The Hills Isn't Real, but It's Not a Big Deal

I am of the countless twenty-something Americans who just happen to be addicted to the Hills, and I'm not even sure why. It's not exactly Shakespeare, inf fact, instead of learning anything, I'm sure my brain cells are actually dying from lack of stimulation every time I tune in. Plus, even though it's supposed to be a reality tv show, and even though the cast swears that it is, you know they're totally fully of it. The lighting is always perfect, who the hell walks around with surrounded by a soft golden light. Plus even when they catch Lauren as she's just rolled out bed she and everyone else on that show still looks fabulous. The bed hair is always perfectly askew, the skin's always glowing, the pjs never frumpy.

Even if you could look past these very "unreal" details, the fact that the conflicts seem like they were scripted from an old episode of Dawson's Creek with all of the melodrama, and the big words, and the long climatic pauses, re-emphasizes that this show is a bunch of b.s. What puts the nail in the coffin is that the acting isn't even good, who can forget Heidi crying out to her boyfriend Spencer "I'm over you, just hang up, I'm over you it's fine, I'm over you," as she wept on Lauren's shoulder after she found that he'd been out flirting the whole night with Playboy Playmates, when he thought she'd left town. Instead of sparking sympathy from me, this little outburst, made me want to gag, but what was worse was when Lauren responds to Spencer when he asked her if Heidi had made get on the phone. She yelled at him "No, she didn't put me on the phone, she didn't put me on the phone Spencer. She was crying so hard I had to pick up the phone, I had to pick the phone, like I had to pick up my best friend and carry her upstairs," meanwhile Heidi's still moaning "I'm over you in the background."

I mean it's awful stuff and you know it's a bunch of b.s. but that's what makes it sooo good to watch. Life will never be as sparkly as they make it seem on the Hills, and that's what draws us in. It's a fantasy and we want life to be this way, where everything is young and fresh, sunny and glossy, rich and beautiful. It's sort of like we do an exchange with MTV, we'll pretend like this crap is real, even though no one we know lives remotely like these people, in exchange for showing this lifestyle to us, so that we can at least feel like it's possible and live vicariously through them. With that said, as you make this little pact with MTV in your head, you do start to believe that this stuff is real, you look past the lighting, the beauty, the bad acting, and you start to go with the idea that it's real, just like any other drama on TV.

You start loving certain characters and hating others. You start caring about whether or not Lauren should have gone off to Paris last season, instead of staying in Cali for Jason's sorry behind. Or what Heidi would've done if the results of her pregnancy test would have turned out to be positive. Or why Heidi should've dumped Spencer's ass a long time ago, he's a huge liar, and he's a coward who tried to start a fight with one of Heidi's co-workers, because he said that Heidi's outfit wasn't work appropriate. The point is that even though it's a big fat soap-opera, the shows is just such a great escape from reality, your mind starts to confuse reality from fiction.