The Hills is back - oddly coinciding with Audrina's nude picture scandal. Free publicity? Never. The show serves as an example of what happens when actors, or rather real people, are left to create dialogue without the help of writers. It superficially pieces together the drama with the help of structured editing and an inflated soundtrack.
In the season opener, Heidi and Spencer's relationship yet again suffers through Spencer Pratt's stupidity, arrogance, immaturity, or whatever you would like to call it, while Lauren struggles, as every single girl must, to find a happy ending. One would think that after several seasons, Heidi would learn that the guy who spread rumors about her best friend isn't "the one" and Lauren would realize that in Hollywood and in front of cameras she really isn't going to find that many decent princes. But that just isn't good TV, or rather it just ain't reality.
Even though tabloids undermine much of the plot with stories that are months ahead of the reality pictured in The Hills, you still wonder how Heidi will react to whatever stupid thing Spencer does next. It is stupidity that Pratt's own sister acknowledges and uses to create the biggest laugh in this episode, advising her socially inept brother that to win Heidi back he only has to do the opposite of everything he has done in the past. She-Pratt's sarcastic debasement of her own blood was a highlight for anyone who acknowledges the absurdity that is expected in a Laguna Beach spin-off. The produres went on to deliver what their audience has always asked for: impeccable outfits, glam jobs, glitzy clubs, and shining stars with their expected plastic embellishments.
These contrived circumstances crescendo in one of the last sequences of the episode, in which Lauren burns a loaned dress but is saved at the last minute with an even more spectacular designer gown, after a tear-stained plot point. This outcome may not be as real as the lines uttered midway through the show by the French romantic interest, "Why are you moving without kissing me bye-bye," but to have it any other way isn't the reality that we expect Lauren to live in. We watched Lauren's drama easily transition from Europe to America, reflected by the musical transition from Europop and French rap to A Fine Frenzy. As a tiny Parisian fairy tale, the show fulfilled the established precedent, but in the end it left one asking whether these shallow situations could develop into anything more than a parade displaying everything that is wrong in a Hollywood obsessed culture.
Be the first to comment on this article!