Previously on THE HILLS...
the rest is still unwritten (jk, it's entirely written, and it's a tome)
For this stack we must journey back in time to the oughts, to the year 2006, which, providentially for this topic, was also the year my parents got cable TV. (I was 11.) Was it good I then spent the summer watching a daytime rotation of 1980s game shows on Game Show Network? I mean, no, but it wasn’t bad, either.
Cable meant a SLATE of new channels and shows that carried me from my tweens to my teens: Disney Channel for Hannah Montana, which had jUST started airing; ABC Family for Gilmore Girls reruns and Secret Life of the American Teenager, which I guess was the fictional version of MTV’s Teen Mom. You know what else I watched on MTV? The Hills.
If you’re not a fan of the show, or, better yet, have no idea what I’m talking about, or who Lauren Conrad even is, you don’t need to abandon reading. This stack has done all the necessary viewing and reading for you (duh! when are we nOT prepared here at TFV?). All you need is curiosity about the term “docusoap.”
That’s right — if you thought The Hills could simply be defined as “reality TV,” you were OH SO WRONG.
I have a pretty limited memory of my journey with The Hills while it was on air; I just remember thinking Lauren Conrad was SO cool and that the series finale was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen on TV.
Fifteen years after that finale, the universe of The Hills — and all its gems to mine in the cavern of narrative — has welcomed me back with open arms, and lots to say.
The Hills was borne in 2006 as a spin-off from its mother show, 2004’s Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach was pitched to MTV as a “real-life version of The O.C.”, following a group of seniors at Laguna Beach high school in sort of a documentary style way. One of those seniors was Lauren Conrad, who described the experience as sort of having a “video yearbook.”
Lauren was apparently enough of a Laguna Beach favorite that she was offered her own spin-off — or it could just be that she was the only one actively trying to start a career. Creator Adam DiVello envisioned The Hills as an aspirational show, saying, “I really wanted it to be this fish-out-of-water show with the girl from the beach who comes to the big, glamorous city and how she's going to navigate the waters… I think Lauren was a great choice because she wanted to work in fashion and she wasn’t coming here to be an actress, and I think that there was a relatability here that the audience responded to.”
For her part, Lauren’s desire to break into the fashion industry was why she said yes to the show. In a 2022 interview she recalled her dad encouraging her to use the show to her advantage, pointing out the relationship between the fashion and entertainment industries (she also described her earliest memory as making clothes for her Barbies). It’s also clear that Lauren viewed the show as a job, saying, “I initially signed on because I wanted the paycheck. I was going to college, my parents weren’t financially supporting me anymore, and I had used up all my Laguna money.”
Still, the show must have also been attractive to her because it felt she would be doing it on her own terms. In an interview she gave in 2007 while the show was airing, Lauren said the yes was easy because “I wanted to do a show with people I liked. For so long I’d done a show with people I didn’t like.” (Lol, this blunt comment is also a classic Lauren thing to say — we’ll get to Laurenisms later, obviously.)
Looking at the 2009 launch of her still-active and much-expanded line LC Lauren Conrad, and her 2013 co-founding of the non-profit e-commerce hub The Little Market — (not to mention a NYT bestselling book series about a girl cast in a reality show) — her yes was arguably wise.
But what exactly did that yes bring about?
Sex tape rumors, salacious stories sold to tabloids, backstabbing friends, sadistic bribery, manipulation …..
You’re watching…
The Hills.
Season 1
Hi, I’m Lauren. I grew up in Laguna Beach.
In season 1 we’re introduced to our four girls: Lauren, Heidi, Audrina, and Whitney.
Lauren Conrad, as we know, was cast as the show’s protagonist. Throughout the series, she provides narrative voiceover to recap previous episodes and tease the themes we’ll see upcoming. In the premiere, she’s introducing herself and her bestie / roommate Heidi Montag as they move in to their new apartment in LA. Soon after, we meet Audrina Patridge, the girls’ neighbor, when Heidi befriends her by the pool.
Aside from enrolling in fashion school, the first thing Lauren does is interview for an internship with Teen Vogue, which she lands. There, she meets and befriends fellow intern Whitney Port. The ten episodes in season 1 follow the four at their jobs, into Lauren and Heidi’s apartment, and to LA clubs like “Area” and “Le Deux.”
Already, it’s clear there’s plot; in the pilot, Heidi crashes a party Lauren and Whitney are working at for Teen Vogue, which ultimately lands Lauren in trouble.
Each episode similarly follows a dramatic arc, with tension building to a climactic moment or reveal. Storylines between characters also correspond to each other in episodes; like, after getting admonished by boss Lisa Love for the party crashing, Lauren re-commits herself to school and Teen Vogue, while Heidi spends the same episode dropping out of school and contemplating quitting her new job. The strong focus on narrative in The Hills is, I think, what so quickly entranced me as a teen. It’s also what makes the show so easy to binge; you want to know what’s going to happen to these girls!
The existence of plot should, of course, be antithetical to the concept of “reality TV.” In the year 2025, there’s nothing mind-boggling in the assertion that reality TV is not, in fact, reality; I consulted my friend Jess, an editor on The Real Housewives of New York City, about this. “It’s entertainment. It exists so that you watch it,” she said. “Just remember that when you watch literally anything.”
But remember this is 2006, back when “reality TV” most often meant that contestants were competing for some kind of prize, and episodes relied on “confessionals,” wherein cast members are interviewed after onscreen events, speaking directly to the camera to provide context. DiVello said that Laguna Beach (and by the same token, The Hills), in refraining from doing confessionals, changed reality TV. “It made our jobs more difficult as producers and storytellers by not having that crutch,” he said, “but I think it gave you the feeling that… you were watching a documentary about these kids and it felt like a scripted series.”
Yet the show isn’t scripted — at least, not exactly. “It's as real as any reality show," producer Tony DiSanto said about Laguna Beach; he would later produce The Hills too, along with DiVello and Liz Gateley. “These are the real kids. The things they're saying are unscripted; it's what goes on in their lives. What we chose to show or not show is where we are editorializing.”
So while the show can’t control and therefore must contend with the circumstances of its characters’ real lives, it can and will situate those characters to its choosing. Let’s look at the four girls again.
We’ve established that Lauren Conrad is the star and the impetus of the show was to follow her ambitions. At the time, Heidi Montag was Lauren’s actual bestie; the two met at fashion school in San Francisco while Lauren was still a cast member on Laguna Beach. Heidi’s casting on The Hills, then, was due to the existing friendship; the two moved to LA together because of the show.
Audrina was cast by the network in sort of a right-place-right-time situation; producers scouted her after noticing her by the pool of the apartment building where Lauren and Heidi were to live. So while Heidi and Lauren did meet Audrina for the first time by the pool, on camera, it was contrived by production.
Oppositely, Whitney’s presence is organic; she later said that when she interviewed for the Teen Vogue internship, she was told she would have to be okay with being filmed, because “‘MTV’s starting to film a TV show here.’” So after interviewing with the show’s producers, Whitney became part of the series. (It’s clear when watching the show that Whitney’s contract, too, is different from the other three girls; we never see her life outside of Teen Vogue unless she’s joining Lauren out somewhere.)
So in terms of cast members “genuinely” being on the show, we have (I would argue):
Whitney (condition of internship)
Lauren (opportunity)
Heidi (opportunity through association)
Audrina (opportunity through casting)
This ranking is very important to my overall thesis (which we’ll get to later). While Whitney and Lauren are, yes, cast in a television show, they are doing it as a means, or as a condition, to a greater end: getting jobs in the fashion industry. Heidi and Audrina, however, have no larger goals; they just got an opportunity to be on a TV show and took it. REMEMBER THIS!
Now, Whitney’s quote makes it pretty clear that Lauren’s internship at Teen Vogue was set up for the show (and if you watch Lauren’s interview, you’ll know that to be the case). Still, Lauren does the internship; episode after episode we see her, eyes rimmed in black liner, voice raspy as fuck, showing up in the morning to steam clothes and move hangers around on racks.
Heidi and Audrina’s “jobs,” meanwhile — at Bolthouse Events and Epic Records — are not only set up, they pretty clearly are not real jobs. At her interview, Heidi several times says, “I didn’t think this was going to be full time,” to which Brent Bolthouse responds, “This is a job, and I need you to work,” to which Heidi says, “Okaiyh.” After this, the only real task we ever see her do is stuff envelopes. One time we’re shown her calendar pulled up on her computer screen, and it simply says “Work” every day from 9-6.
