There is a trend in television that many find disturbing. It is the rapid proliferation of so called reality television. There has always been some television that technically could have been included in this category. In the fifties there were shows like ‘You Asked for It’ where the audience would write in an request a strange stunt of some sort which would then be performed on TV. Then in 1971 PBS came up with what is considered the grandfather of modern reality television ‘An American Family’. Each episode followed the real lives of the Loud family as they went about their day. The series garnered a lot of attention when the son revealed that he was gay. Over twenty years after that in 1992 MTV began its move from a music video cable network with the introduction of their flagship reality series; ‘The Real World’ where a group of twenty year olds were take from diverse backgrounds and placed in a house and put under twenty four hour a day observation. As the regular broadcast networks rallied around the reality trend new shows began to pop up all over the place taking a variety of formats from dating shows to competitions. There is a solid reason for this trend. It is typically cheaper than a scripted hour long drama. When the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike and no screenplays were available the prime time programming rapidly filled with reality based series. MTV was not to be left out. One of the most popular formats from scripted television with their youthful demographic was the night time youth oriented soap opera. There is one thing that the creative department at MTV knows it is how to construct a new series aimed at that group of viewers. One of the most popular broadcast network series was ‘The O.C.’ which dealt with a group of over sexed teens in California’s Orange County. This lead the creative department of MTV to come up with ‘Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County’, and as the name indicates it was a reality based series with the same basic plot line and target group as ‘The O.C.’ When a series is successful it is natural that the studio would want to create others along similar lines as a spin off. This brings us at last to the subject here, ‘The Hills’. MTV has been releasing DVD box sets of the series for a few years now and with season five about to begin you can catch up on the antics by watching season four on the latest DVD set.

‘Laguna Beach’ focused primarily on a group of privileged teens in high school. After a few years they managed to graduate and ‘The Hills’ followed a few of the most popular characters as they try to make their way in the world as adults. I freely admit that my inclusion in the target age group is now more decades in the past then I would like to think about but I can see how this show as risen to become the most popular on MTV. It is the very definition of a guilty pleasure. It has a voyeuristic feel to it that gives a little sense of the forbidden as you sit and watch a group of handsome young men and beautiful young women plot against each other in the social equivalent of the ‘Art of War’. Allegiances shift with a dazzling speed as friends become enemies and other characters vide for center stage. The main character is Lauren Conrad who in this season is still attending The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) in pursuit of her career as a fashion designer. Depending on the current, mercurial feelings of the audience Lauren, better known as LC, is either the good girl of the series or the villainess. Her main ‘frienemy’ is Heidi Montag the former best friend of LC. Heidi currently works for Bolthouse Productions, a public relations firm in Los Angles which is responsible for many high profile events popular with the media. Heidi has had a lot of radical changes in both her professional and person life this season. She gets promoted to event planner at Boathouse, fired and then rehired. She also has a relationship with here long time boyfriend Spencer Pratt but despite a lot of effort to keep the audience guessing the pair are apparently engaged to be married. In the tabloids Spencer and Heidi are frequently referred to by the combined name of ‘Spidey’. The never ending conflict between the Heidi and LC is perfect to divide the audience and makes for even better ratings.

In this season LC has moved into a new house with her friends Audrina Patridge and long time friend Lo Bosworth. Audrina works for Epic Records and seems to make a pretty good living. Looking at this series I had to think back to when I was that age. I was married and we lived in a fairly small apartment in Brooklyn and took the subway to our jobs. I just find it difficult to relate to a bunch of twenty somethings whining and complaining when they have it made at such a young age. I suppose this is part of the appeal of the show. It is reportedly a reality series but in fact it depicts a fantasy life that the youthful audience can live vicariously through. There is a scene in the series that has become famous due to the satiric clip show ‘The Soup’ on the ‘E!’ network. It shows Audrina and Lo at brunch as Lo begins to talk about the Large Hadron particle collider. Lo tells Audirna about how they want to create a black hole to find out how the universe began. Audrina stares at her friend and muses ‘all of this is going on while Lauren is out of town’. It just shows how self adsorbed this cast is and just how unaware they come off with regard to any events taking place in the real world. Heidi is also having some roommate problems when Spencer’s sister Holly moves in. This puts a strain on the ‘Spidey’ relationship and Heidi becomes determined to get her to move out. Meanwhile another LC friend Whitney Port begins a bicoastal life style traveling between Los Angles and New York as required by her job for People's Revolution, a fashion industry public relations firm. She ultimately leaves that job when she lands a position in the Diane von Furstenberg fashion house. I wish I had these kinds of problems when I was their age.

As always the DVD set is well done. There are several extras included that should be highly entertaining to the legion of fans out there. There is a group of deleted scenes culled from material not shown on the series. Interviews with the major cast members provide a little additional insight to the many plot lines that came out this season. Next there is ‘Lessons in Love’ where you can get some romantic advice from the cast. There are two photo shoots included; one is the official season four shoot and the other one was done for Rolling Stone magazine. Rounding things off are ‘remixes’ of several episodes and a virtual Hills. This is primarily for fans but it keeps the action and deception moving along nicely.