Dear Jenny,
In the spirit of the last post and what I think Oprah calls "remembering your spirit" or "thanking your angels" or something, I feel like I have to praise what is, no lie, my favorite show right now . . . MTV's The Hills (Mondays at 10:00 EST).
Once you get past all the crazy meta/reality show/LA/vaguely scripted staginess -- and this requires a lot of effort -- it's a classic example of how to tell a good story. All of the elements are there:
1. A sympathetic heroine. Lauren Conrad may not be the prettiest or most interesting Laguna Beach alum, but she's got a lot of very appealing qualities: she works hard, she's self-effacing, she's kind, she's loyal, she's intolerant of bullshit. Maybe this is all a carefully-crafted screen persona, but I don't think so. She's MTV's ordained reality show princess: if she really cared about her image, she could make the network make Teen Vogue give her a better job. Does she? No. She toils in intern Hell and lets us see the likes of Lisa Love (whom I adore) play Miranda Priestly all over her.
2. A loathsome villain. Spencer is the most despicable person in reality television since . . . since . .. Trista Rehn. Each time you think he can't sink lower, he does. To quote Lauren (and I will, constantly, until I die), "He's a sucky person."
3. Relatable conflicts. I don't know about you, but -- aside from the LA weirdness and Pinkberry -- nearly everything that happens on this show resonates with me. Lauren and Whitney have crappy, crappy jobs in which they're treated like dirt. You were in graduate school when you were Lauren's age, but me, I had those jobs, the ones that look good on paper, but amount to worrying about whether someone you dislike is going to complain about the lunch you just ordered her and hoping the phone doesn't ring during this game of Tetris. The Hills brings back those jobs to me so vividly that, while I was preparing this post in my head, on my walk home, I composed five different open letters to former employers. A conflict like the one happening between Lauren and her roommate/ex-best friend Heidi Montag has happened to me before, too. It's humiliating and it's sad and the way it's being portrayed on the show seems really real to me.
Love,
-- Pete
P.S. Every day should be Pete and Jenny Day.
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