Audrina later said that the show’s shooting schedule prevented her from keeping a real job (makes sense!) and she had to ask the network to increase her pay in the first season so she could cover her rent (depressing!), or she’d have to stop with the show.
True to form, throughout the series, Audrina and Heidi’s work scenes and work friendships only ever serve an expository function — “sooo last night I went out with Lauren,” “sooo last night I had an argument with Spencer,” etc etc — whereas Lauren and Whitney have actual storylines related to work; we see them go to New York and Paris to help with fashion shows, and help icon-boss Lisa Love run events like my beloved Teen Vogue Young Hollywood party in season 3, where the only drama was this:
I’m getting ahead of myself though! Back to our inaugural season. Of course, this is MTV in 2006, so we can’t have a show about four girls unless they have romantic interests. Heidi spends season 1 in a relationship with some guy named Jordan who buys her a puppy for Christmas but otherwise consistently says things like “you’re crazy” and “shut up.” Heidi, to her credit, is still solidly a girl’s girl, albeit a girl’s girl who just wants to party and definitely should not be caring for a dog.
Lauren is gifted with a “surprise phone call” from Laguna ex Jason Wahler, who, after appearing in LA “out of the blue,” soon becomes her boyfriend, giving us really great scenes like this:
Lauren’s relationship with scary-Jason lasts the entire season, and she even turns down a summer internship in Paris so she can stay in Malibu with him — a storyline I assumed was fabricated, until learning that Anna Wintour dubbed Lauren “the girl who didn’t go to Paris” and that Jason later said, “She should have gone. We broke up, like, two weeks after that scene was shot.” I mean, I guess it was fabricated insofar as it was another opportunity set up by the show, but still, an opportunity that would have translated into a real experience! Lauren later recalled, “They were very upset with me for not going to Paris—they were ready to fly a whole crew. I would get daily phone calls from Adam [DiVello] saying, ‘You have to go!’”
Anyway, that season, while fun to have the swirly girlie energy, got dark kinda fast what with me being forced to watch 19-year-old boys wreak havoc on the lives of 19-year-old girls. (Fun fact— not only is Jason not 35 years old in these episodes, he is A YEAR YOUNGER than Lauren.)
I’m also glad to be moving on to seasons where Lauren is less groggy. We all knew a clear-eyed, clear-headed Lauren would be too powerful….
Season 2
We’ll just see what happens.
In her voiceover intro to season 2, Lauren informs us that she and Jason are donezo, and since making her foolish not-going-to-Paris choice, she’s going to work harder at Teen Vogue. Heidi, meanwhile, has met new beau Spencer Pratt “over the summer.” Despite dating Heidi, Spencer is shown trying to also date Audrina.
Audrina ultimately rejects him and calls him a player, yet somehow in all this, Audrina is the one to receive the cold shoulder from Heidi. Lauren, meanwhile, is set up with Spencer’s friend Brody Jenner, who, though sadly not as smart as he is good-looking, is a god damn breath of fresh air after a season of horrors with Jason.
While Brody is something of a gentleman, Spencer’s behavior only gets worse; he consistently gaslights and manipulates Heidi, encouraging her not to work things out with Audrina, lest she say, idk, something like—
He’s also caught flirting with some “playmates” at a club that’s being run by Bolthouse Events (aka Heidi’s “employer”). Sucks for Heidi, but leads to some more girl’s girl moments that have me cheering.
Lauren, thinking Heidi is on the precipice of ending the relationship, makes the friendship-fatal mistake of being open with Heidi about what a bad person she thinks Spencer is. Heidi, though, is met with the very strong argument from Spencer of, just don’t break up with me, though? So she gives him another chance! Lauren, poor dear, tries again to get through to her bestie.
Heidi’s response to this is, “We’ll just see what happens,” which is reality TV-speak for, “I’m hearing the advice you’re giving me, and I’m not gonna do it, because it sounds too hard.”
Sigh. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, Heidi only gets trapped deeper in Spencer’s web; Spencer, for his part, has a new Enemy #1, and it’s Lauren Conrad. Heidi and Lauren limp along in their friendship, but by the end of the season, Spencer tells Heidi she needs to move out from her place with Lauren and move in with him, or the relationship is over. And, she does! Nice! She even cooks him dinner to show her gratitude for being given such an ultimatum.
Whitney, our dear confidante in the Teen Vogue closet, thinks losing Heidi is probably for the best. Oh, Lauren also has issues this season with a Laguna friend inexplicably named “Jen Bunney,” who “does something shady behind Lauren’s back,” which the show frames as hooking up with Brody, but what in real life was apparently1 selling stories about her to the tabloids, as well as witnessing Spencer secretly record other cast members’ conversations?? Ay yi yi.
Still, one’s heart might begin to ache for Heidi at this point. I mean, girlfriend is clearly being masterfully situated, like Spencer is the real producer here. But I am not so generous. You wanna know why? Because of the sex tape rumors, that’s why.
Before I get into that whole mess, it’s time to take a beat to look closer at our new male cast.
We don’t “meet” Spencer onscreen — we’re just told he and Heidi are dating now — which suggests it was a real relationship the show just had to deal with. Yet Spencer and Heidi did not organically meet; he saw her on the show and set out to meet her. Spencer had connections to one of the show’s producers through his own failed reality TV venture, a show called The Princes of Malibu he did with none other than Brody Jenner.
So, once Heidi and Spencer start dating, he gets on the show, and brings Brody with him. Spencer’s animosity toward Lauren, then, is pretty rich; he is literally relying on her for relevance and income. (Yes, Spencer never has a job, though, to his credit, he never tries to hide that fact, either.)
If Spencer’s animosity just remained animosity, that would be one thing. But it doesn’t! Let’s talk about the nasty little rumor that draws air time into it like a black hole.
Season 3
I just don’t want to see you get hurt.
As we begin season 3, suddenly so much has happened offscreen that it’s confusing. Lauren quickly introduces us to the situation: someone has “spread a rumor” that she and ex Jason have a sex tape. And Lauren is 100% certain that person was Spencer Pratt. This leads to a confrontation with Heidi, who denies not only spreading the rumor, but even knowing anything about it.
It always interests me how the show chooses to frame things. They try to pretend, as much as possible, that there is not an offscreen world happening; like, there’s no discussion of how or where this rumor was spread, or why Lauren is so certain it’s Spencer.
For context, as the second season was airing, the cast’s fame blew up. They were regular subjects for paparazzi and tabloids, like TMZ, whose Perez Hilton, right after filming on season 2 wrapped up in March, reported that Lauren Conrad had a secret sex tape with ex Jason Wahler. You can find further reporting from TMZ on it here.
Lauren and Jason denied that such a tape existed. Of course, whether or not the tape exists, and who told TMZ it did, are two separate issues. The drama of the show really only focuses on the latter; it’s all about “who spread the rumor,” taking as Bible Lauren’s position that the tape doesn’t exist.
But in the media, there was a war about the tape’s existence. Lauren acerbically told US Weekly, “Honestly, they videotape my life five days out of the week. I don't need additional footage, you know?” Yet Spencer and Heidi — while denying having anything to do with the rumors — spent the next YEAR telling whoever would listen that the tape did exist. Spencer even chaotically posted a blog where he referred to Lauren’s genitalia as beef curtains. Both H / S also complained that the show’s editing worked in Lauren’s favor and against the two of them, and she wasn’t the nice clean girl everyone thought she was. Well, no one edited you into saying beef curtains!
For further context, this is what the shooting-to-airing schedule looks like for The Hills, meaning that season 2 began airing while it was still being filmed — Spencer had plenty of time to see his portrayal on the show, feel unhappy with it, and set out to make Lauren look bad.
It also means that season 3 began filming right as this all was happening, hence the chaotic first episode. (As a side note, the shooting-airing schedule also interests me because it’s clear that some episodes are getting filmed, and then made, right down to the wire of when they’re getting aired. Jess told me that, with one season she worked on for Housewives, “The first 3 months, we got maybe one good episode out of them. The last 3 months, we got the rest of the season… with docusoaps, it all depends on what you’re getting out of them.”)
Now, none of the “real life drama” is discussed on the show. But clearly, Lauren’s denial of the tape just inflames Spencer and Heidi, who, in asserting that it’s not a rumor, PROVE that it was in fact them who spread the rumor to tabloids.
