The Hills – The Complete Fourth Season (MTV/Paramount DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Episodes: C

 

 

Hasn’t America and the world had enough of these shallow, pseudo-celebrities?  Now on its Fifth Season, The Hills has gone on long beyond its time; especially for a pretentious spinoff of an already obnoxious reality series, Laguna Beach.  The series stars (if you can call it that) Lauren Conrad, Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag, Audrina Partridge, and a plethora of other pompous wannabes whose only claim to fame is that they look pretty in front of a camera.  The Hills: The Complete Fourth Season is more of the same junk found in previous seasons, just switched around a bit.  More shoes, more boys, more lunch, more night clubs, more drama, and even less substance.  The series is so light that if America would just let go it would float away; never to be seen or heard from again.

 

Apparently this season is about “life decisions” as the girls finally to make “deeper choices” than what’s for dinner.  An old face returns from Laguna Beach as Lauren Conrad starts dating the ever annoying Doug; while she simultaneously tries to keep roommates Audrina and Lo from killing each other.  Other series star, Whitney, begins to work her way up in the world climbing the ranks in People’s Revolution much faster than she expected, but trying to keep her social life a priority as a male model sweeps her off her feet.  Heidi and Spencer (the devil’s spawn themselves) battle it out once more with each other and the world; as the obvious and obnoxiously put-on stage show continues with her and her “future hubby” fighting at every turn.  The big issue for the vomit inducing couple this time is when Heidi’s sister makes an indefinite visit to their Los Angles pad from Colorado.  Oh, how will the “relationship” ever survive?  Let’s just say the drama ship has set sail once again…let’s just hope it sinks.

 

The Hills once again features many technical ups and downs.  The picture is once again presented in a lackluster 1.33 X 1 full screen that it as soft as ever, but does not look half bad for a reality series.  The sound in its Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is hit or miss, as the series tries to make it seem more realistic with its at times distant, muffled, or soft quality that can be more annoying than anything else.  The extras like last season fail to impress including some deleted scenes, interviews, “Lessons in Love,” After Show Remixes, Season 4 Photo Shoot, Rolling Stone Photo Shoot, and Virtual Hills.  Not a single extra is great and all hold an even less rewatchable quality.  The fact of the matter is, once you have seen the episodes even the biggest fans will have no desire to watch these over and over again.  This series is a definite skip.  Even if you are a fan, why own the box set?  Watch the reruns on television.

 

The only light at the end of this tunnel is that the Fifth Season is supposedly the last *crosses fingers*

 

 

-   Michael P. Dougherty II