in the same city, and they have a history, but how many people who I met when I was 19 or 20 do I still care about now? It’s easy to phase people out of your life when you don’t have producers pushing to keep them in your life so that the fans have something to talk about. Heidi and Spencer are having problems (big surprise) and Spencer spends the evening flirting with a bartender. Heidi finds out, confronts the bartender a day or so later, opening with “hey, this might sound crazy, but…remember a guy who was in here the other night? Spencer?” (as Lady Amy and I watched this together, drinking our gin and juices and crying quietly to ourselves as we reflected on what our adult lives have become, she pointed out that Heidi could have just said “hey, you might notice I’m here with a camera crew. Remember the other night there was a guy in here who also had a camera crew? Someone from the crew probably talked to you so that you could give your consent and they could use your image and name on television? Sound familiar?”).

Spencer referred to LC as the “Queen Bee-otch.” I liked that. It was the one thing he did all night that made me laugh instead of cringe. Heidi, I realize that you’re no great prize, but come on. Really? I’m glad you marched yourself and your Disney Princess hair into that bar and confronted the bartender, but the next step would be to actually break up with the worst thing that ever happened to you. The bartender, by the way, confirmed that Spencer was flirting and that she wouldn’t want her boyfriend to act like that. However, when Spencer went back to the bar later, the same bartender told him that his “crazy” girlfriend came in the other day and that she really seemed crazy. Why two attractive (though dumb) girls would ever fight with each other over Spencer Pratt is beyond me.

Heidi crashed LC’s super cool surprise party on a boat (I’m on a boat!) and LC was all upset about it. So upset, in fact, that whenever someone asked her “how did you like your party?” LC had to sigh and say something like “oh, too much drama…I mean, it was OK, but…too much drama…why was Heidi there…I complain about everything…etc.” She even said that to Lo and Audrina, who planned the surprise for her. Man, LC, you are the queen Bee-otch! Lo and Audrina: “Hey, I went to all this trouble planning a super cool party for you! Did you like it?” LC: “Nope.”

So, Spencer’s still a jerk, Heidi and LC are still frienemies, Lo is still the queen of dirty looks, and it looks like this season is going to be about the same as last—only minus Whitney.

This entry was posted by Brigitte, on Thursday, April 09, 2009. You can leave your response.