The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Hills, the Gift That Keeps Giving

Audrina Partridge, the resident brunette on MTV's loathsomely addictive love letter to the meaningfully meaningless stare, The Hills, is getting her own television show. Burning yule logs hold the camera better than Partridge, but burning yule logs have never gotten a chance to think confuddled thoughts near Hills star Lauren Conrad, lay out on chaise lounges next to Lauren Conrad, or to mistakenly accuse Lauren Conrad of making out with their greasy, manipulative on-again, off-again boyfriends. If yule logs had such opportunities, and looked as good in a bikini, one would expect yule logs to break out of the Christmas Eve type casting and land their own reality show, just like Audrina and all her Hills co-stars, including The City's Whitney Port and Bromance's Brody Jenner.  

Audrina's show will be produced by Mark Burnett, the reality TV guru who created Survivor and The Apprentice.  Say what you will about Burnett (like, he’s the guy who briefly resurrected Donald Trump's reputation), but he understands how reality TV works. Just like in movies and politics, a name is better than no name. Partridge doesn't have to be interesting or charismatic in the limited way of The Real World cast members or the expansive way of the hilarious loonies on The Real Housewives of New York City because we already "know" her. In a sweetly human, but incredibly undiscerning way, prior knowledge of Audrina's story is all some of us will need to care about what happens next. She can continue to be as dull and dim as a burned out light bulb and she will have an audience. 

In a big leap from brow to brow, Audrina’s show got me thinking of David Foster Wallace. In the recent New Yorker piece on him, D.T. Max wrote that Foster Wallace’s unfinished novel, The Pale King, about IRS employees, suggests that “Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment.” I wonder what DFW would make of our dependence on entertainment that is already well and truly boring.