The Hills: New Beginnings Proves We Cant Go Home Again
Well, MTV can. Before too long, the amiable “what a long strange trip” vibe gives way to the meat of..
Well, MTV can. Before too long, the amiable “what a long strange trip” vibe gives way to the meat of this show—or, this season. Spencer is pitted against Brody. Spencers sister, Stephanie, is forced, a square peg in a bad hole, into a love triangle with Audrina and the dreaded Justin Bobby, who has still not given up on his dream of somehow becoming, really becoming, Johnny Depp. Its depressing how quickly The Hills: New Beginnings sinks into its lazy artifice. We barely get any room to reminisce before the show has to charge us into the new drama. Couldnt we have had more contemplative Big Chilling? Isnt that what wine-hazed 30somethings spend most of their time doing anyway?
The shows most interesting new variable also doesnt work. Theyve lured in Mischa Barton, star of The O.C. (which is said to have inspired The Hills progenitor Laguna Beach), and longtime tabloid target. She looks happy and healthy, and has a centered intelligence foreign to many of the other characters on the show. I dont fully know whether I believe that Barton and this gang were good friends back in the day the way they keep suggesting, but whatever. For the peculiar project of this show—raising sad zombies to twirl before us as distraction from encroaching middle-age—Bartons casting makes sense.
In the second episode, were presented with an exciting possibility: Barton facing off with her old antagonizer Perez Hilton, that golem of the aughts who is now, supposedly, reformed. (As we all are, I guess.) What a Rocky sequel that promises to be! A mighty, meta reckoning with the celebrity culture that bore and swallowed up all these people—and has now spit them back out at us. Only when the big, teased moment finally arrives, New Beginnings isnt able to offer anyone much catharsis. Hilton storms off, Barton seems unsatisfied, and the episode glides away. All the potential goes rushing out of the room, leaving behind the airless conflict engineered by the shows producers.
The shows art is gone, too. The camera work tries to ape the sparkle of old, but theres something too bright and HD about it. Its not just time that has ravaged (and medical work that has un-ravaged) these people; its the lighting. And they have the cast do reality show-standard talking-head interviews, something the original The Hills never did, which helped it feel more like the neorealist soap it was intended to be. New Beginnings, with its duller look and flat, joyless affect dims in comparison to, say, Vanderpump Rules, a show that owes a lot to The Hillss particular gentrification.
New Beginnings isnt something tragic, a broken dream, or anything. Its just dumb and not entertaining. I dont hate any of the people on it; I just wanted better for them. I suppose there is a little worry embedded in there: if they havent, really, changed at their core, have I?? Money is money, of course. Id probably start soft-shoeing my way through some old routine if the right paycheck came calling, too. (Anyone want to pay top-dollar for re-written Gossip Girl Read More – Source