That is Lauren’s problem with Heidi and Spencer: it was clearly them who did it, yet they keep lying about it. She never wavers on this, and she explains it to Heidi very clearly, more than once. That’s why it’s so infuriating to watch, episode after episode, Heidi act soooo confused about what Lauren’s problem is with her, telling anyone who will listen that the only reason they’re not friends is because Lauren is “controlling” and “doesn’t like Spencer.” Yet throughout season 3, and honestly, the rest of the series, Heidi consistently waffles between wistfully wanting Lauren’s friendship back, and acting victimized — which makes her vicious comments to media even more maddening and gross. Which is it? Do you want to be her friend? Or is she a “pathetic” “low-life” “who needs to find her own boyfriend?” (Three different things Heidi said about her!!)
Still, if Spencer’s end goal — to make Lauren look bad — wasn’t achieved, he at least achieved one thing: he cemented airtime for himself and Heidi. With the Heidi / Lauren split, the show split, too; in each episode, there’s the Lauren thread, and the Heidi / Spencer thread. Did I, every time H / S appear, want to employ the “skip ahead 10 seconds” button a la scenes with Christopher in Gilmore Girls? Yes. Yes I did. But I didn’t, for the sake of the six of you still reading this stack.
Unlike with my hatred for Christopher, it seems I may be in the minority in wanting to pretend Heidi and Spencer don’t exist. My friend Hannah, who I watched most of season 3 with, calls it a car crash she can’t look away from, and it’s true; their constant drama is made for reality TV. But I find it boring. How many times must I watch them fight to the point of breaking up, only for Spencer to show up at Heidi’s “work,” call her, and for Heidi to come down and sit in his car with him and talk? YOU LIVE TOGETHER! Why must you make me watch this? Give me more of Lauren and Whitney steaming clothes at Teen Vogue. I’m serious. Isn’t this Lauren’s show? Isn’t this supposed to be an aspirational show about a girl moving to the city and trying to make it in the fashion industry? Then why am I watching Heidi jet home to Colorado, get a nose job, and “take a break” from Spencer, only to then get mad when he takes shots with girls at a club?
Where even is Whitney, for that matter?
Thesis drop: season 3 is when The Hills stops being a show about Lauren Conrad, and starts being a show targeting her. And there’s a reason why. But let’s watch a bit more first.
With Heidi’s moving out in season 2, Audrina moves in with Lauren. We haven’t talked about Audrina much, have we? Audrina’s main thing, from now on, is her on-again-off-again relationship with a man named Justin Bobby.
This relationship is so confusing that the show can’t even edit it into making sense, with Justin’s name once appearing on the screen with the moniker “Audrina’s Boyfriend” during an episode where Audrina was supposed to be in a relationship with this Australian dude Corey. Audrina is really good at listening to Justin’s garbled strings of incoherent sentences and turning them into thoughtful positions she agrees with.
Lauren doesn’t like Justin Bobby, nor should she; before she even met him, he was known to Lauren as “the guy who abandoned you in Vegas” — infuriatingly, we don’t get more to that story — and he says things like “I get the gist” when Audrina asks if he feels he knows her. He also famously “disappears” for days and is unreachable by call or text. Lauren makes her concerns known to Audrina, in much gentler terms than with Heidi, but it still causes problems.
Justin’s take? “Your friends don’t fathom me at all.” We love docusoap boys using words like fathom!
But Lauren does fathom Justin; how else would we get her searing “Homeboy wore combat boots to the beach.” (“She needs a book of quotes,” Hannah says.) After enduring the emotional abuse of Jason in S1, seeing through Spencer’s manipulation in S2 and now definitively being betrayed by Heidi, Lauren isn’t playing anymore. She’s paying the fuck attention, and she’s committing herself to being a good friend. I like her and Audrina’s sweet dynamic; it rings truer to early 20s friendship than her friendship with Heidi, which honestly always had a strange feel to it.
In fact, season 3 is the season of the burgeoning friend group that has Lauren at its center: we’ve got Audrina, Brody, this guy Frankie Delgado who is honestly always a good vibe, and Lauren’s childhood friend Lo Bosworth (who was also on Laguna Beach). The way Lo is introduced is another example of the show refusing to break the fourth wall; Lauren briefly mentions that the whole reason she and Lo “didn’t talk” for the last “two years” is because of “Jen Bunney.” And that’s all the explanation we get!
Brody is a big part of season 3; interestingly, in the whole sex tape fiasco, he essentially chooses Lauren over Spencer, because Spencer’s like, “Well if you’re rolling with the enemy, you’re dead to me.” Brody’s choice could be because he thinks it’s the wiser way to guarantee a spot on the show, but he and Lauren also seem to have a genuine friendship, and it lasts throughout Lauren’s time on the series. Anyway, Lauren and Brody start having this will-they-won’t-they dynamic, and even though Brody is a literal “Where’s my hug?” guy, I low-key live for this arc.
Another funny thing about Brody is that his hair changes so much that Hannah could never recognize him episode to episode, asking, “Who is that?” every time he and Lauren sat down to dinner somewhere.
So yeah, their relationship remains decidedly “won’t-they”; in fact, Lauren doesn’t date anyone throughout the rest of her time on the show, unless we want to count “Doug” in season 4, which I don’t. (Lauren actually started a real-life relationship in 2008 [sometime while filming season 4] with actor Kyle Howard, who didn’t want to be filmed.)
With the Heidi / Spencer vs. Lauren divide in the show — Lauren refuses to be filmed with them — new characters need to be brought on to bridge the gap and keep the show feeling cohesive. For this we’re gifted Stephanie Pratt, Spencer’s younger, sweeter, airhead sister, who says things like, “It used to be a hamster, and now it’s a guinea pig,” and “He’s a professional lacrosse player. I don’t know what lacrosse is.”
Stephanie’s entrance is made at a club where Lauren and her gang are out; Stephanie goes up to them and accosts them, calling Lauren evil. Nice! Lauren’s take on why a she-Pratt is worse than a he-Pratt? “A guy can’t hit a girl. A girl can hit a girl.”
Stephanie soon realizes that her ride-or-die alliance to Heidi and Spencer may be misguided, as Spencer is thoroughly mean to her, even while crashing on her couch for free during one of the elongated “breaks” with Heidi.
When Stephanie “just so happens” to be in one of Lauren’s classes at fashion school, she apologizes for the club attack. Lauren goes, “Yeah, I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t want to get yelled at.” Still, she decides to give Stephanie the benefit of the doubt, and accepts her gesture of friendship, much to Audrina, Lo, and Brody’s distrust. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” they say, which is reality TV-speak for, “You should do what I’m saying you should do.” The show, I’m sure, is thankful; Stephanie can now act as a link of information between H / S and Lauren.
And boy, that link. Heidi and Spencer are constantly discussing Lauren; how horrible she is, how insane Stephanie is to want to be her friend, how much Heidi misses her, how much she doesn’t miss her, on and on ad nauseam. Heidi even briefly tries to blame Brody for the sex tape rumors, an accusation Brody quickly quashes, even though it means definitively selling out his ex-bestie.
Lauren, for her part, avoids discussing Heidi and Spencer altogether, unless someone else brings them up, or the producers arrange for them to show up somewhere Lauren is — like when Jason appears post-rehab to catch up, and H / S waltz in to the same restaurant and send a water and a Shirley Temple to their table. Classy!
Ah, yes, I’ve finally remembered the producers and their situating.
It’s pretty clear at this point in the show how it generally works: cast members are told to go to x location to meet with x other cast member to talk about x. Other times, the whole group is told to go to x club or x party and do whatever. That’s where you get MTV’s whole argument that even though the show is staged, it’s still real; the cast members can say and do whatever they want.
But in season 3, it starts feeling more and more like cast members are being surprised by the situations they’re put in.
Like remember episode 1, where Lauren and Heidi have this confrontation?
There is behind the scenes footage of Lauren confronting a producer that night about feeling set up. “MTV should care what Spencer did to me. It's not okay that they let him up here,” she said. “It's not f—king funny when you guys do that. I'm gonna go home now. I don't want to film in the same vicinity as them.”
But as we saw with the rest of the season, not only does MTV not care what Spencer did — they love it.
Furthering of thesis: The producers started changing the game when they realized Lauren isn’t good fodder for reality TV. And why isn’t she? In Hannah’s words: “She’s not insecure. That’s why she’s bad at reality TV. She’s just as brutal as the others,” but unlike the others, she has a strong sense of self and self-worth that makes her hard to get anything out of. And remember, “with docusoaps, it all depends on what you’re getting out of them.”
