Since Lauren Conrad has said that this is her last season of The Hills, but because MTV has already announced that they’re going ahead with a sixth, Lauren-free season, you can see how the producers are already trying to ween audiences away from Lauren and build up meaningful tent-pole narratives with the rest of the cast. It’s not working. But so last night Lauren appears with Audrina at a clothing store, raspingly pretending like she cares about this Audrina-Brody situation. False. And she at least gets paid to care about this shit, what is our motivation? The next time we see her she is playing Wii tennis at Brody’s party…and that’s it. And the last time we see her she meets Brody for coffee or cocaine or SmartVodka or whatever they do in LA now and to pretend like she’s a voice of reason in the drama that has ERUPTED between her two “friends.” They always say that you never realize what you had until it is gone, but now that Lauren is mostly gone, I still feel like this show has become a total waste of time, rehashing dead storylines and lukewarm feuds as the castmembers become increasingly involved in the world of The Show and disengaged from any kind of relatable reality or human experience.

Blah.

So, Audrina and Brody slept in the same bed in Hawaii.

Now his new girlfriend, Jayde, because that’s a real name that people have, is pissed. She lives in a world where when you are dating someone, and it has become serious, that person does not share their bed with another woman while on a surfing excursion in Hawaii. Wait a second, that sounds like our world! The human world! The problem is that this show doesn’t take place in the human world. It takes place in a world of nightclub openings and late-night makeup retouching sessions in oversized bathrooms. Audrina is ready to go to war with Jayde! Over the thing that she did that she must know is kind of inappropriate and even if she decides is not a big deal at the very least she can recognize might make someone’s girlfriend upset. No way! She’s Audrina Patridge! A completely vacuous cipher who has spent the entirety of the past few seasons being tossed around by the sunny winds of inconsequential drama.

Seriously, for as much as I don’t care about Brody’s flirtations with Audrina, or the resultant conflict with Jayde, and I very much don’t care about that, I’m even more annoyed by the sudden and obvious shift in Audrina’s character. What, Justin Bobby’s doormat is suddenly an outspoken champion of sexual liberation? Please.

Brody meets with Lauren for a cup of pure H2O (only drink it to the soap, you guys, careful!) and he tells her that he understands why Jayde is upset, but what was he supposed to do, not let Audrina sleep in his bed in Hawaii? The obvious answer to that, of course, is “YES, Brody. You weird, emotionally incapable, self-involved jackass. You were supposed to not let Audrina sleep in your bed in Hawaii.” And that’s basically what Lauren says, with her cigarette smirk and the disengaged air of a Kohl’s mogul. But there’s another answer which is not as simplistic and obvious and correct, which is the answer in which we take into account that everyone on this show is beholden to the need to create some kind of dramatic tension for the producers to edit into something even remotely watchable (nice try, A for Affort). In which case, no, Brody isn’t supposed to not let Audrina sleep in his bed in Hawaii. And the next morning, he’s supposed to casually announce to his friends that he messed up and cheated on his girlfriend in a way that even after seeing it a couple of times is completely impossible to take seriously and sounds completely canned and pre-rehearsed.

ACTING!

Meanwhile, Heidi and Spencer, formerly the driving engines of this show, are limping along through the shadowplay of their reconciliation. To be honest, I’m not even convinced that it’s fake. I have absolutely no trouble believing that their relationship is a daily nightmare without end. Just because I know they get married later doesn’t mean that they don’t secretly loathe each other while simultaneously finding themselves completely incapable of imagining a life without the other’s contribution to the incessant fueling of the gossip media machine on which they’ve staked the entirety of their future success and, even more basic, sense of self.

So maybe they really are going to couple’s therapy, and maybe they do really wonder if they should be together or not since neither of them has any redeeming qualities or recognizes any of those same qualities in the other. Maybe they really do keep randomly bumping into that bartender Stacy at clubs every single fucking night in a city of 3 million people and 498 square miles. It could happen, I guess.

This is just silly, though: