MTV Heads for 'The Hills'

The times they are a-changin'. And while we've been idly watching American Idol and polishing off our chips-n-dip, things have been a-changin' right before our eyes. Reality TV has reshaped our perception of reality. And we didn't even notice.

Let's consider MTV's newest offering. The Hills (as in Hollywood Hills) follows the beautiful, teenage, BMW-driving Lauren as she leaves Laguna Beach (land of her former MTV reality show) and migrates to Los Angeles. There she moves in with her equally blond and gorgeous friend Heidi, attends fashion college and works as an intern for Teen Vogue magazine. Oh, and in her spare time she and her fashionable brat pack enjoy the sparkling, celebrity-filled L.A. nightlife, too—never mind that she's barely out of high school.

Glamour, Sex, Roll Camera
Picture it. A group of really attractive 19-year-olds and twentysomethings lounging around a dance club table sipping drinks, dressed in oh-so-trendy T-shirts and impossibly expensive jeans. They're discussing one of the age-old problems of life—having to actually get up and go to work before noon. "Some people do have full-time jobs. Crazy thought, I know," says Lauren with a serious tilt of her golden-maned head. The well-favored hunk next to her replies, "I have a full-time job ... I go out every night."

With that, we get a perfect snapshot of where The Hills begins and where it's going. It's a little boring at times and not necessarily very good drama, but it is reality, right? That's how they bill it, anyway. The beauties in the show are real kids, with real names in a real world and the teens tuning in each week want to believe it. (MTV even has an "After Show" where Lauren and Co. "dish" on "real life.")

I'll admit that the scene-by-scene dialogue does sound insipid enough to be real. For example, when the fashion college dean asks Heidi about her career plans, she replies vacantly: "I wanna be, like, the fun party PR girl in L.A., type of thing." It's hard to write dizzy dialogue like that outside of a comedy romp, or even teach an actress to deliver it with a straight face. Heidi somehow manages it with ease and clueless conviction.

On the other hand, The Hills is formulaically paced and there's always the requisite amount of sexual banter and scantily clad beauties in every episode—just to keep the young audience titillated. For instance, brat-packer Brian goes to visit his new girlfriend at her workplace. Now, she just happens to work at a photographic studio, which just happens to be doing a model shoot for Maxim that day, and as she shows Brian around we just happen to catch sight of a barely covered model as she adjusts her ample cleavage for the camera.

In another episode, Heidi's boyfriend, Jordan, talks to his roommate about a spat they had. "We made up," says Jordan. "How many times did you make up?" winks the roomy with a smarmy grin. They go on to list the finer points of having more than one sexual partner, ending with: "You're in Hollywood now Jordan ... this isn't North Carolina." Later, we see Heidi and her boy-toy roll out of bed in their undies. And it's all so slick and sanitized and "Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."

Being Paris, Loving Lohan
And therein lies the rub. We tune in to the hip MTV to look at these self-absorbed poppets struggling with their vacuous, but oh-so-glamorous lives and think, "I wish I had their worries." Reality TV has given the mundane a celebrity status that we want to watch and emulate. Gone are the days of following after honored leaders or teachers. We'd rather dream of being paparazzi fodder like a Hilton or a Lohan and we create Web sites like YouTube to display our own reality videos and live that dream.

Somewhere, deep down, we know that all this stuff has been manufactured for our mindless consumption. Still, we don't care. Shows like The Hills may not be dramatically compelling or even very interesting. But they're pretty. And if we stare at them long enough, we may start to think ... they're reality.