Like, take her confrontation with Stephanie, followed by Stephanie’s apology; Lauren never gets in Stephanie’s face to yell back or bitch her out or anything, as I’m sure producers would’ve loved to see — nor does she act like a doormat when Stephanie changes her tune. She’s just like, “Yeah, that was fucked up what you did.”
Everything about Lauren screams emotionally secure: the way she says things with finality; how she’s always trying to be profound; how she collages from magazines when she’s alone in the apartment; her headbands and hair scarves; the fact that she names the protagonist in her books Jane.
Not so with Heidi, whose plastic surgeries and constant Spencer drama all scream insecure. (I’m reminded of the S1 Christmas episode where Heidi is surprised that crying on Christmas wasn’t a universal experience for children — “I was always crying because I didn’t get the presents I wanted, or my sister was getting more attention than me,” Heidi explains, to a room of raised eyebrows.)
Lauren also actually exhibits growth, while other characters remain stuck in their loops of immature choices that, again, are reality TV fodder. When Whitney gets an opportunity to go to Paris to help with fashion week, a pining Lauren wisely observes, “Why would they invite me again when I said no when I probably didn’t even deserve it?” (Spoiler: she gets to go. :’)) When she and Audrina go to a party at ex-Jason’s that turns out to be an announcement of his engagement, instead of storming out in a huff or having a sob-fest, Lauren reflects, “I was looking around, thinking — I am so glad it’s not me.” She even offers a mature apology to Audrina for being too vocal about her issues with Justin, not wanting to repeat her mistakes with Heidi.
Lauren’s confidence and maturity also mean she gives us nothing when it comes to the easiest route available to production in causing problems for its young female cast: men. While Audrina is trying to get Justin Bobby to even speak to her in complete sentences, Lauren has this to say about a guy that comes onto her too strong:
I can just hear Adam DiVello exasperatedly saying, “We give her Brody, they go on two dates. We bring Stephen Colletti, she’s not interested. Jason comes back, she’s not even upset.” She’s got a good head on her shoulders, she’s there for her friends, and she’s not willing to settle. But that’s…. boring.
I obviously read Lauren’s L.A. Candy series based on the show, and the most enlightening character is the one modeled after Adam DiVello — “Trevor Lord,” who latches onto “Jane” as the lead for his show because of her relatability, yet grows frustrated when things are going well for her. “He couldn’t let her reality continue to descend into ordinary,” Lauren writes, lest ratings suffer as a result. His more problematic (read: Heidi-coded) cast members, on the other hand, were “desperate for attention and willing to do whatever it took to get it, which were excellent qualities for a reality show.”
Though Lauren might indeed be “boring,” it’s the double-edged sword of her greatest strength: she’s real. She’s sincere. Which means how she responds to crisis is going to be interesting.
So The Hills producers begin situating the “desperate for attention” cast members to cause problems with Lauren. That’s what we see throughout seasons 3 and 4: people just doing shit to her, and her what the fuck reaction, like when Heidi and Spencer show up anywhere she is. Heidi and Spencer are rewarded for their bad behavior, while Lauren pays the price.
Speaking of those two, Heidi does finally kind of apologize to Lauren for that whole bit of sabotage back there, though her sliminess is still evident throughout the conversation; Lauren accepts her apology, but firmly dispels any notion their friendship might be restored.
Damn. Heidi wishes her words had the same hall-echoing effect as Lauren’s. (You can tell she tries, but it never hits.)
Really quick as this season wraps up, I have more thoughts on Heidi.
There’s often a lot of discussion2 about how scary Spencer is, and how hard it is to watch Heidi be so easily manipulated by him. Even on the show, Stephanie and Holly (Heidi’s sister), both at various points insist to Lauren that Spencer is the real problem, and Heidi is just another victim. This is true to some extent, but I actually think Heidi and Spencer are made for each other, and that’s why they’re still — !! — to this day — !! — married.
Remember back at the very beginning of everything, when I told you that Heidi and Lauren’s friendship began while Lauren was still a cast member on Laguna Beach. This is Lauren’s account of how the friendship started: “She just walked up to me in class, said hello and offered to share a cab home… We immediately became friends.”
I mean, Spencer sought out Heidi after seeing her on TV. Might not Heidi have sought out Lauren for the same reason? The Heidi-Lauren origin story becomes even fishier when Lauren also reveals, on camera, that Jason never liked her. I mean, Jason is no peach, but when we see him sober, he’s actually a nice and normal guy, to the extent that Hannah is confused I ever had such a loathing for him. Well Hannah, you weren’t there for New Years S1.
Anyway, I trust that Jason, who knew Lauren before she was on TV, could see through Heidi from the start. This kind of forethought suggests it could have just as easily been Heidi who wanted to smear Lauren’s reputation, and Spencer was just oh so willing to oblige her; interestingly, there’s a plot line in L.A. Candy where one of the show’s other cast members (“Madison”), in a bid for more airtime, feigns friendship to “Jane” while in reality actively sabotaging her.
Regardless, this development changes my rankings from before. We now have:
Whitney (still just wants her job)
Lauren (can practically smell that fashion line on the horizon)
Audrina (just happy to be here, and actually befriends Lauren)
Heidi (was only ever here to get on TV)
I think Lauren comes to terms with this fact, and it’s why she never wavers on her decision to cut Heidi out. She knows Heidi was probably never a real friend to her in the first place, whereas Heidi, as time goes on, realizes Lauren was probably the closest thing to a real friend she’ll ever have again.
Season 4
Can we leave?
Speaking of real friends! Let’s test Lauren’s other friendships. Like, for fun!
By the start of season 4, we’ve got some tension bubbling over between Lauren, Audrina, and Lo, who all moved into a cute house together at the end of S3. The strange thing is there’s never really a clear reason why the tension starts; Lo just starts being hostile toward Audrina for no reason, Audrina starts withdrawing altogether, and Lauren seems generally confused about what’s going on. It doesn’t help that Lo is always in Lauren’s ear about Audrina, and Justin is always in Audrina’s ear about Lauren. It also doesn’t help that Lo and Audrina have a conversation that only seems to make things worse.
As things come to a breaking point, Lauren and Audrina finally sit down and talk about their distance.
It’s strange, because it seemed clear to me that the show was trying to orchestrate a rift between Audrina and Lauren just to make something happen (like, what problem does Lo actually have with her?), but the tears in this conversation are real, so clearly something is wrong.
Wait, what was that, Audrina?
It’s like everyone doesn’t want us to be friends.
Who is everyone? Might Audrina be copping onto the possibility that the strain between her and Lauren has been… perhaps… situated? The girls, bless them, make up and re-commit to their friendship.
And production’s fine with it, because DiVello got what he wanted: “You’re watching little monitors, and when you get that like black eyeliner roll, you’re just like, ‘Damn, this is so great.”
Lo later said of her time on the show, “I served a very specific role, which I’m actually grateful for in hindsight. I didn’t have to get into it too much. But in the areas where I did, it still kind of haunts me to this day… We were very young women constantly put into compromised situations where we had to blood-sport it out against each other to get through a day of production.” This seems pretty clear that the whole Audrina fight was something Lo was pushed into doing, and once her “character” “did her job,” she was able to fade into the background again.
But it’s not just the gals who seem to be getting fed up with the producers. When Heidi and Spencer just happen to show up at Stephanie’s birthday — “I thought you guys were ignoring my calls,” Stephanie says when they arrive — Brody’s immediately on his feet.
If you’ve watched the show, or decide to give it a go after your interest is thoroughly piqued by this stack, you’ll start hearing this line a lot: “Can we leave?”
This isn’t just friends asking friends if they’re ready to go. It’s a genuine question put forth by someone under contract, who is miked and has been scheduled to film this scene, wondering if the producers are going to let them leave this situation they now don’t want to be in. The “accidental run-in” becomes such par for the course that the cast stops being shocked it’s happening, and instead just annoyed.
After her birthday, Stephanie, poor lass (she’s an exceedingly easy target for production), has to work double time, insisting to Spencer that she’s just trying to be friends with everyone—
—and insisting to Lauren that she’s not trying to two-time her.
I honestly believe Stephanie; she doesn’t have the brains or motive to manipulate Lauren. But it’s not smooth sailing from there — Steph also gets into hot water when she briefly dates “Doug” while Lauren is in Italy, and then kinda lies about it, a whole thing that inflames Brody and shows Doug’s true colors as being a total douchebag.
Oh right, “Doug.” He’s a Laguna guy that Lauren goes on a few dates with at the start of S4, tires of, and then he gets absorbed into the friend group. I find Doug so unimportant, but I’m bringing up this storyline because it’s also when the show starts getting openly misogynistic.
