Some people don't care about "The Hills," and that's okay. Maybe you're someone who spent your teenage years reading Foucault, or volunteering with children. Good for you. Maybe the names "Justin Bobby" and "Audrina" and "Jen Bunney" sound like gibberish to you. Fine.
This is for the rest of us — those of us who tuned in every week from 2006 to 2010 to watch the admittedly manufactured drama between overprivileged straight white women and their hopelessly dunderheaded boyfriends. Those of us who aren't afraid to admit that we will always remember the tone and delivery of Lauren Conrad delivering the classic, friendship-ending line, "I want to forgive you, and I want to forget you."
We're here to celebrate that MTV announced that they might be reuniting at this year's VMAs! Without three fifths of the main cast, that is.
Lauren Conrad, her later-season replacement Kristin Cavallari, and Whitney Port were all absent from the awards show, as was Brody Jenner, who famously dated both Lauren and Kristin. But that left Audrina Patridge, Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag and Jason Wahler of "you'll always be the girl who never went to Paris" fame. Also possibly appearing in the reunion: the man so great he needed two first names, Justin Bobby Brescia, and, fairly randomly, Frankie Delgado. Heidi and Spencer even brought their baby boy, Gunner, to Monday night's awards show.
MTV is being coy about the details, but the show is definitely coming back under the title "The Hills: New Beginnings." A new Twitter account, @thehills, tweeted for the first time around 10:20 pm on Monday night.
Shortly after, the account tweeted a promo that features a slowed-down version of the show's theme song "Unwritten" over picturesque shots of Los Angeles. At the end, a female voice (Stephanie Pratt?) says, "It's like we're all growing up. It's weird."
People familiar with the show probably won't be surprised to hear that Justin Bobby let the news slip early. On an Australian tour with his band, which is called BobbyrocK (of course it is, and no, the errant capital K is not a typo), he told interviewers that he had to return to Los Angeles "because the show I've done before, called 'The Hills,' might be starting up again."
Lauren, who left the show after five seasons, told HuffPost last year that she doesn't want to be part of another reality show. "I spent a lot of years on a show focused on my personal life, so I don't think I'd do it again," she said.
She seems to have moved fluidly from reality star to lifestyle brand manager without trying to establish a career as a singer or actress, which is admirable in and of itself. Maybe?
Kristin, on the other hand, might have been interested. "I was about to sign a deal to do a 'Hills' reunion with E!, and then Heidi and Spencer signed a deal with MTV," she told People earlier this summer. She added that Speidi was such a "vital part" of the show that she couldn't imagine doing it without them. These days, Kristin is busy with her own reality show, "Very Cavallari," about her life in Nashville with her football player husband Jay Cutler. Reviews have been mixed.
Whitney, as she was on the show, is a bit more of an enigma. She mentioned the reunion on social media, although she was conspicuously absent from the VMAs. Like Lauren, she seems to run a lifestyle brand now, although its focus is unclear. The "About" section on her brand's website lists dozens of descriptors including "Boss," "CEO," "French Braid Model," "Leather Jacket Hoarder," "Stylist to the Stars (aka my mom and sisters)", and "Snow Globe Collector."
("Everything might happen" is a pretty perfect description of the low stakes/high drama on the show, incidentally.)
Some people are having trouble picturing the rest of the cast carrying the show without either Lauren or Kristin. (Is Stephanie Pratt, Spencer's very boring sister, going to be the main character? That seems... misguided, to say the least.)
It's hard to imagine what "The Hills" will look like if it's not about incredibly immature people in their early 20s. Will a show about slightly responsible parents in their early 30s be as entertaining? Let's be honest, it will probably be bad. And there's definitely a discussion to be had about how many more untalented white people we need on screen at this particular moment in time. But as a dirty-haired philosopher once said, "truth and time tells all."
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