55: The Hills

There is no show on this list whose demographic is more opposite my won than the Hills. It's aimed at I don't know, I assume teenage to twenty something girls, but even the girls who it's aimed at aren't the ones with whom I usually associate (I don't say that as a judgment - I've watched plenty of bad TV, just an observation). I can't think of anyone I know who watches The Hills, or has even watched it at all, as far as I know. Yet, it seems to have a been a bit of a big deal, and I feel I'd be remiss not to give it a shout out, to its demographic as well (Yeah, Laguna Beach is counting in this entry as well - one's a spin off of their other, and even if they were big enough to deserve two entries, which I'm not sold on, I definitely wouldn't have enough to say about both of them).

The only thing I know about The Hills without looking it up is the names of the girls (or at least some of them) - Lauren Conrad, Heidi, Whitney, Audrina whose names I suppose have just showed up too many places for me to avoid. That, and they live somewhere in southern california and at least one of them works in fashion and I think one has a boyfriend named Spencer.

I honestly have as little to say about this as I do about anything else on this list. I suppose I should view at least one episode before I say this (maybe it's creepily addictive - it's happened before) but it doesn't seem like the type of show I'd normally watch and I don't really understand the appeal (I don't mean this in an old-person-luddite I don't understand people and their technology these days - I'm not saying it as a putdown or in a sarcastic manner - I really would like to know what people like about it and what makes it a big hit). I once had a drunken conversation with a girl at a bar somewhere and at some point she started talking about Laguna Beach and I realized I had nothing to say on the matter (a rarity with me on TV, clearly).

What I will say, is, and this is true about a lot of what's on TV, but perhaps none more than this one on this list - The Hills straddles that strange line between what is really "reality" in reality TV. There's actually a whole section of their wikipedia page devoted to how "real" the show is (I know I keep using it in quotes, but I feel like it's apt that way - it's obviously real without quotes in that it exists and is not imaginary). It's more real than scripted TV, in that, well, there's no script, but it's not entirely real either, even more so than just by employing selective editing - while the dialogue is not written out beforehand, scenes are planned out and set up by MTV, and Heidi's wedding was merely symbolic and didn't actually happen. Real life is clearly too boring to be in TV, but I suppose it's cheaper to have people play themselves, or they're just not good enough actors, or I don't even know.

But yeah, it's kind of a big deal. So here it is.