The Hills will once more be alive with the sound of histrionics, as MTV revives its iconic late-aughts show this June. And yet, unlike The Real Housewives franchise, it didn’t initially trade in scandal and conflict. It began in 2006, when Lauren Conrad graduated from high school docuseries Laguna Beach to study fashion and intern at Teen Vogue in Los Angeles and took the cameras with her. It was a smart move: the show’s sky-high ratings allowed her to launch a lifestyle brand, multiple fashion lines and nine books (and counting).
She lived with her best friend Heidi Montag and early episodes followed them, their neighbour Audrina Patridge and fellow Teen Vogue intern Whitney Port as they pursued their dreams while overcoming reassuringly low-stakes obstacles. Montag got her PR company boss’s drink order wrong and he was irritated; Port tripped over while representing Teen Vogue on television; Conrad borrowed an expensive dress and struggled to return it unblemished. There was a little interpersonal angst – Conrad had to decide between a work trip to Paris and spending the summer with her sullen on-off boyfriend (and it’s still hard to accept the choice she made) – but, for the most part, it was perfect escapist TV, free of the stresses of real life. At least until Spencer Pratt joined the cast.
Montag ignored Conrad’s advice and at-home viewers’ screams and quickly fell in love with Pratt, moving in with him despite his manipulative and cruel behaviour (when Montag suggested she might want to delay cohabitation a few months, he ordered her out of his car). But the first episode of season three was when viewers learned that Montag and Pratt had spread rumours about Conrad making a sex tape (or she had evidence that suggested they had), culminating in a mascara-stained nightclub slanging match where Conrad screamed: “You guys are sick people!”
Their friendship never recovered, and neither did the show. Pratt continued to alienate friends and family members, Patridge accused Conrad of hooking up with her intermittent boyfriend, the irascible Justin Bobby, resulting in another public spat. And Montag flew to Colorado to devastate her mother with the news of her extensive cosmetic surgery. The Hills had always been accused of being scripted, but now it was a little too real – and a lot less fun.
Unsurprisingly, Conrad was keen to leave, so during season five producers replaced her with her hot-headed former Laguna Beach love rival – and future anti-vaxxer – Kristin Cavallari to maximise the potential for drama. It worked: soon Patridge was accusing Cavallari of eyeing up Justin Bobby and the two women almost came to blows.
The ending in 2010 added insult to near-injury. Cavallari hugged her ex-boyfriend Brody Jenner goodbye and then drove away to new adventures, before the LA landscape was revealed to be a soundstage. It was supposed to be a meta-commentary on the shifting nature of truth, or something, but it was a cheap trick – one last desperate move from a programme well past its peak.
