Crucial Minutiae

I did a shameful thing this weekend. I watched the latest episode of the Hills for the third time. I also re-watched Newport Harbor, and relived the shock I had the first time that a group of teenagers who are throwing a “Pretty in Pink” party had no idea that the phrase was originally a Molly Ringwald movie. I am not alone in my obsession with these MTV shows—when the Hills premiered two weeks ago, millions of folks tuned in to watch, making it the highest rated program for the night.

So what the heck is so addicting about these shows? The characters are often infuriating (I wanted to scream when Heidi accepted Spencer’s proposal and slipped the ring he’d bought at some cheesmo mall store onto her finger) and vapid (Samantha on Newport Harbor believed that “bootylicious” had made it’s way into the dictionary). The plot lines even aren’t all that—you basically know everything that’s going to happen from the previews MTV plays aggressively through the week. So why would I waste multiple half hours re-watching these shows?

Here is my best theory:

It’s teenage and early-twenties life boiled down to the elemental forms, without any of the true struggles. My senior year of high school was filled with good times—parties, flirtations, group trips, and lots of stuff I probably still wouldn’t tell my parents about. But it also had some annoying stuff—part-time jobs, exams, college applications, college rejections, worrying about paying for college, knowing your friend group was about to be flung across the country, and being faced with the prospect of the world for the first time. The beauty of Laguna Beach and now Newport Harbor is that it gives us only the former, eliminating all of the later. Sure, the people on the show probably go to school, but we hear zero about it. We also hear zero about college—it was discussed briefly in the much-less-popular first season, but the producers quickly learned to lose it. The people on the show are obscenely rich, so there’s no money concerns at all. All of the real struggle of life is gone, and all that’s left is the hookups, love triangles, and rivalries (generally, between the women). In other words, great television. Plus, who knew there were so many different shades of blonde hair in the world?

Ditto goes for the Hills. Lauren Conrad (who I’ve interviewed before and is truly a lovely, funny woman) goes to fashion school—her career aspirations were the center of the first episode of the show three seasons ago. But now, aside from a random establishing shot once every five episodes, we hear nothing about college whatsoever. No all-nighters, no killer exams, no professors who have it in for her. Nada. She has an internship, and both Heidi and Audrina have jobs, but the only scenes we ever see of them at work including talking to their also-attractive co-workers and gossiping about their friends. No photocopying, no boring meetings. Meanwhile, they’re in their early 20s and have apartments more gorgeous than most 40-year-olds I know. They can focus full-times on their fights and boy drama.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you took most friend groups ages 18-22, eliminated all the boring stuff, brought in a good cinematographer, put them in bathing suits more often than not, and encouraged back-stabbing and hook-ups, it would probably be pretty fascinating. Right?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 8:21 am and is filed under Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.