Don't Hate It Because It's Beautiful

Let's get one thing out of the way first. Yes, The Hills is fake. Fake in the sense that producers and participants acknowledge reshooting scenes and doing multiple takes. Fake in the sense that MTV's beautiful "stars" are famous for little more than being on The Hills. And fake in that it's proof that a beautiful shot and a well-chosen sound track can imitate emotion in even the most banal scene.

But if you can get past the idea that fakeness is a bad thing--use a fancier term, like artifice, if that helps you--then The Hills is one of the most magnificent pieces of fakery on television, a jewel-like celebration of superficiality.

Following four young women's dramas, shifting alliances and adventures in the L.A. glamour biz, The Hills (Season 4 starts Aug. 18; Seasons 1 through 3 are out on DVD) comes from a proud heritage of California teen soaps. We met the protagonist, Lauren Conrad, on MTV's high school reality soap Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. After graduation, she was spun off to The Hills, moved to L.A., landed an internship at Teen Vogue and made new friends. There's frenemy Heidi Montag, with her on-again, off-again boyfriend Spencer Pratt, the social-climbing Laddie Macbeth who drove a wedge between her and Lauren; Audrina Patridge, Lauren's less confident wing woman; Whitney Port, her levelheaded confidante and co-worker at a fashion-p.r. firm. Over three seasons, the four and their dream life made The Hills MTV's most popular show.

In the process, they've become tabloid stars. In one episode Lauren asks Whitney if she went out last night, and Whitney says, "No, actually, I took the night off." It's a figure of speech, but not entirely: their social lives are their jobs. (The tabs unearthed a contract in which Audrina was paid $10,000 to go to a nightclub for two hours.)

Fans can follow their story in the off-season in gossip pages, blogs and celebrity magazines. (You may well know them from those even if you've never watched the show.) Thus when a rumor circulated that Lauren and a boyfriend had made a sex tape, it played in the gossip sheets, then came up in Season 3, when she accused Heidi of helping spread the dirt.

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?

The illusion is broken only when the subjects open their mouths; their dialogue is, to be tactful, minimalist. (Lauren's conversation with an ex-boyfriend: "I told you I'd be your friend again eventually. I just couldn't do it at first." "It's just hard to get over." "I know." And--scene!) The Hills is like a music video, an art-directed distillation of emotion that would only be ruined by too many words. It's life, if you were young, lucky and beautiful and had your own cinematographer and sound-track curator. If this is fake, maybe reality is overrated.