The Hills: Love Means Having To Grudgingly Say You’re Sorry

The pen is indeed mightier! In fact, the pen is ultimate. Which is to say, last night was the second-to-last episode of The Hills this season, calloo callay. As any good second-to-last episode is, it was all setup for the dramatic finale next week. So let’s sift through the setup.

Oh Steponme Pratt. Is she maybe the saddest character in all of television? I mean, Betty Draper is pretty fucking sad. And I’ve wept an hour or two for poor Barb Henrickson. But Steponme “Handbags” Pratt… oh dear.

If someone were to find a slab of browning butter lying on the side of the road, and they carved New Hampshire’s (now deceased) Old Man in the Mountain out of the butter, and then propped it up on thick toothpicks, and then told it to twirl like a pretty ballet princess, but of course it couldn’t because it’s just old butter on toothpicks, so it cried salty, buttery tears…. that thing would be Prom Queen to Handbags’ runner-up. Handbags is one step down from weeping toothpick Old Man in the Mountain butter.

So in this episode she was forced to bumble, as always, between waxen Heidi and Lauren and her Harpies Two, Audrina and Locifer. See, last episode was when Spencer puked on the Ferris wheel and out came an enormous engagement ring, which Heidi put on her finger and said “Yes,” so now they will be married in a huge princess wedding on top of a frosted cake castle at the Shimmery Cloud Events and Senior Recreation centre. Because no one on The Hills has ever heard of the postal service (not the band! the thing with the horses and angry black ladies!), it was up to Handbags to deliver the wedding invitations to everyone. So she took biplanes and caravans (cross the desert like an Arab man) and oh, Handbags, we don’t care how they get there, but get them there if you can. The hardest and scariest invite of all was the one extended to one Lauren Conrad, the soon-to-be-erstwhile star of our bubbling diarrhea series.

Handbags had just been fired by Lauren from Fashion Incorporated, plus Lauren totally hates Spencer, so it was supes awkward. The pair went to a gauzy luncheon at some place in Beverly Hills and Handbags moped and joked awkwardly about her job prospects (”I’m just going to focus on school…” which means “I’m just going to stare blankly into the mirror brushing my hair like Amanda Peet at the end of Igby Goes Down until the producers need me”), and then she said that oh pretty please, won’t you please come to Heidi’s fantastiwedding? Lauren said no, because things is just too hot with Spencer. So, a roadblock for Handbags!

On the other side of this dusty biodome, some awkwardness was going down between Audrina “Patches” Patridge, because she maybe sorta slept with Brody and Brody’s girlfriend the Jayde Scorpion tried to kill her with her pincers, and now no one will talk to Patches at clurbs. Not getting talked to at clurbs is the Hills equivalent of getting blacklisted from Hollywood for being a gay communist in the 1950s, so it’s pretty serious and I guess we’re supposed to care. Good thing we don’t! I’m sure they’ll make some effort to create drama surrounding this situation at next’s weeks poorly-attended wedding, but for now… feh.

Anyway. Heidi went wedding dress shopping. After lashing yard upon yard of tulle around her stiff-yet-rubbery midsection, all the girls cooed and said, “Yes. That’s the dress.” I think “that’s the dress” is a line taken from that episode of Sex and the City were Charlotte Befriends A Gay, but I could be projecting. Not sure. Oh well. Heidi’s dress probably cost a million spacebucks, but no one cares because I’m sure MTV is picking up the tab. Handbags was then forced to deliver the sad news that Lauren doesn’t want to come lest a civil strife break out, so Heidi’s face did its best impression of “crestfallen,” which involved her mouth area drooping the one half centimeter it’s able to, and then relying on music to fill in the rest of the emoticonning. Everyone wept, because they realised the episode was only half over.