Omg speaking of misogyny, there’s also an episode around here where Lauren and Audrina tag along with the guys to Mexico or Hawaii or something for “Doug’s” birthday, and a truckload of girls gets ordered in to the villa, you know, as a gift.
It’s creepy as fuck, but Lauren, bless her, has this reaction:
Anyway, while Brody gleefully cusses Stephanie out over trying to get with “Doug” —
—Lauren just kind of rolls her eyes and moves on, because who tf cares about Doug? We always knew he wasn’t good enough for Lauren; and he makes an enemy of Whitney, which makes me want to kill him.
Doug also actually, truly, in trying to convince Lauren not to go to work one time, says, “Let’s do something fun. Let’s go to Cabo.” Not, let’s do something fun, let’s see a movie. Let’s do something fun. L e t ’ s g o t o C a b o. To which Lauren, our fucking Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Aphrodite, says, “My work is fun.”
Oh right, last season, Whitney started working at People’s Revolution with boss-bitch-supreme Kelly Cutrone, and she got Lauren a job there too. I didn’t tell you about it because there was just too much shit going on. Do you realize season 3 had 28 episodes? I was fighting for my life writing that section.
Oh my GOD, speaking of Whitney and Lauren’s work life, I also forgot to tell you about intern Emily in season 2. She was sent by NYC Teen Vogue to help plan an event in LA, and her East Coast perfectionism caused a few episodes of insecurity for our West Coast I-just-woke-up girlies.
Emily does goes on to found Glossier! You saw her on The Hills first. Along with Lady Gaga.
So anyway, while Heidi can keep fucking up at Bolthouse to the point that she gets fired from her fake job there, Whitney and Lauren are doing so well at their jobs that we can’t even mine their workplace for drama.
UgH! That means we need to start hitting up our easy targets to make something happen for us! Which, when it’s not Stephanie, means Audrina.
Audrina, Audrina. To backtrack a bit, even though she and Lauren did ultimately make up (and she and Lo seemed cool too), Audrina does move out of the shared house and into her own place. Because she’s still drinking her dumb bitch juice with Justin, part of her motivation in doing this actually seems to be that she believes he’ll move in with her.
I think Audrina’s main crime is, oppositely from some of Lauren’s I’ll-fucking-go-to-bat-for-you-right-now friends like Brody, she’s the friend who doesn’t really stand for anything at all (sort of a, “well, they’re nice to me, so,” friend). When Heidi realizes, whoops, I doesn’t have any friends anymore, it’s Audrina she starts hitting up to hang out, because Audrina, being backbone-less, isn’t going to say no. Hannah diagnoses her as a people pleaser, and Lauren herself tells Audrina that her niceness makes her easy to take advantage of. But it also makes Audrina straight up a bad friend to Lauren at times; I mean, while Lauren’s helping Audrina put shit in boxes, Audrina is cheersing with Heidi and Spencer over moving out. It’s icky.
And this is all on top of Audrina doing the same stupid song and dance over and over again with Justin, and Lauren always patiently being there through it.
And that’s not all! As season 4 draws to a close, suddenly there’s a huge blowup; Audrina has accused Lauren of hooking up with Justin Bobby! Not only is Lauren immediately incensed by this, she’s frankly offended.
She and JB both deny this happened (like, several times, across several different conversations), but Audrina, insisting that “the friend” who told her it did had no reason to make it up, amplifies the accusation across the friend group, and says some pretty nasty things to Lauren and JB in the process. Who is this “friend?” We don’t know, they’re not someone on the show. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been, by whatever means available, encouraged by production to tell Audrina offscreen that this happened. Which is what many people3 believe to be the case.
I mean, let’s not forget these are the same producers who keep sending Heidi and Spencer to Lauren’s location, despite Lauren’s embargo on filming with them, despite the fact that they fed a harmful story about her to tabloids, and this is her show. These are the same producers that got Justin Bobby to agree to filming in the first place by saying, “Whatever Maroon 5 is paying you, we’ll triple it.” And these are the same producers who, in season 6, will tell Lo they’ll buy her a Birkin bag if she accuses Kristin Cavallari of having a drug problem. There is no moral quandary for them in the lengths they’ll go to do their situating. As Lauren writes about DiVello / Lord in L.A. Candy, “The lie came easily, in part because he didn’t believe in arbitrary labels like facts and lies.”
The timing of this accusation also points to the producers, imo — they’ve spent two seasons watching this toxic pattern with Justin play out, making it all too easy for them to now weaponize Justin’s bad behavior and use Audrina as a mechanism for giving us something. As Lauren observes to Lo, “The way he’s treated her the past few years is the reason why [Audrina] believed this.”
Anyway, Audrina approaches Lauren in a club and starts asking for like the millionth time if Lauren did it, which sends Lauren over the fucking edge, and she starts yelling, “I didn’t do anything! You did this!”
Audrina comes out looking really ugly in this dispute, because she goes so far as to tell Lauren, “You’re doing the same thing to Heidi that you did to me.” Uh, what??? Lauren is clearly angry at Audrina for believing a rumor that has the smell of production all over it, and she was mad at Heidi for, at best, sitting idly by as Spencer set out to ruin her reputation, and at worst, helping him do it. So what equivalency is Audrina trying draw here? That Heidi’s betrayal is… Lauren’s fault? And now Audrina’s betrayal is… also Lauren’s fault?? Or that the sex tape rumors weren’t Heidi’s fault, and these rumors aren’t Audrina’s fault, so Lauren shouldn’t get to be mad at them? Either way, Lauren retaliates by saying, “No, I’m not, because you’re way worse than Heidi.” Wait, what does THAT mean?? Along with this cryptic back and forth, the episode, again, ends with Lauren in real tears, probably because she’s like, just so done with this shit?, and Lo holds her to shield her from the cameras.
Though it seems like this is it for them, Audrina finally accepts that Lauren and JB are telling the truth, and asks Lauren to meet. Lauren arrives, curled ponytail swinging; Audrina tearfully admits, in so many words, she has gotten all caught up in the confusing hell that is filming this show and doesn’t know what the fuck is going on anymore.
In case you care what’s going on with Heidi and Spencer at this point, they’ve gotten married twice and have basically alienated all of Heidi’s family. With nothing else to do after all that, they film a pointless episode at Spencer and Stephanie’s “Nana’s house,” during which they tell Nana all about what a bad person Lauren Conrad is. Like Nana fucking cares. Like WE fucking care.
As we wrap up season 4, though, we’re losing our first cast member. And it isn’t Lauren (although she does try to leave at this point, and is prevented by her contract).
Yes, our dear Whitney is getting a job in New York and, surprise!, her own spin-off called The City. I did start watching The City for the sake of this stack, and it’s manufactured as hell and includes a “socialite” in its cast, in case you were wondering if there was any way reality TV people in New York could possibly be worse than LA.
Anyway, Whitney leaving is my Titanic, because — she and Lauren are the greatest love story of this show.
I’m telling you, I could watch hours and hours of this alone. The most drama that ever occurs between them them is when Lauren decides to put a running stitch in her couture dress (yes, our queen can sew 💅) in Paris so she can wear it out and Whitney is like… maybe don’t?
Lauren and Whitney’s last scene is one of the increasingly frequent moments where cast members seem to be directly referencing the show and its impact (read: fuckery) on their lives.
Whitney’s departure for her own show means my rankings change once again. We now have:
Lauren (reaching for something in the distance / so close she can almost taste it)
Whitney (despite witnessing the horrors, wonders if being the star means it’s worth it? I mean, Diane Von Furstenburg!)
Audrina (has realized she has no identity apart from her TV character)
Heidi (ruining all friend and familial relationships is worth it to be on TV)
At this point I’m sure it’s obvious what I’m getting at in my rankings and how it relates to my thesis. The higher you’re ranked, the worse you are at reality TV, yet the better you come off on the show, because, well — the less you actually want to be on TV. Did you get all that?
If you spend time on anyone’s Wikipedia page after this, you’ll learn that every single cast member on this show went on to do more reality TV after The Hills except for Lauren Conrad. In fact, reality TV is all that most of these people ever ended up doing.
Season 5a
Life isn’t an island.
By season 5, it’s clear that Lauren Conrad has fully actualized. She’s sporting a red lip; she’s doing this little mini braid in her golden tresses; she goes to work at People’s Revolution, to coffee with Lo, and dinner with Brody, who always says, “Hello beautiful,” in greeting.
