stateofbliss
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Gawker.com recapped the Hills and brought up some interesting points...
http://gawker.com/5056881/the-hills--i-guess-this-is-growing-upThe Hills: I Guess This Is Growing Up
Am I a crazy person or was last night's episode of The Hills kind of, um, really good? I mean, the meandering reality soap, about the moaning ruins of Los Angeles youth, was still silly and staged for the most part, but there were a few moments last night when I suppressed a gasp and thought to myself "this might actually be real." It was both unsettling and thrilling, like a boring party that suddenly tips to one side and becomes drunken and weird and, yes, a good time.
The first hit came in the land of Heidi and Spencer, who still bicker and mug at each other, probably so tired of one another and yet still mucking through this charade so the cameras will still circle them forever. Oh and Heidigger, Heidi's listless older sister, was also there, cooking up some kind of birthday surprise. That surprise turned out to be the Mother Montag, who tumbled through the door and immediately stirred some **** up. Like daughter like mother! Spencer—who, by basically just sitting on the couch and spouting off bitchy one liners in every episode, has become the show's Sofia Petrillo—mixed it up right back, and the two agreed to have a private lunch so they could hiss at each other some more.
The lunch was sad and awkward, with Spencer barking and sniping on autopilot and Heidi's mom desperately trying to do... something. I don't know what. Why is this woman on the show? What's going on? Has she drank whatever laudanum-laced mojito-flavored Kool Aid that the producers feed the rest of the cast? It's just sad to see a mom, a real-life non-LA mom debasing herself like that. Well, so I thought until she had lunch with Heidi, and complained that Spencer was condescending and mean. Then she began to cry, real tears, a real terrible fear that her daughter could be slipping from her grasp, lost to this sprawling mini-mall of a city and its many pitfalls and sand traps. It made me wonder how many people are wandering around LA who have devastated parents somewhere else, parents who feel that they've lost something—something huge and indescribable—forever.
Then, of course, there was Lauren, who was still dealing with the fallout from last week's revelation that her supposed friend Spencerina had gone out on a date with her ex, Doug the Frozen Burrito Heir. She confronted Spencerina about it, who sputtered and stuttered and told half truths and made up things about deleting him from her phone and I just put my head in my hands. What is the point of lying if you're being filmed all the time? Does she really think that producers or camera men or whoever else is constantly surrounding these people aren't going to whisper something into Lauren's ear? It's just mind boggling.
Anyway, we found out that Spencerina has, in fact, continued to see Douggles. The Pinto Bean Prince confessed to his chief Broseph Brody that he wasn't all about it but man this chick was sending him crazy texts about watching movies "late night" and **** so what's a brah to do, you know? Whatevs man, my grandpaps totally invented frozen burritos, so that makes it all right and pretty ****in' cool of me to act like a total chach all the time. It's all good, bro.
It all ended, absolutely everything, with a barbecue, of course. Lauren was bemusedly pissed off that Spencerina decided to come and said some funny things to Whitney about walking the hour home, in a sheer dress down Sunset Boulevard, if she had to. All was OK, a detente if you will, until Brody decided to sidle up to Spencerina and yell at her for being a sneak or whatever and she just, again, sputtered weakly and the whole thing was just untoward. It only got worse though. Later at the party, when they'd moved inside, Spencerina was in a nearby bedroom while the others were in the living room, bellowing about the whole kerfuffle. Doug, probably about twenty Bud Light with Limes in at this point, was saying "I don't care about her, I just felt bad for her, blah blah blah" and Spenc—Stephanie—heard the whole thing.
And, yes. This seemed genuine. She was obviously very hurt and began crying. She tried to leave secretly but Lauren caught her and comforted her, sort of, and the camera was shaky and it all felt very real. Stephanie tried to offer up more silly excuses and Lauren just stopped her dead in her tracks with one "Stephanie..." coupled with a withering, pitying, baleful stare. I guess she just wanted to end the charade, end the embarrassment, end it all. I may be crazy and overanalyzing, but I thought I saw some shift in Lauren, something whirring and clicking that wasn't whirring and clicking before. Last week I fantasized that Lauren would escape to Italy, but now I think she might rescue herself in a far simpler (and yet somehow so much more complicated!) way: by taking a deep breath, putting one foot in front of the other, and just growing up.
And wouldn't that be something to watch?