Stop Staring at that Box, You'll Ruin Your Eyes

How do we bid adieu to the show that brought us more catfights, hookups, scandals and subject-verb disagreement than we ever could have asked for? I’d like to do a recap and review some of my favorite Hills moments of the past five years.

Last night’s finale was a kind-of-sad, kind-of-nauseating ode to what it means to grow up and move on when you’re an over-privileged white kid living in Southern California. Since Lauren Conrad left the show last season and Kristin Cavillari sort of limped along, replaying the slutty, manipulative bitch role she honed while fighting over “Ste-viiiiiin” on Laguna Beach (eventually learning that television audiences don’t dig unlikeable reality show protagonists and settling into playing a poor man’s version of L.C.) it was apparent that renewal was probably not going to be an option. I mean, these people’s salaries had been re-upped to something like $25,000 per person, per episode so why would they agree to pay when those idiots on Jersey Shore are willing to make fools of themselves for a bottle of Valtrex and a cheap tanning package?)

So now, with no reality show to film (and no discernible income), our fearless band of heroes have to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. The four remaining main characters: Kristin, who isn’t actually friends with any of these girls, Lo, who somehow got dragged into all of this when she was living with Lauren but who stuck around when she realized that $25,000 an episode was pretty hard to turn down, Audrina, whose ceiling eyes and buoyant implants have marked the series’ most vapid moments (that’s saying something!) and Stephanie, who somehow went from being Spencer’s drugged out, violent little sister to the most sensible one on the show, get together to talk about their futures.

Steph is just so happy! Everyone can tell because she’s just positively glowing; they don’t realize that that’s just because she isn’t drinking a gallon of Appletini every week. Audrina isn’t quite so happy. We find this out in a little depressing/awkward interchange:

Aud: You look really happy.
Steph: I am! I’ve just found my happy place
Aud: I don’t think that I have. I feel like I’m still looking.
Steph: But you used to…
Aud: No, not really.

How fucking sad! So I’m supposed to believe that after all of these years of lounging by the pool and riding away into the sunset with Justin Bobby and pretending to work in various offices she still hasn’t found happiness? Not even when she filmed Into the Blue 2??? God, Audrina. That’s just sad! On the other hand, Lo is. She’s decided to totally jump off the cliff and move in with ol’ dopey eyes. She loves him and she has a normal job and she wants to have babies!!! All of the girls “ooooh” and “aaaaahhhh” over this and I cringe at the idea of them babysitting. Finally we come to Kristin, who is seriously going through a “mid-20s mid-life crisis” and just doesn’t know what to do with her life. She’s bored and lost and is feeling the wanderlust that only pretty blond girls whose parents own beach-front properties can. It’s Europe or bust (which is kind of the most vague kind of geographical directive you could give) and she’s got to leave right away! — right after she talks to Brody and has a going away party and films The Hills Finale After Party two months later.

The rest of the episode is composed of these people wrapping up their story lines. Audrina looks at a beach house so that she can “get out of Hollywood” and “clear her head.” I will avoid the obvious joke here. It may just be me and my wacky responsibility piping up again, but I think that moving into a really expensive beach house immediately after your only source of regular income has been eradicated is maybe not the best idea. Well, there is that rumored Audrina reality show that everyone’s been talking about. Puke.

Steph drives two hours to see her new motor-cross dude race, and afterward she has “the talk” with him. Throughout this scene my boyfriend says that he “likes her” because she seems nice and normal and she wears an adorable pseudo-athletic outfit to see her athlete date. “That’s what you would wear if I raced bikes.” Yes Grant, yes it is. So, the talk goes something like this: “You look like, you’re just, like, this tough, motorcycle guy, but then, like, you’re just like a big Carebear underneath.” The saying is “teddy bear” but that’s okay, Steph. I’ll let this one slide. This precipitates a “I’m not dating anyone else” “I’m not dating anyone else either” “Do you want to be dating anyone else?” conversation and it’s all too adorable and sweet to ignore. I hope they order Diet Coke and Sprites for a long, long, time.

Let’s see… who else? Lo moved in with her unfortunate looking boyfriend. He seems nice and stable and older than all of them. He also loves her — enough to say that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her. Her little face lights up and you can tell that she doesn’t want to beam because it makes her cheeks look fat. It’s a very real, very endearing moment. If nothing else, these two will have that on tape for the rest of their lives and that’s really something.