So, how does Lauren make her exit?
Well first, she has to deal with everyone around her encouraging Heidi’s delulu idea that she and Lauren can become friends again — all because Lauren kept it classy and was nice to Heidi when the two “ran into each other” at a Bolthouse event in the S4 finale.
Yeah, so, at this point in the show, Lauren has moved on to the point of not harboring any anger toward Heidi. Healthy! I mean, it’s been 2 years now. She meant it when she forgave and forgot. But for some reason Lauren’s lack of open hostility toward Heidi makes all these other idiots think they can be friends again. I mean, here’s a little slideshow from S4 when Heidi’s sister Holly tries to sell Heidi’s friendship back to Lauren.
In episode 1 of 5a, Stephanie brings Heidi to Lauren’s birthday party uninvited. Heidi also doesn’t tell Spencer where she’s going, because, well, obviously? Lauren, though irritated that Heidi is there, still is nice to her, even when Heidi (of course!) brings Spencer drama to the party, upon getting a text from Stephanie’s ex (??) that he’s at a bar flirting with a bartender. “The last thing I wanna do is be the party crasher on your birthday and cause all this drama,” Heidi says. Lauren actually rolls her eyes. Spencer then punches the ex in the face for squealing on him.
Due to the aid of alcohol, the two even have a semi-heart-to-heart moment about the loss of their friendship because of Spencer.
Still, after the party, Lauren confronts Stephanie: “You have to stop pushing Heidi on me. Let it go.” We love a firm Lauren! With it clear that Lauren is not interested in rekindling the friendship, the pressure then mounts instead for her to at least go to Heidi’s wedding. Because yeah, even though we already had to sit through two Heidi / Spencer wedding plot lines, the show, like DJ Khaled, is like, ANOTHA ONE!
Oh yeah, and this wedding plot comes right off the heels of another H / S relationship crisis because of “Stacie” “the bartender” Spencer was flirting with and subsequently starts going to clubs with?? It means we get to witness this super great confrontation where Stephanie says to Heidi, “You can tell they’re wh*res, look at what they’re wearing.” Nice, Steph.
H / S go to couples therapy, during which the therapist says, “This all feels very high schoolish to me,” and Spencer says, “I’m in a nightmare.” Same! Anyway, they soon decide to wed thrice.
A condition of this engagement, though? Heidi says Spencer has to apologize to Lauren. Because Heidi wants Lauren to come to her wedding so so bad. She even shows up to People’s Revolution to hand-deliver an invite.
Heidi’s like, “You think I’m making a mistake?” And Lauren’s like, “Yeah, I do.” And then she says this:
“It’s about the person he is. I remember being with Jason, in that same situation where I felt like, without him I would die. And I remember thinking everything would be perfect if we could go to an island somewhere. But life isn’t an island. You have to have other people in your life. And seeing that the amazing relationship you used to have with your mom now go away, and your sister was your best friend and now I watch you guys grow apart. And I get you need to have you own life, but I just— it makes me really sad to watch you give up everything else in your life.”
Lauren!!!!! Heidi’s just like, OKaiyh. Also, it makes me sad that she looks like this during this conversation—
—when just a few short years ago, she looked like this.
So after Heidi leaves, Lauren gets a phone call from none other than… Spencer!! Yay! Because for Lauren, life is a horror movie you can’t get out of.
Spencer’s like, sorry about the sex tape (which yeah was me btw), and Heidi wants you at our wedding. Lauren then hangs up as soon as humanly possible.
Spencer has also crawled back into ex-bestie Brody’s life—
—and meets up with him to encourage him to also pressure Lauren into going. Spencer’s like, I even apologized for all that sabotage I did.
I appreciate that Brody is the only person not drinking everyone’s delulu juice that bygones be bygones now. But he does tell Lauren he thinks she should go to the wedding, because she might regret it if she doesn’t.
I don’t like how Lauren is gaslit by everyone around her into normalizing the Heidi / Spencer relationship with her attendance at this cursed wedding; even Lo and Audrina are like, yeah, of course I’m going to the wedding. To which Lauren’s like….. K.
Other than this pressure campaign, the only plot they could get with Lauren was bringing Stephanie in to her job to fuck things up, and for Lauren to have to fire her. Lauren actually starts appearing in episodes to serve an expository function for characters like Audrina — like this whole storyline where Brody “cheats” on his “girlfriend Jayde” with Audrina (???), and then Audrina calls Brody “p*ssy-whipped” for staying with Jayde?? Seriously, yuck, I refuse to even screen-cap anything about this.
The wedding plot also means I’m forced to watch Heidi tell her bridal shower attendees that she wants four boys (!!!) because she wants to be the “queen of the throne” and doesn’t want “any little girls coming up” to “rival” her !!! EW!
So, yeah! The entire arc of Lauren’s final episodes are a will-she-won’t-she attend the H / S wedding. Spoiler alert, she goes.
Also in attendance at this fake third wedding? Lauren’s replacement to lead the show: Kristin Cavallari. It’s hilarious how, in a half-assed attempt to make Kristin’s sudden presence make any narrative sense, the show tries to pretend that Kristin and Brody introduced Heidi and Spencer to each other. This is first brought up at the bridal shower, when Heidi asks, “How did Spencer and I meet?” and her mom and sister Holly shout out the real answer, “He stalked you!” “He sought you out in the club!” and Audrina’s like, “Didn’t you meet through Kristin Cavallari??” Yes, someone we’ve never talked about before now, introduced them!
Kristin and Brody did used to date, pre-Hills era; Stephanie iconically says about the relationship, “All I know is, Brody never had girlfriends and all of a sudden he was buying this girl a dog.” Oh, also, Kristin Cavallari was one of the leads from Laguna Beach. She and Lauren, apparently, were enemies. I say apparently because I actually haven’t seen Laguna Beach. (Also, might Brody Jenner have sought out Kristin after seeing her on Laguna Beach?? I stg, these vampiric men.)
And that’s it, folks! It makes me soooooo mad that Lauren’s exit stage, from a show created with her at its center, is leaving Spencer and Heidi’s fake third wedding that she didn’t want to go to. But, our beloved Lead was probably like, I’m not telling any of you bitches where I’m going or what I’m doing now, that’s my business, peace out.
However, we know Lauren is working on her fashion line and writing a bestselling book series about her Truman Show experience. Lauren finished filming in April 2009 and her last episode aired on May 31; L.A. Candy was published June 16.
Season 5b
So it’s gonna be like this?
Sigh. I really didn’t want to watch seasons 5b and 6, aka the Kristin Era, but I muscled through it for sake of the three of you still reading this stack.
I remember hating Kristin when watching this show as a teen, but now, I’m actually surprised to find her the only person somewhat compelling to watch in these episodes. She also is weirdly similar to Lauren, in that she’s not insecure (I mean, she is — she’s what we would now call a pick-me — but she moves through the world with confidence). Kristin just laughs at everyone and their dumb reality TV-fodder behavior, which is extremely refreshing in comparison to Audrina’s dead-eyed gazes and Stephanie’s tears. But where Lauren is classy, Kristin is just straight c*nty.
(Also, just as an aside, it’s so messy of the show for these episodes to still have Lauren’s voice going, “Previously on The Hills,” followed by Kristin’s voice giving the recap. Like, just record a new one!)
Watching 5b is like being at a party when all of a sudden the lights get turned on. Everyone looks ugly; everyone has a drinking problem; everyone’s getting in fights; it’s just a mess. It’s almost like, led by Lauren, the cast was on good behavior, trying to measure up to her standards. Led by Kristin, everyone devolves into their worst selves. I mean, here’s a sampler.
Even at the show’s worst moments before, you didn’t have girls calling each other a bitch4. I mean, it really makes you miss these days:
Kristin pretty much makes an enemy of every woman on the show right off the bat, starting with Audrina, because Kristin hooks up with Justin — a storyline I actually appreciate, because it means we get to see Kristin make fun of Justin and his mumbling. Why does Audrina care? Oh, right.
There could be 11 seasons of this show, there could be 23 seasons of this show, and Audrina would still be there, telling a wall, “The chemistry I have with Justin, I just don’t have with anyone else.”
But what’s fun about Kristin is she comes as close to breaking the 4th wall as any other lead cast member ever has; all her behavior has a self-awareness that she’s playing a character on a reality show. Like, when this confrontation happens in the first episode—
—she yells after Audrina and Stephanie, “SO IT’S GONNA BE LIKE THIS? IT’S GONNA BE LIKE THIS? THEN IT’S ON, BITCH!” She’s basically saying, Oh, so we’re going to be enemies? Fine, then I’ll be your biggest enemy. I’ll be the best enemy.
