“The Hills” — For Better Or Worse
Dude, you’re wearing girl-jeans.
About halfway through last night’s episode of The Hills there was this moment that somehow managed to encapsulate the entire series in about thirty seconds. Whitney was in charge of doing this photo shoot for the band “Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” and she needed one of the members to change from his jeans to these other jeans. He didn’t really want to. He liked his jeans. Whitney gave him the ol’, “um, OK” look that she has perfected in her two decades on this planet (or whatever planet). Just then the music started to swell with some sad indie-rock number (RJA?). Whitney walked away defeated. I swear, it might as well have been the Charlie Brown walk. It was perfect because it did precisely what the show does so well. It takes a completely meaningless exchange with very little consequence and gives it meaning. Now that’s power. More after the jump…
The addition of the rock band this week was key in its ability to pierce holes in the thin veil of reality that cloaks this series. When the show is on, it seems like nothing shy of the pure unadulterated word of god handed down from above. However, if too many outsiders infiltrate this world we start to see how the sausage is made and then in all starts getting a tad meta for my tastes — Rick said as he typed. If Pitchfork reviewed Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ performance on the show I’d wager it’d get a 2.7 (of course you’d have to wade through about three paragraphs of exposition to find out why, but that’s for another blog).
Elsewhere in the episode, Lauren had to deal with Jason getting engaged after only a few months dating this new girl. She reacted in classic LC fashion, by giving us the big eyes and then looking away suppressed disgust. Something tells me she’ll get through it.
As for Jason, what can you say. The guy has had a rough go of it. Isn’t engagement one of the twelve steps anyway?
Meanwhile on a completely different show, Heidi and Spencer start doing all of the wedding preparation things that people apparently do to prepare for a wedding (or something). She looked at dresses. They tried to register for plates and glasses. They had lunch and discussed dates for the wedding. He wanted to do it in Tibet. Nice, Spencer. Real nice. Unsurprisingly, he put up a front throughout most of this, not understanding why they just couldn’t elope, and then revealing he has yet to tell his parents of their proclaimed commitment. Heidi seemed to find this news particularly distressing.
Spencer, as we all know, is a mess, though with each passing week his actions seem to more and more warrant physical harm done upon him. I now sit in my chair watching this show praying a stray bullet catches him in the shoulder (you know, just a flesh wound), or better yet that some lost, delirious and hopefully troubled linebacker would just inexplicably come out of the right side of the frame and just drill him. That would be good television — and totally real.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I feel like all the Heidi-Spencer scenes are 100% staged. Why would she be dress shopping already? Why haven’t they had dinner with his parents to break the news? This is the fakest engagement ever… Spencer’s gay.