There's Gold In Them There Hills!

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm mortified by it, but I'll man up and admit it. I watch The Hills. Yeah, that's right, The Hills. And I LOVE it. Judging me for it would be the natural thing but you best be getting off your high horse about it because there's undoubtedly a show out there that you love that you're not brave enough to admit to. The Love Boat for you older folks out there perhaps? Or maybe even G's to Gents or Big Brother for you young whippersnappers? You just don't have the guts to 'fess up.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Don't let my bravado fool you into thinking that I don't know what an awful show it is. I know it's awful. It's really awful. Vapid and contrived and beyond superficial. But...COME ON, LC and Lo and Audrina and OMG, Spencer and Heidi - SPENCER AND HEIDI!! (aka: "Speidi".) It's just so good! I can't not watch it.

For 30 minutes a week (minus all of the commercials and teasers and b-roll) I go to Los Angeles and hang with the beautiful people. We have lunch and dinner and go to chic clubs and chill by the pool. Oh, and of course there's work and school and boyfriends and drama drama drama. This week Stephanie had a birthday party and invited LC, Lo, Audrina, Brody and Frankie, none of who like Speidi. Speidi shows up and everyone else leaves. Spencer gives Stephanie a talking to the next day telling her that if she "rolls with LC's posse" she is no longer his sister. He even tried to get all intellectual about it and compared their dispute to the Iran/Israel situation (there's a situation?) - "It's like Israel and Iran - the two don't mix." (Stephanie, to her credit, didn't seem too broken up about it.)

I'm not alone in my lust for The Hills. This show is not only the all-time top rated show for MTV, but it also had 4.7 million viewers for their season finale this past spring and won the top slot for all cable shows that night. The stats aren't in yet for the season 4 premiere but it had a lot of buzz and the chances are good that it topped all previous records.

What does this all mean? Well, for one thing, it means that the principals on the show are raking in boku bucks. LC just bought a multi-million dollar house and has her own clothing line that is a major success largely due to the media attention she gets which provides free advertising for her. The Speidi team are in talks for their own show as is Whitney, LC's best work friend. Audrina has won several acting gigs. And the clubs in LA are scrambling to get on the show via the gang hanging out at these various hotspots.

But what does it say about the viewers? Are we all just voyeurs living vicariously through a bunch of rich kids because their lives are more exciting than ours? Do we enjoy watching other people and their drama because it makes us feel so much better about our own? Is it simply an escape from the everyday for us?

It could be one or all of those things I suppose, but what I really think is that, in some twisted way, it's comforting for us to know that we're not the only ones that find ourselves in the middle of crappy situations. That even the rich and beautiful get embroiled in the stupidity of life. But most of all, it reminds us that really, all of life is just junior high. That no matter how old we get or how much we think we've grown up or how many responsibilities we've taken on in life, down deep, when you strip away everything else, we're all just a bunch of middle-schoolers.

Think about it, take any tough situation you have at work or in your marriage or with friends or at church or with your neighbors - if you dismiss the ages of the participants and all of their grownup trappings - what you have left is junior high. Junior high actions, junior high reactions and usually, junior high results. Thus the broken friendships, marriages, churches...not to mention the number of jobs lost to immature antics and political bullshit that we all go through in our adulthood.

What if we could see the truth of that and remember it before a tough situation comes along? Or, at the very least, during it? Maybe if we kept in mind how stupid we're probably being and if the other person involved could acknowledge how stupid they're being, we'd all get along better and have a better quality of life. Cut to the chase quicker - get through the muck to the clearer understanding faster.

Granted, there's nothing you can do if the other person doesn't want to acknowledge their own childishness. But, in the end, all you can do is what you know is true and right for you. Not being able to count on the other person to do that as well can be hurtful and annoying and frustrating, but at least you know that what you did was good and kind and with the hope of getting to a better place with that person.

Personally, I'm going to try to live my actual chronological age and not my sometimes middle school mental age a bit more. A lot more actually. I prefer to leave the middle school behavior in Los Angeles with the beautiful people. They can afford the therapy.