YMMV / The Hills

• Escapist Character: Like its predecessor, the show was full of individuals who had lavish lifestyles.
  • Lauren is an intern for Teen Vogue who gets access to exclusive parties, meetings and job opportunities, while all of her screw-ups are excused by her boss, Lisa Love, whose sole punishment consists of a stern talking-to every other episode. Later on, she works for several different fashion houses, being on the cusp of fashion trends in L.A.
  • Whitney shares the same benefits as Lauren without the high-profile status that followed the former, including a work trip to Paris (and a job opportunity there), and later, her own spinoff working at a major firm in New York.
  • Stephanie Pratt is seemingly an Upper-Class Twit, whose only purpose is to show up at various restaurants and clubs through L.A. and snark at/trade gossip with other members of Lauren's group of friends.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Due to controversy over Lauren leaving the series, the view of some viewers that Kristin wasn't an effective replacement, and the subsequent sliding ratings, there's a segment of the audience that functionally disregards the final season in its entirety. The Revival skews into this perception, as it brings every major character (sans Kristin) for the show's first season.^note Kristin is later reintroduced in the Revival's second season.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Watching Spencer and Heidi live a seemingly lavish lifestyle, knowing that years later they would reveal they were actually broke. Though depending how you feel about them, it could border into Hilarious in Hindsight.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Montag" was the name of the protagonist in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a man who works for the government in destroying books because they get in the way of the vapid media culture that's taken over society.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: It's hard to believe now, but the show (for a time) boasted better numbers than the flagship series, notable enough to be considered MTV's highest-performing series, and receiving constant media coverage over every single thing the cast said or did on the show. The controversial circumstances regarding Lauren't exit and the dwindling ratings by the sixth season (to say nothing of the mockery it eventually generated from talk shows) put a stop to that, though enough interest remained that the show got a Revival more than a decade later.
• Memetic Mutation: Tons of examples.
  • "You know why I'm mad at you, you know what you did!"
  • "Now Lauren will always be known as the girl who didn't go to Paris"
  • Justin Bobby. The man so great he needed two names.
  • "It's so weird how all of this is happening when Lauren is gone"
  • The mascara tears during Lauren's discussion with Audrina over the club fight with Heidi in Season 2.
• Narm: Take your pick.
  • An early highlight was Lauren's "He's a sucky person! A sucky person!" quote, said during a moment of sadness and anger.
  • Heidi's sadness when her boss tells her that everyone will get to go to Vegas except her. It's likely that many people were laughing at her instead.
  • Heidi's mother's reaction to her new face, and Heidi's breakdown afterwards.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • While the show's Reality Is Unrealistic tendencies were not entirely hidden even beforehand, the Les Deux "club fight" between Lauren and Heidi in Season 2 — treated as a momentary spat in the show, and a serious altercation in real-life that necessitated a police presence — was the first clue many fans got that the show was deliberately manipulated to play up certain storylines.
  • Allegations of cast member Lauren Conrad having a sextape (ultimately untrue) rocked public perception of the show, casting a damper on certain storylines in Season 2 and 3 that portrayed Lauren as a virtuous intern.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Speidi" for Spencer and Heidi.
• Replacement Scrappy: To some, the notion that the show traded out Lauren (who'd more-or-less checked out of the series by the fifth season, and was just going through the motions) for Kristin, who immediately filled Lauren's role — but without the benefit of pre-established connections with the rest of the cast, making it look like she showed up in L.A. just to get into vapid fights with people for no other reason than pettiness, is a clear case of this phenomenon.
• The Scrappy: Spencer and Heidi, but especially Spencer. Although some fans love to hate them.
• Seasonal Rot: The sixth season of the show has been cited by some as the breaking point. After several seasons of growing controversy, mockery over perceived fake drama and increasingly absurd storylines, Lauren left the series, distancing herself as much as possible while new lead (and fellow Laguna Beach cast member) Kristin Cavalieri joined the cast. The resulting sixth season saw tanking ratings and contrived circumstances to have the characters get into arguments, while the entire dynamic of the series was refocused on Kristin meeting with (and having arguments with) characters she barely knew. This culminated in a Gainax Ending (yes, for a reality show) that suggested most, if not all, of the series was faked. Needless to say, fans were not pleased, and the resulting years saw several cast members (including Cavalieri) disparage MTV and the producers for going too far in the opposite direction.
• Viewers Are Goldfish:
  • The caption saying who the character onscreen is. It appears whenever the character enters, regardless of how many times the character has already appeared in the episode. As if you weren't already aware that Spencer was Heidi's boyfriend from the last 2 times you've been told today....
  • This extends to the locations the series is set in. The show will often state where the scene is set (i.e. People's Revolution, Teen Vogue Offices), even if it's already been shown once before in the episode.

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