Another thing I like about Kristin is her relationship with her Italian dad, who she goes home to see and who iconically forgets what show she’s even on, asking, “Have you seen Stephen or Lauren?” and, at mention of Brody, asks, “Is Brody still kind of in love with himself?” Yes, Mr. Cavallari, he is. Actually, let’s talk about Brody. But really quick let me get something out of the way first.
Season 6
Guilty on all counts.
I need to talk about Heidi and Spencer one last time, because Heidi’s about to be our third lead to exit the show (I guess that makes Audrina our Final Girl?). Without a wedding to be plot for Heidi and Spencer, they’ve just been doing random boring shit like going behind each other’s back to secretly get pregnant / have a vasectomy, buy a house Heidi doesn’t want, and spend time with the neighbor kid Enzo, who, I need to know what kind of parents are cool with pimping out their kid like this. Heidi even creepily throws Enzo a birthday party with an elephant, like we’re in the movie Babylon or something.
Any time the other cast members are forced to interact with Heidi and Spencer, it’s looked a bit like this.
But as S6 premieres, suddenly things are even worse; Heidi has undergone a terrifying amount of plastic surgery (she got parts of her back cut out??? as well as *H* cups “for Heidi” 😱). It makes her mother break down in tears (which was a real, live reaction that camera crews raced out to Colorado to capture). And then Heidi cries and it looks like this.
Just a reminder of our journey—
And Spencer, who was already being a monster (in the episode below, he referred to Heidi’s mother as “just a vagina that birthed Heidi”)—
—is full of terrifying amounts of rage. Here’s him freaking out when Stephanie (his literal sister!) comes over to say hi to him.
He’s clearly on something, but production seems to ignore that fact, which is even more infuriating given they tried to give Kristin a drug problem in 5b (that tabloids ran with IRL, of course) when she appears in each scene speaking and acting completely normally. But, no matter — this show openly hates women now, remember??
Spencer and Heidi are also really into crystals, and Kristin makes me laugh when she doesn’t know what to do when Heidi tries to do crystals with her at the club.
Kristin, Audrina, and Holly all try to get through to Heidi at various points, but Heidi says stuff like, “All guys are controlling,” and “Spencer didn’t change me, I changed me,” and, “It’s like, who even am I without Spencer?”
So after their fruitless efforts, our gals meet and agree to cut H / S out of their lives. (Yes, somehow after all the strife in 5b, all our gals are all cool with each other now.) And oh, what’s this that Lo says?
Hmmmm. Where have I heard that before?
Oh, right. But when Lauren says it, we keep Heidi and Spencer on the show for three more seasons and pressure her into going to their wedding. But now that Lauren’s gone, there’s no real angle to get from Heidi and Spencer’s toxicity anymore. So, they’re off the show! Easy as pie!
What else happens in our final season? Audrina dates musician Ryan Cabrera, even though she pretty clearly doesn’t like him, and she hangs out with Justin some more.
This line from Lo made me laugh out loud. Stephanie also consistently cracks me up this season.
Otherwise, this show is so boring now they have to bring in third-string people to cause problems, like McKaela (??), and we have to pretend that bartender Stacie is anyone’s actual friend.
Omg, speaking of McKaela, we’re supposed to talk about Brody! This will also help me transition into our discussion of That Famous Series Finale.
So, in the Kristin Era, Brody is decidedly, to me, and to women everywhere, a villain. I went from being like, “oh, this Lauren-Brody chemistry is fun,” to, “Brody you can absolutely choke.”
Brody’s arc in these seasons is basically that he’s dating a playmate (“Jayde”), they go on a break because he “doesn’t know if he might have feelings for Kristin,” he then does this friends with benefits thing with Kristin, gets back together with Jayde, breaks up with Jayde, resumes fwb with Kristin, starts dating “McKaela,” then, by the end of the season, when Kristin tells him she has feelings for him, is “already dating someone else.” Throughout all of this, Brody acts like women are sooo crazy and annoying and obsessed with him and why can’t they just hook up and be cool about it???? Which is pretty rich coming from the man who literally always has a girlfriend. Brody just acts completely heinously at every turn, yet we’re supposed to believe that Kristin is totally in love with him and acting jilted instead of rightfully bothered by his abhorrence.
He also tries to get Audrina to break up with Ryan Cabrera just like, for fun?, and is generally a homophobic asshole.
So I’m watching these episodes like, how did I ever like Brody? I mean, let’s be honest, there were always red flags, like having a phone contact named “Britney Canada Whore.” But I still felt he was a good friend to Lauren.
But. Remember that time when Heidi kind of out of nowhere was like, Brody started those rumors about Lauren?
At the time, this felt like Heidi was just desperately trying to think of someone else to blame for the sex tape fiasco, but after seeing the way Brody talks about women when women aren’t there, I’m like, huh. And apparently Redditers5 always thought the “beef curtains” remark was a little out of left field for even psycho-Spencer to come up with, given the fact that he’d obviously never had a relationship with Lauren. Which leads one to wonder… might Brody Jenner have jocularly thrown that phrase around with Spencer behind closed doors? You know, that thing that 2000s men (and current presidents) need to do where they assert dominance in their sexual relationships by just, totally denigrating women? I don’t think Brody actually sold Lauren out to tabloids, or anything — he’s not a monster, just a douche — but it would make sense to me if Heidi knew Brody said some shit about Lauren behind her back, then got annoyed that Brody got off scot-free. I mean, here’s what Spencer says verbatim in his psycho blog post about why he keeps writing “LC (BEEF CURTAINS)”: “I only call her this because this is what people like Brody Jenner, Steven Coletti, and Jason Whaler all go around calling her.”
Want even more tea on this topic? There’s this plot line in L.A. Candy where Jane has this quasi-love triangle thing with this aspiring actor she really likes, “Braden,” and Braden’s friend, “Jesse,” who’s like this player guy who’s the child of famous people. Even though she dates Jesse (who agrees to be filmed), she deep down always really likes the Braden dude (who doesn’t agree to be filmed), and even “cheats” on Jesse with Braden.
I was reading this like, huh — “Jesse” sounds kinda like a Brody Jenner type (oh yeah, in case you didn’t know, Brody Jenner is the spawn of Caitlynn Jenner and Linda Thompson). And “Braden” — remember Lauren’s real-life actor bf I mentioned who didn’t want to be on the show? It got me thinking, wouldn’t it be weird if Brody Jenner and Kyle Howard really did know each other? Well. According to Kyle Howard’s IMDb page, he and Lauren were introduced by… “mutual friend Brody Jenner.”
So then I was like…. maybe Brody was salty Lauren always liked this other guy more??? And so… beef curtains??? This is the wildest leap I’m going to make in this stack, because I have no other sources definitively linking the two men, other than this tabloid blurb from 2008 where Brody said, “He’s a cool guy. I like him a lot,” but, do with it what you will. Also, Lauren never actually told press that she and Brody were dating, while Brody did. Also also, Lauren doesn’t follow Brody on Instagram. (She actually only follows Lo, Whitney, Stephanie, and Frankie Delgado. We knew Frankie was a good guy!)
I majorly digress! Anyway, the show is pretending Brody is this heartthrob guy we can’t have as we head into the series finale.
Series Finale
No one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips…
So basically by wrapping up all of our remaining gals’ storylines by giving them committed boyfriends (Lo, Steph) and/or houses on the beach (Audrina), the show is like, what to do with Kristin? Kristin decides that Brody’s rejection of her is the last straw, and she’s gonna move to Europe.
Brody arrives the morning she’s due to leave to see her off. They hug goodbye, Kristin gets in a car, and drives off, as a little mini-montage commences of scenes from seasons past. Did I tear up at the reprise of Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” while this is happening? It’s possible.
When we cut back to Brody watching Kristin’s car disappear, we — wait, what’s happening??? A BACKDROP is being rolled away behind him to reveal he’s — NOT on Kristin’s street at all, but on a SET????? Are you fucking KIDDING????
I’ve screen grabbed this whole sequence for your viewing pleasure; if you don’t want to watch it, fine, but you’re the only person still reading this stack, so you really might as well??
Series Finale Detailed Breakdown
Was it real??
Okay, let’s discuss. This finale is basically MTV giving us the finger; “After all those years we’ve insisted this show was real, we’ve decided to reveal in the final seconds that it, in fact, is not. It was all fake. All of it. The whole time. Ha ha ha!”