One night at a clurb Steponme was there and so was her old, mean boss Kelly Cutrone. Because television works this way, Steps took the opportunity to go over and meekly grovel to the shebeast. The Hindenburg looked proud there for a moment, all full of helium and bobbing over New Jersey, but then whoosh! and flame! and everyone died and someone wanted to say “Oh the humanity,” but all the humanity escaped old Handbags years and years and years ago, so instead the weary and worried news reporter just said “Oh… the carpeting.” Kelly dismissed Handbags by calling her terribly incompetent and then Handbags tried to blame Kelly for never being around to train her (because everyone who owns companies takes the time to personally train their interns) and then Kelly just stabbed her and walked away.

Meanwhile Heidi showed up at Lauren’s office because no one ever does work there and, again, there is no such thing as a mail service, to hand deliver another sad invitation. Lauren gave a genuinely sincere monologue about how Heidi used to be special (not so sure I believe that, but evs) and about how since she’s been with Spencer that spark has dwindled and died. She’s a lighthouse shut down because no worthy ship sails those rocky shores anymore. She’s a candle that flickered when no one was looking. She’s the glue that came unstuck. The gum on a pair of shoes that no one wears anymore. Heidi’s Eye Pod 3000s tried to work up some realistic tear action, but all that happened was that her ducts sputtered and moaned and a tiny trickle of vodka-laced Red Bull came slowly dribbling out. Such drama!

Over at Castle Fleshbeard, Heidi was complaining to Spencer about he’s mean and won’t say he’s sorry to Lauren. Fleshbeard said that he never apologizes for anything ever, and he’s not about to start now on the star of the show even if the producers tell him to d— Oh. Ha ha. What’s that? They do, in fact, want him to apologize? Well, righty-o then! After playing golf with his uglier, Swedish doppelganger, Fleshbeard made the awkward call.

“Hey LC it’s your favourite best friend Spencer,” began the call. “So before you hang up, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for spreading sex tape rumours and Heidi thinks you’re real special and aw it sure would make her happy if you came to our big wedding todo, so please won’t you? I’m sorry your family thinks you diddled J.Wahl on camera, and I’m sorry that this show ever happened and oh boy I remember when I was young I used to want to play baseball, but then I wasn’t good at that, so I tried plays and I tried golf and I tried everything else and now I’m just tired and want it to come to me easily, and can you really blame me for that? For seeing my options and finding them sad and taking instead a strange new path of least resistance that I paved myself, not with good intentions but at least with an idea that life is short and everyone deserves their happiness? Can’t you give me that? Can you give Heidi that?”

Lauren shook her head and sighed and gurgled. “I just… don’t think… with everything… that… happened.” And Spencer knew. He knew somewhere that, yes, of course, Lauren would come to the wedding. Whether it was his beautiful words, or whether the producers would put their firm hands on her shoulder and tell her just this once, just this one last time, do it for us, kiddo. Do it for Adam. And she would. She’d wear a dress and sniff at the flowers and pretend to try and catch the bouquet and in the wings Kristin Cavallari would lurk, waiting for her moment to step out and snatch that which Lauren didn’t want anyway.

So we’re pretty well set up for next week. All the duck-faces are in a row. And all that’s left of this week is a little light glowing in the window of a little room, high up in those hills.

If you could look in, if you could turn wishes and hopes into fuel or wings and fly up there and gaze in, you’d see old Handbags. Creaking there in front of a mirror, her pointy features suddenly soft in the dim amber light, her raccoon eyes wrinkling with wonder.

She’d tried on the dress. She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it. It was so white and so warm and so lovely—what a story it started! What a lovely dream of a life begins with a dress. Kids and cars and vacations and things. Long after the cake is gone and the garter tossed and the guests filed out. Left there, beneath the pile, the last present to be opened, is a life. Nothing simpler or bigger. A life to lead, a life to live.

But it wasn’t real, she knew. Not for her, not that night. But at least there was twirling to be done before she heard Heidi’s car in the driveway and had to slip out of the garment and pretend to be doing something else entirely.

“Oh you just caught me cleaning,” she’d say. Or preparing the flowers. Or just something else.

It was, for poor Handbags, always something else.