“The Hills,” the landmark reality soap that cemented Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag and their pals as tabloid superstarlets, died last week at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. It was 4.
The popular series’ cause of death wasn’t provided, but MTV president of programming Tony DiSanto previously called it “an organic culmination of this saga.” After 102 installments, “The Hills” faded into the sunset with a goodbye gala attended by the show’s cast and a wink, wink twist ending in the final episode that had friends-with-benefits Kristin Cavallari and Brody Jenner seemingly saying goodbye in front of the Hollywood sign, then appearing in front of a backdrop on the Paramount Studios’ lot.
“With ‘The Hills’ off the air, I no longer have to field questions about the show’s authenticity,” said Mandelker. “I can think of about 10 different things I’d rather do than engage in yet another dumb argument about whether or not ‘The Hills’ is staged. I just tell people it’s like professional wrestling: Don’t take it so seriously, and enjoy the ride.”
The club-hopping, music-pumping, catfighting, mascara-dripping, mouth-dropping, crystal-worshipping drama of “The Hills” debuted in 2006 as a spinoff of MTV’s popular high-school reality docudrama “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” The series originally documented the journey of bubbly “Laguna Beach” graduate Conrad to L.A.
As the show progressed, “The Hills” morphed from a coming-of- age story centering on the budding fashion designer to a splashy soap focusing on a bevy of beautiful people. Andy Dehnart, who has blogged about reality TV for more than 10 years at , said the series’ lush cinematography and phony authenticity left a lasting impression on the medium.
“The legacy of ‘The Hills’ is that it improved the visual language of reality TV while proving that a series could be sustained in an M.C. Escher-like circle where tabloid coverage of the cast members sustained interest in a narrative that largely ignored their real lives, including the intense media coverage that generated interest in the show,” said Dehnart.
Fans never seemed to mind the show’s fabrications. Kelli Hughes, who has followed the series since its inception, bemoaned that her Tuesday nights would never be the same. Despite the end of “The Hills,” she said she would continue to monitor the cast’s off-screen exploits.
“I still plan on blogging about all the girls because, for me, that’s what the show was always about,” said Hughes. “They have all had issues on-screen and off that we can relate to. That’s what drew me to ‘The Hills’ and always kept me coming back for more.”
Throughout the show’s tumultuous run, tabloids and blogs were enamored with the show’s never-ending series of breakups, makeups and falling-outs, most notably the epic divide between best friends Montag and Conrad, who left “The Hills” in the middle of the fifth season and was replaced by her sassy, raspy “Laguna Beach” adversary Cavallari.
