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People have mocked me for liking The Hills—behind my back! You think I can’t hear you but I totally hear you!—but I’m OK with that. Really. To be honest, I’ve drifted away from the show—which airs its last episode tonight—for the last year or two as it became even more totally dedicated to being a fame-manufacturing machine and Speidi wore out their short-to-begin-with welcome in the tabloids beyond the show. But what I wrote about it back in its fourth season still holds true: it was a gorgeous show in the way it was composed, and an influential show in its use of the meta-world of its participants’ celebrity. From that 2008 review:
It all sounds shallow, and, O.K., it is. The surfaces are precisely what make The Hills entrancing: it is possibly the best-looking series on television. It doesn’t just look better than life. It looks better than TV. Where most reality shows use garish close-ups to show hot emotions, The Hills uses middle- and long-range shots in wide-screen, giving it a cooler feel and framing the subjects like art photography. It’s full of liquid L.A. sun, in love with the way light plays on surfaces–car bodies, plate glass, glossed lips. And who hasn’t imagined his or her life as a TV show, every minor drama magnified, every view airbrushed, a Natasha Bedingfield song ripping hearts out every time you sadly adjust your sunglasses at a red light?
Is anyone in Tuned Inland going to miss The Hills besides me? I’m guessing not. And I’m OK with that too.