…off into the sunset

By Alexandra Welch

4,204 minutes. That’s how much time fans have invested in The Hills, The City, Newport Harbor and the one that started it all, Laguna Beach. That’s almost three straight days of girl talk and boy drama, and this is without commercial breaks, countless reruns, after-shows and endless gossip sessions with girlfriends.

Now, for all the pretentious critics out there that claim they would never engage in such mindless TV and seemingly contrived – OK actually contrived drama, please save all that pseudo intellectual commentary about how you are “above it all” for someone else. I am not afraid to say, I shamelessly enjoyed every single second of it.

After 102 episodes, six seasons and four years of countless love triangles, friendship spats, crazy boyfriends, alleged sex tapes, bizarre weddings and slight mental breakdowns, along with tons of shopping, plastic surgery, drinking, flirting and gossip, the pop culture phenomenon that is The Hills had its final curtain call Tuesday night.

The show, which Entertainment Weekly ranked 82 on their list of The Top 100 Best TV Shows of the Last 25 years, made household names of playboy Brody Jenner, beautiful but loveless Audrina Patridge, delusional — possibly brainwashed — Heidi Montag and villain and resident crazy Spencer Pratt. It has spawned a spinoff for the always amiable and ambitious Whitney Port (The City), and thanks to sweet yet snarky Lo Bosworth, the nickname Justin-Bobby will forever be carved into the annals of pop culture. But it was our leading ladies, Lauren Conrad and Kristen Cavallari, the most relatable of the cast and the omniscient narrators of everyone’s relationships, scandals and escapades in the Hollywood Hills who kept the drama flowing and held an MTV audience captivated for more than six years.

Conrad and Cavallari’s ascent to fame can quickly be traced with a 60-mile trip down the 405 Freeway from Los Angeles, which will drop you straight out onto the Pacific Coast Highway that the wealthy beach towns of the palm tree and Porsche lined Orange County stretch out along. My California vacation found me doing just that this past weekend, and after only two days in Laguna, it was plain to see why this place was such a breeding ground for TV gold.

The entire town of Laguna is built along just two or three miles of the PCH. The beach, boardwalk, inns and surf shops are on one side, while the extravagant art galleries, quaint restaurants and boutiques pan out opposite on the side streets of “downtown” Laguna, which backs up into a hillside of mansions overlooking the Pacific. Every single glamorized scene we saw on the show happened within a stone’s throw of every other. Laguna is so small, in fact, that when a car accident blew out a transformer on the PCH Sunday morning, the entire town was completely without power and basically shut down. I couldn’t dry my hair, Starbucks was closed and no sports bar could show the World Cup final — horrific, I know.

In a bubble that small, where you can’t avoid seeing the same faces on a daily basis, it’s to no wonder why the love triangle of the decade between Stephen Colletti, Conrad and Cavallari developed into a series of cat fights that soon became the girl’s ticket to fame, fortune and tabloid fodder.

With a formula in place for great “reality” television, MTV shipped Lauren Conrad off to The Hills to start her fashion career and see what else she could stir up along the way. She soon made a name for herself as an intern at Teen Vogue, and established a Hollywood Brat Pack of her own that became the talk of the town. Jenner and Pratt jumped reality show ships after their ill-fated Princes of Malibu tanked five episodes in, and the duo soon joined the new scene with Conrad, Montag, Patridge and Port.

The premise was simple: Do what every girl really does, only on a grander scale. Follow the girls as they shopped at trendy stores and talked about the drama they created the night before. Then, follow the girls as they ate out at fancy restaurants and talked about the drama they created the night before. Occasionally, follow the girls to “work” so you can hear the last bit of everyone’s opinion on the drama they created the night before. And then finally, follow the girls out to the Sunset Strip or on vacation so they can go on dates at exclusive nightclubs and create fresh drama. Tirelessly repeat this. When it gets boring, bring on Kristen Cavallari for a sure fired explosion of unrelenting scandal.
Critics and fans alike have always questioned the reality of the semi-scripted nature of the show, and in its final moments, The Hills did what it’s always done best, and created a great buzz-worthy water cooler moment. As Cavallari said goodbye to her unrequited love, Jenner, with the iconic Hollywood sign serving as backdrop, the show broke the fourth-wall. The camera pulled back to reveal Jenner on a backlot soundstage, leaving everyone to wonder whether the entire storyline was scripted or if it was just a message to anyone who actually took time out of their day to question an entertainment show’s reality.

“As you saw in the end — what’s real and what’s fake? You don’t know. Our relationships the entire time could have been fake. You don’t know; you don’t know” Jenner said.

As for me, I don’t care either way. Real or fake, I loved The Hills for what it was, a blissful escape of pure guilty pleasure entertainment. In a perfect world, Heidi’s boobs would have deflated, Spencer would have checked himself into a mental institution, and The Hills would have continued on into my nursing home days. But hey, there’s always spinoffs. Might I suggest Brody and Kristen: The Wedding; eh? I guess in the words of Natasha Bedingfield, the rest is still unwritten.

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