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Susannah, you're right that the appeal of the Real Housewives of New Jersey lies in their outsize cattiness. But in today's XXtra Small, Torie writes about the anti-Housewife: The Hills' Lauren Conrad and her new, semi-autobiographical book L.A. Candy. Conrad's appeal has always been as the bland nice girl... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Meghan, being connected to lost friends via Facebook can be vertiginous—but I bet it doesn't make a person feel quite as lost in time as being connected to a former BFF via reality TV. I'm thinking specifically of The Hills, which starts its fifth and likely final season tonight and has always been, at its core, a long drama about the disintegration of female friendship.
When the show began, protagonists Lauren and Heidi were besties. But it really took off in the ratings during its second season, when the duo basically broke up because Heidi got herself a truly terrible boyfriend. In the two and a half seasons since, other story lines—plus bathing suits, over-determined stares, a tension between "reality" and reality, and the meta-joy of watching celebrity be created in real time—have held the audience's interest, but Lauren and Heidi have always been the A-plot, conveniently running into each other, and shedding many mascara-laden tears, just in time for season premieres and finales.
Losing a best friend, whether due to drifting, fighting, or a cad named Spencer, is something most adolescent girls know about; that's why The Hills has always been "relatable" even though it stars a bunch of space aliens dressed as Barbie dolls. But when most regular folks irrevocably spar with a friend, they don't have to run into her, on camera, for the next three years. Talk about being stuck in time. No wonder Lauren decided she was done filming the series. Of course, even after the cameras leave, she'll still be receiving status updates from Heidi—the two of them are almost certainly Facebook friends.