Narcissism Cubed; The Hills is Just Like Reality, Which is Why It's Easier to Watch Than Turn Off

THE HILLS
MTV
The National Post

Yes. The Hills are alive, though I myself am flagging. MTV's reality-soap - call it that for the moment - is airing what amounts to a day-long retrospective of the season so far leading up to a brand-new finale. I had planned on experiencing this marathon ahead of time, via a simulated model consisting of some 12 hours worth of DVDs. But time and fortitude ran out, and I had to do some skipping. I doubt that, in essential terms, I missed much. The Hills, like much long-running TV, is a show in which stuff happens but nothing much changes. Sort of like life.

The Hills revolves around four teen-and-twenties California career girls, and like most youth shows it's designed for a mostly female audience, younger than its characters, who wish they all could be California girls. So I am not, on several counts, its target demographic. Also, I have a strong bias toward acted and written drama, which The Hills prides, or at least advertises, itself as not being. Nor is it comedy, another genre I like. I smiled once during my Hills experience: Lauren Conrad, who plays - sorry, who is - the central character Lauren Conrad, was sitting at an outdoor cafe with a girlfriend and announced that she had planned a trip to the gym. "Don't bother to work out," said the friend; "eat your Pinkberry and enjoy life." That line had a shape to it, a certain elliptical swing. But it stands alone.

Lauren lives in Hollywood where she combines college with an intern job at Teen Vogue. (The show is an orgy of product-and-location placement.) The publicity tells us that she really does work there, though it's a mystery how she manages, given the demands on her schedule of recording her personal and professional life for the camera. The personal of course takes precedence. Season 3, the current one, began with Lauren locked in a bitter feud with her former roommate and best friend Heidi. The reasons, though often explained, remained obscure to me but they seemed to include Lauren's disapproval of Spencer, the boy of Heidi's dreams, who over the season has realized some of Lauren's worst fears. This is symbolized by his going from clean-cut to stubbled.

I wonder how they work these things out. The crew can't be on duty 24/7. Does a protagonist call up the producers and say "I'm going to break up with my boyfriend today - be there"? And how do they ensure the boyfriend's compliance? And did Heidi, an event planner, get a promotion and a trip to Las Vegas because her bosses thought her worthy or because the show did? Fairly obviously, it's all set up. This show may have started with the actual circumstances of its participants' lives, but it must now be proceeding according to a pre-arranged plan. Though one would like to know who does the arranging.

Like all "reality shows" The Hills is heavily edited: more, probably, than most dramas. It's even more artificial than the Survivor model, which at least sets a bunch of people a common challenge and lets them get on with it. But some of its borrowings from the genre are useful. Characters are meticulously identified, by name and function, every time they appear, an especially valuable aid on a show where nearly all the girls are blondes. The titles used to tell us, for example, that "Justin" was "Audrina's ex-boyfriend", though they acted so close that he seemed more like an ex-ex. And indeed he's now billed as "boyfriend." There have been times when I would have welcomed such assistance with The Wire and The Sopranos. By the way, though sleeping-together is taken for granted, The Hills is sexless. Friends and Dawson's Creek were Bacchanalian by comparison.

The show may be contrived, but it doesn't sound written. I doubt that any writer could come with dialogue so lame. Note I said "lame," not "bad." There is an accuracy about the uninspired and unfocused way these people speak. Most of us, most of the time, think and talk as narrowly and narcissistically as they do (though the Hollywood setting accentuates the narcissism) and we all think our own concerns all-important. Most of us, though, don't get to share those concerns with the viewing public. The folks who live on on The Hills do narcissism cubed.

Crazily, it works; as with all soaps of any competence, taken in sufficient quantities it becomes addictive, or at least easier to watch than to turn off. Some make higher claims for it. The real-life Spencer, who is making a real-life bundle from personal appearances, has been quoted as saying "like, how much work is reading from a script? We're improv TV personalities. That's way harder." Now one knows - or hopes - that there's more to acting than "reading from a script" (Spencer really should get out more). But it's true that most of us instinctively judge acting by how "real" it seems, and in that sense improvised performance or reality-show performance or the unskilled hybrid performances on The Hills are off to a standing start. But they also get boring quicker. A perfect match of style, form and content, The Hills is also the perfect definition of what people grow out of.