The Hills' "meta masterpiece" of a series finale turns 10

Mel Magazine

"Out of nowhere, The Hills managed to pull off a twist that makes The Usual Suspects look like The Happening," says Blake Harper of the MTV reality show's July 13, 2010 series finale. "As we see (Brody) Jenner longingly staring at (Kristin) Cavallari’s car driving away, suddenly the Hollywood sign in the background starts moving, revealing that it was just a backdrop on a standard Hollywood backlot. The camera pans out to show that Cavallari’s car had really just driven her a few feet. Once the director yells cut, Cavallari gets out of the car and shares a friendly hug with Jenner before casually declaring she’s heading out. In short, the entire thing was staged." Harper notes that the series finale received mixed reviews. "With all due respect to those critics, they’re dead wrong and their opinions are bad," says Harper. "The Hills series finale was the most impressive display of meta storytelling in TV history — a level of self-referential humor that Community’s Dan Harmon and Arrested Development’s Mitch Hurwitz could only dream of reaching. Sure, by this time, we all kind of knew that reality TV played pretty loosely with the term “reality.” There were stories about the drama being staged and that some of the relationships were cooked up for the sake of intrigue...But while people are right to think reality TV is mostly fake, they’re wrong to assume that means it’s dumb. For the show’s entire run, joyless, smug a**holes felt the need to point out The Hills’ flaws, calling it a vapid, pointless show that wasn’t even real. But in its final moments, The Hills proved how smart reality TV can be. To have the very last episode of an incredibly popular reality TV show shout out its own manufactured storytelling in such an overt way is pure, unadulterated brilliance. Even as reality TV has evolved, no show has ever managed to come close to such a daring display of smirking self-awareness."