This was 2010, so obviously, people lost their freaking minds. Including me. I was like whoaaa that’s so meta and baller of them to do!
But now I’m an adult, and I’m like — was it *really* fake, though? Or was it, in Stephanie’s words —
Let’s consult one of our primary sources, L.A. Candy.
Lauren said she started writing the first book when she was on vacation with her family in Italy (who remembers?? season 4!!), which gives me the impression that the minute she was away from cameras, it started pouring out of her. “I [was] inserting the funny things that happen every day that have kind of become the norm for us into this book, because they’re not normal,” she said later. “I would love to write a tell-all and kind of tell the story, but, in order for me to tell my story, I’d have to tell everybody else’s, and I don’t think that’s really my place.”
So we’re gonna go ahead and assume that while she fictionalized the actual people, the show’s methods as described in the books are true to the experience of being on The Hills.
While we already know that producers arranged all the scenes and told people what to talk about — as well as amping things up later on with surprise run-ins and manufactured drama — the books describe producers actually texting cast members while they’re filming to prompt them with topics, even verbatim lines they want them to say. It’s why they all have Blackberrys.
Producers would also feed lines to certain cast members ahead of time, without telling other cast members in the scene that they’d done so, in order to generate genuine reactions from the cast members in the dark. Jane also eventually finds Trevor Lord / Adam DiVello’s notebook sketching out the entire season in advance, meaning they were pushing the cast into “acting out” their pre-conceived plans. He would even frame certain scenes to cast members as being about x, just to get them to agree to do them, when really he was going to take their dialogue and cut it into something completely different.
Lo Bosworth later discussed this very thing, saying, “What we're experiencing actually is not what is being edited on the cutting room floor and then shared with the world... We had no idea in those early years that the executive producers were in a room with whiteboards mapping out the entire season.”
In retrospect, it’s easy to be like, well, of course they were. How else would they be able to air episodes so soon after filming them, if they didn’t know what they were looking for? My bestie Jess had a lot to say on this, explaining how field producers, segment producers, and the camera crew are all sent to location to prep the area, mic everyone, then direct the scene. “Every producer is there to make sure we get everything we need,” she said. Then, the story editor is given the footage and basically told, “These are the storylines we have for this season, here’s the fourth episode, here’s what we think we have for you.”
I do want to offer a quick shout-out to The Hills’ story editors, who, while doing DiVello’s bidding, did have a killer sense of humor.
“Some [scenes] will have multiple plot points you can use,” Jess told me. “Sometimes you can recut a scene to have 5 different storylines. You just have to pick one and be very clear.” Most often, you’re choosing the strongest story or “whatever the network has decided they want to see.” She called the entire process “Television by committee.”
All of this is what the finale is reminding us of; this is a television show. Of course it’s not real.
But that view neglects what is real for the cast; they are experiencing at least some version of these events, and their lives are being written out for them by full-grown adults twice their age.
Lauren also writes about getting approached by someone during filming — whether it’s someone at a bar, a new intern at work, what have you — and the constant not-knowing of if that person has been cast by the network, if they’re there for a genuine reason but just agreed to be miked and sign a release, or if they aren’t miked at all / didn’t sign a release and won’t make it into the footage. In one example, Jane’s “friend at work” is cast by the network without her knowledge, and even told to encourage Jane to stay in a relationship with scary-Jesse (Jesse’s character eventually leaves Brody Jenner territory and enters scary-Jason territory); the work friend ultimately comes clean to Jane and afterward they become actual friends, but it’s still a creepy reveal.
With this in mind, it starts being easier to see who / what might have been “planted” by production. Take the whole “Doug” and Stephanie dating thing — Doug is the one who pursues Stephanie, but then tells everyone else he wants nothing to do with her, which makes Stephanie cry when she overhears him say it. If this plot was just altogether “fake,” it wouldn’t have made Stephanie react like that; more likely, producers told Doug to ask out Stephanie, and Stephanie had no idea it wasn’t genuine.
Not only was the cast never told what was going on, they were also flat out lied to about it. Whenever Jane tries to confront Trevor Lord / Adam DiVello about manipulating her life — like when he gets Jane’s nemesis “Madison” a job at Jane’s job — he just lies to her face about having anything to do with it. This is literally on top of him, at another point, telling Jane, “Sometimes you have to lie to people if it’s for their own good.” Oh??? And also when it’s — not for their own good?? (“Why is it that what’s good for ratings and what’s good for me are totally opposite?” Jane’s bestie Scarlett asks at one point.)
When Lauren went on The View to do promo for L.A. Candy, she was asked about the H / S relationship and Spencer apologizing to her for the sex tape, at which point Lauren dropped another bomb: he never called her to apologize. “I didn’t even know about it,” she said, until she saw the episode air. (Whoopi has a great sarcastic, “That’s shocking,” to the news.) I have a lot of questions about this, because Lauren was saying things into a phone, and so was Spencer — it was later confirmed that Spencer was just recording audio pretending he was talking to her, but I’m so curious what the producers told Lauren she was doing???
Finally, the finale doesn’t hit because of the elephant in the room of Lauren Conrad’s non-presence. Oh, your show was fake? Then why was your lead always in tears and ultimately decided to leave? If Lauren was still on the show, the “it was all fake” thing would be way more compelling, because it would be a joke she’s in on — especially given how much the show’s storylines were treated as real by media and tabloids.
So now’s the part where I tell you that Adam DiVello actually filmed two different endings to this show, and the one he preferred — that MTV did not — was the one with a surprise Lauren appearance. I’ve screen capped this ending, starting from after Brody hugs Kristin goodbye and her car drives off. Let’s watch!
Aside from the dumbass formatting MTV did to this video, what do we see here?? With Lauren waiting in Brody’s apartment for him, the viewer would assume the “someone else” Brody had “started seeing,” was in fact Lauren. (Just like Ross and Rachel, will-they-won’t-they becomes they will!) “It’s hard to say goodbye,” is also a tasteful little nod at Lauren’s departure from the show. While conceptually I also like this ending less, I think it makes more sense for the direction the show actually had taken at this point.
And that’s our show. I think the saddest thing for me when I think about Lauren Conrad’s experience with all this is that, above everything, she always cared about being a good friend. And maybe that’s a dumb thing to do when you’re on a reality show, but she was twenty years old. “Friendship’s really important to me, and I think it’s a really prominent theme in these books,” she said about L.A. Candy, and it’s true; the boy drama and producer sadism are secondary to the friendship plots — thinking someone’s your friend and they’re not, trying to save your friend from a situation they can’t be saved from, and being there for your friend no matter fucking what.
For me the best part of The Hills *was* the friend group era, and the best episodes were when the girls were bonding and talking each other through problems. I saw myself in them! But this is America, and we are built on toxicity. As Lauren observes in L.A. Candy, “The only thing America loved more than watching their stars rise was watching them fall.”
Miscellany
Aka none of this fit anywhere else.
Who is this mad scientist looking man? He steals every scene he is in. He is never identified. Someone find him for me.
This Halloween episode where Brody fully acknowledged himself as the sidekick to Frankie’s Batman; Whitney was an adorable ladybug; and Jen Bunney was a complete dumb bitch and Lauren was not.
This episode where Lauren and Lo go clean out Lauren’s room at the Laguna Beach house and Lauren reads her adorable diary out loud, as well as her will.
Photograph of Brody’s mom Linda Thompson in her dating-Elvis era.
Laurenisms
She needs a book of quotes.
I had to close it out with this. I love this bitch so much.
Ready to queue up the show? Release your inhibitions! Feel the rain on your face! And don’t forget to live text me throughout.
this has been—
xxx your twin flame
P.S. I have big news! Twin Flame is starting a podcast! Our first episode will be a companion piece to this stack. Stay tuned for further programming.
My source is Reddit.
Whenever I say “discussion,” in this post, I mean Reddit threads.
Again, this means Reddit.
Except for one time Lauren called Jen Bunney a bitch, but not to her face.
Note me not even footnotes-ing Reddit this time.
I am truly obsessed with this had so much fun writing this. This show and its predecessor were truly seminal to my internalized misogyny and this was such a helpful reminder that Brody Jenner is sadly in my subconscious mind somewhere. Also Lauren is so much smarter than she is ever made to appear. Audrina is saying everything but JB is the best fuck she’s ever had, and Heidi is in a really abusive relationship. BRAVO!!!!!!!!! Exceptional reading and writing!!
And cant wait for the podcast!!