Whitney And The City – Really Real Reality – ::wink::

Written on January 5, 2009 by Marc Eastman in Television

Whitney from The Hills has her own show now, and while many critics have flooded the media with claims that The Hills is “scripted, completely fake reality,” there is no way they can make such claims about honest, death-before-dishonor The City.

Yeah, bit of a wind-up there.

Yes, Whitney Port, often described as the smartest person on The Hills (read total lack of brain activity not confirmed), has her own show. She has moved to New York City, and taken a job with someone in the fashion industry who has a name, but is listed in the credits as “Dude, I’ll be on TV!”

In the first few episodes Whitney shows up to her new job, and MTV does us the courtesy of immediately answering all our questions on the subject of reality fakery. We knew where The Hills went with the game, but a new show means a definite possibility to change perspectives on what’s going on. Many people wondered if The City was just going to be The Hills 2.0, with all that entails, or if the show was going to mix things up a bit.

And, what is virtually the first thing that happens on the show? Whitney walks into her new job, and after a minute long intro for the girl who is clearly taking over Heidi’s role, said pseudo-Heidi sees Whitney getting comfy at a desk, puts on a look of somewhat irritated surprise, and asks who Whitney is.

Mull that over for a few seconds.

It’s not enough that this girl clearly owns every season of The Hills on DVD (they’re practically poking out of her purse), but you might at least suspect that the cameraman tipped her off.

Nevermind the fact that she was clearly the girl at casting who looked most like Heidi, and her copy of the script has “You’re the Bitchy one,” penciled into the margin in big letters. You’d think MTV could come up with something a little better to get us out of the gates.

But, we also have Whitney’s roommate, who was the girl at casting who looked the most like Blank Stare from The Hills.

Pretty soon I’m not even sure what game we’re playing anymore. Are we even still pretending there is any reality to the thing?

The second episode winds down with a “heated debate,” between Whitney’s… I don’t know… Dude, and some other guy who is feverishly interested in protecting Whitney from Dudes who might take advantage of her (that’s actually exactly what it says in the script), and the whole affair screams mockumentary.

In case you aren’t completely convinced by the show’s own efforts to tell you how lost it is and how dumb it thinks you are by way of video, Whitney’s voiceover intro to the show includes this line – ”He’s everything I should stay away from: young, good-looking…”

On the pro-con male quality list Whitney has made for herself, chief among the attributes she has decided to avoid are: young and good-looking.

What?

The ratings are apparently not in the league MTV might have hoped for, and let’s just go ahead and put that down to some realization, or sudden awareness, or sudden shift in intelligence. Of course, it is actually due to the fact that Whitney is not quite “Super Awesome Oh My Gawwwdddd!”, but let’s pretend otherwise.