The Hills

There's retarded, and then there is The Hills. I found out about this show by googling "worst TV show 2009" and observing dozens of mentions of this MTV shitfest. In greenlighting this series, I can only assume that the producers noticed that the "severe head trauma" demographic was woefully underrepresented on television and decided to fill the void.

The show is mercifully short (only 21 minutes, including previously-on, next-on, and theme song segments), yet it still took me three tries to get all the way through an episode. It feels much longer, as about two thirds of this time is spent panning back and forth between characters awkwardly not talking to each other.

The cast consists of approximately half a dozen interchangeable bimbos, plus a handful of the male equivilent with some of the douchiest facial hair this side of the Jersey shore. I imagine that there must be some sort of giant Play-doh dumb factory in California that churns out these identical talking mannequins, because even with a gun to my head I couldn't tell them apart. Luckily the producers (who probably can't tell them apart either) chose to flash each character's name on the screen every time they appear. They could have saved themselves the trouble and just had them all wear nametags, but whatever.

The plot is virtually non-existant. The entire show consists of 60-90 second segments of 2-4 blond placeholders talking awkwardly with each other about absolutely nothing. At the end of each "dialog", the cameras cut back and forth between the bobbleheads as they stare awkwardly around the room for about 20 seconds. Then there is a musical montage consisting of whatever song is popular that week among twentysomethings with down syndrome, cut with stock footage of Things That Happen In LA. Then there is a commercial break and the cycle begins anew.

You might argue that "It's a reality show, whatever happens happens", but you would be retarded. Whatever the cast claims (probably to avoid having to pay writers), every vapid syllable that falls out of the empty blond noggins on The Hills is scripted in advance. There is absolutely nothing "real" about it.

It is possible that there is some sort of story going on, and that you have to watch the series from the beginning to "get into it". However the 20 minutes I spent watching the one episode made me feel noticeably dumber, and I fear if I watch any more I will loose the ability to do long division. Whatever story may exist is burried so deeply in uncomfortable staring and self-absorbed anecdotes about shopping that you'd choke to death on banality long before you found it.

The fact that ~3 million people watch this show makes me weep for the future of humanity. It has somehow managed to last through five fucking seasons despite having the intellectual and entertainment capacity of a mayonnaise sandwich. The Hills has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If you walk up to a group of women (and it will be women) discussing this program, turn around and walk away. I guarantee that not one of them has the sense that god gave corn. If ever there was a barometer for mental infirmity, it is The Hills.