I counted five long, awkward pauses during Audrina and Justin Bobby's first encounter on the premiere of The Hills: New Beginnings. Five. And the final one lasted a whopping 15 seconds. That's a whole lot of time to spend watching people stare at each other—but honestly, I could've done it for 15 more minutes. When The Hills first premiered 10 years ago, I was amazed by how much I enjoyed seeing pretty people sit around and do nothing. But reality TV has evolved considerably since then: Now we have Bachelors jumping over fences and Real Housewives almost dying in boat accidents. So can The Hills keep up with that? Can the series' iconic brand of nothingness work in a landscape of Kardashian cheating scandals?
The answer is a resounding, overwhelming yes. The Hills: New Beginnings has all the ingredients that made you fall in love with the franchise in 2006: stunning cinematography, Heidi Montag saying "yeah" repeatedly, and confrontations that last a total of 30 seconds. Truly! 30 seconds! The entire first episode built toward Stephanie Pratt's "welcome home" party—she was living in London for years—but we see only three minutes of it at the end. That's it. Forty-three minutes of pointless dialogue led to three minutes of action.
That's exactly how The Hills hooks you, though. We'll see what unfolds at Stephanie's party next week, of course, but the drama will undoubtedly be followed by several scenes essentially recapping what happened. Then Spencer will say something wild in the last minute of the show to hook you for the next episode. It's a vicious cycle, but a cycle I'll happily jump on time and time again.
The most perplexing part about The Hills reboot is that it has the potential to be about so much more. These cast members have been through a lot, after all. Audrina is divorced; Stephanie is now a British reality-TV star; and Heidi and Spencer are, well, Heidi and Spencer. There's plenty of narrative to go around, but no one's digging deep. Audrina talked about her situation with her ex-husband no less than six times during the premiere but didn't really reveal anything. If you're going to address something like that on camera—and on a show like this—why not go all in? (Pending there isn't a legal reason, of course.)
That's not to say the season won't pick up as it continues. Stephanie told Glamour that so much of the new reboot is "nuts," so maybe they were just table-setting in the premiere. There were some things that needed clarifying—like why actress Mischa Barton was added to the cast. Apparently, she was a part of The Hills gang's social circle back in the day, so her presence here isn't totally random. She only had one scene in the premiere with Stephanie, and it was quite interesting. Mischa didn't say much—just that she was getting used to life in L.A. again—but she was extremely natural for someone who's never done reality TV before. Perhaps more natural than some of her veteran costars.
There's also the addition of Brandon Lee, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee's son. All we know about him after the premiere is that he's embarrassed to tell people his mom is C.J. from Baywatch. Oh, and that she moved to France after Trump was elected. Mind you, there was an entire segment of the episode dedicated to him, but that's all we learned. Somehow, though, I'm already invested. Maybe next week he'll sage his house again.
One last person we're introduced to is Kaitlynn Carter, Brody Jenner's wife. I'm already not thrilled with how the show's painting her: nagging, controlling, and trying to get pregnant to "tame" Brody in some way. It's incredibly reductive—as is the fact that Brody kept misgendering his mother, Caitlyn. Twitter wasn't too happy about that. If anything needs to be fixed on The Hills: New Beginnings, it's this.
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Besides that, I was pleasantly surprised with the premiere. I'm already looking forward to next week, when Mischa confronts Perez Hilton over how he treated her in the 2000s and the Pratt siblings have their first big fight. More than that, I can't wait to see how the episode fills its remaining 40 minutes after these two spats end. Hopefully, it's just more of Audrina and Justin staring at each other. Oh, how I've missed it.
Christopher Rosa is the staff entertainment writer at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrosa92.