On the crazy end of the pond, Kristin needs to close the book on Brody before she begins gallivanting off to Ye Olde Europe. So, she meets him on top of some roof in downtown Los Angeles swimming in a pool in his sunglasses (I WANT A ROOFTOP POOL. MAXIMUM TANNING. MAXIMUM PRIVACY. MAXIMUM ‘HOLY SHIT I’M SWIMMING ON TOP OF A REALLY, REALLY HIGH BUILDING’ FEELING.) She sits down on a chaise lounge and tells him the big news. She’s leaving — maybe for a month, maybe for the summer, maybe she’ll settle down with a nice French man named Jacques who feeds her cheese cubes and plays the lyrical guitar. Brody asks her if the decision has anything to do with him. What a bold-faced thing to do, Brody Jenner! How could you be so audacious as to assume that you would be the sole reason why reality super star Kristin Cavallari would leave the home-baked glow of Los Angeles for the cold, blistering, rainy lull of god damn Europe. I want to yell at him and say that he’s wrong, but he’s right. He’s so, so right. All the while, Brody’s new squeeze — Canadian songstress/eyeliner proponent Avril Lavigne — is calling endlessly, wondering why things have to be so complicated. Kristin invites him to her going away party but he doesn’t know if he’s going to come because that will be, in some way, condoning her leaving. Oh, Brody Jenner. You are a grade A dickhead.

The party happens and it’s at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel — the same place Heidi snuck all of her friends into under the watchful eye of Teen Vogue intern Lauren Conrad in the very first season of The Hills! Times were simpler then. Heidi was a spunky party-girl whose enigmatic personality made up for the fact that she wasn’t as traditionally attractive as her sweet-but-mundane friend. Lauren’s hair was a terrible shade of blond. Spencer Pratt didn’t even exist. Ah, memories.

No one’s sneaking in and there are no fights tonight. Everyone’s just saying a fake goodbye to Kristin, which is actually a fake goodbye to the show. Brody tells her not to leave, that he will miss her. A single, glistening tear runs down his golden tan and perfect stubble — I wonder what it feels like to nuzzle his face? Probably like holding a newborn puppy — and the moment is had. The next day Kristin plans to leave the country (maybe just drive down the street?) so she puts on her finest shorty-shorts and heads out to her car. Who should be there but Brody, wishing her goodbye. Telling her that he wants her to stay… “That’s all that I’ve wanted to hear you say for so long. But I have to leave.” She gets into the car, the camera settles on Brody, Hollywood sign in the background, and suddenly some shit goes down! The Hollywood sign/sunset is removed as a backdrop and a movie set is revealed. Kristin gets out of the car, hugs Brody, someone yells, “CUT!” and The Hills is over.

So what did it all mean??? During the after show Brody Jenner asserted that it had an open-ended meaning, “You never know what’s real and what’s not. Maybe our [Kristin and Brody] relationship was all fake.” Maybe that’s what it is — I certainly don’t think that everything on the show was fake. Surely after Lauren left there was more falsification, less concentration on the real-life feelings of these people, but I think that some of it was real. I know for damn sure that Brody and Kristin’s friends-with-benefits situation was real. You could smell the stink of desperation on her when he looked at her, and the involvement of alcohol certainly aided in more than a few “ride home together” nights. But mostly, I think that the ending was a big “Look What I Did” from Adam Divello. The man who crafted the semi-scripted concept for Laguna Beach, and continued — with success — to helm the reigns of the equally fake The Hills created a new television art form. In acknowledging that it was fake, he also shed light on the fact that what he created had never been done before. American didn’t need something real to become invested — and they didn’t need something fake to ensure that whatever hardships or triumphs were far enough away from their own lives that they didn’t sting — they just needed a well-crafted story and a few hundred tequila shots to get them hooked. Surely it isn’t the reality (or lack thereof) that entices an audience, but the reassurance that some things will always be the same. Audrina’s eyes will always stare aimlessly upward. Kristin’s skin will always be a glowing tan. Brody will always be simultaneously aggravating and attractive. The rest, is still unwritten.