Thoughts on Hills Finale (spoilers)

In an effort to bump up the MTV Movie Awards viewership, we got the season finale of The Hills a night early. Spoilers ahead but really, if you’ve turned on a computer in the last 2 months then you know most of went down.

There were two important tasks this finale had to achieve. One, it had to send series star Lauren “LC” Conrad off in style and two, it had to convince us viewers that a LC-free Hills would be worth watching this Fall. Surprisingly I’d say MTV came through on both counts while centering the episode on the unholy wedding of Heidi and Spencer.

Let’s get the wedding stuff out of the way first. After you suspend your belief that Heidi and Spencer were able to throw this massive wedding together over a matter of weeks, their march to the alter became quite entertaining. First up, you had former BFF Brody cut Spencer off at the knees by calling him out on his new fake “therapy works wonders” persona. Then you had Holly, Heidi’s sister, get shit faced at the rehearsal dinner. You almost wondered if She-devil Stephanie, who not so secretly envied Holly’s maid of honor status, spiked Holly’s drink. Holly rambled on for untold minutes, ruined Heidi’s purse and then stormed out after Spencer tried to use his new found human-like skills on her. The wedding itself was a who’s who of The Hills. The only friend we’ve seen Spencer have, Charlie, was not in the wedding strangely and instead brought pretend bartender Stacy as his guest. JustinBobby made an appearance and seemed to be channeling his inner Joaquin Phoenix. Heidi’s fake boss Brent Bolthouse showed up and so did Brody, Frankie, Audrina and Lo. There were two “shocking” guests as well and both tied back in to the tasks this finale had to carry out.

First up was LC, who has slowly been fazing herself out of the show over the last few months. Her departure is not a surprise but I wonder if the fact that the show had become more and more staged was finally getting to her. While I would never argue that the show gave an accurate portrayal of the stars lives, I think we can all agree the unbelievable meet ups and spoon fed newbies has increased tenfold over the last 2 seasons. You could almost see LC get fed up with that aspect herself in this episode. After spending most of the ep hemming and hawing over attending the wedding, she shows up and gives Heidi a sort of blessing. You could see the strain in her face and I wondered if it was from her own inner conflict of seeing her friend make a mistake or obeying MTV’s order to show the hell up at the wedding. This look of strain only increased, as she was made aware of the second “surprise” guest.

It was very convenient that this ep brought to light the fact that LC’s old Laguna Beach rival Kristin Cavallari was the one who introduced Spencer and Heidi. Hard to believe this fact was never thrown out there over the last four plus seasons. Anyhoo guess who shows up at the wedding with a microphone and dedicated camera? Yes Kristin is in the house and is clearly being set up as the new lead on the show. So just as she took over for Lauren on Laguna Beach, Kristin will now take over on The Hills. As utterly ridiculous as this is, I’m buying it. Kristin has always embraced the scripted nature of these shows on and off screen and given how The Hills has gotten she is the perfect fit. I’m sure Lauren knew that Kristin was going to be there but her face was almost believable. The juxtaposition of Lauren’s departure out of the side of the church against Kristin’s wave to the paparazzi was the perfect picture of where this show has come from and where it’s headed. Either way, I think it will be worth seeing where that road goes.