MTV Takes a Bite Out of the Big Apple With Hills Spin-Off

With any MTV reality show, there’s bound to be a little Vaseline on the lens. The Hills, for instance, exists in a world where you can live in L.A. for years without ever seeing a black person. It can get tiresome—which is why the best scene in the first two episodes of The City, MTV's new Gotham-centric spinoff of The Hills, naturally features the Hills mainstay famous for her resistance to the Vaseline: public relations goddess Kelly Cutrone. In this scene, the show’s protagonist Whitney Port, pal of The Hills’ Lauren Conrad, is telling her former boss and old friend Cutrone about the people she’s met during her first few weeks in New York. One of her co-workers at Diane Von Furstenberg, Whitney explains, is a girl named “Olivia… Pa-ler-mo?”

Without missing a beat, Cutrone shoots back, “She got a job? That's very unlike her.” What’s so refreshing about the exchange is that in many ways, Cutrone seems to be the only person in The City who has any idea what she’s talking about. Whitney has already mentioned Olivia to a few of her friends, always answered by vague assertions of acquaintance. “I totally know that girl,” Whitney’s friend Erin says. Love interest Jay has a similar reaction: “I’ve seen her around,” he says with studied casualness.

If the show’s first two episodes teach the viewer anything, it’s that New York is all about who you know—and that a good way to get ahead is by pretending to know people you don’t. Whitney, though, isn’t good at pretense yet—she’s still too earnest. At several points in the first few episodes, she reminds people that “I don’t know that many people here yet.” It’s an unwise thing to say in the New York of The City, particularly for a budding public relations whiz. Whitney, the viewer realizes, isn’t “cool,” exactly. She uses words like “shenanigans,” and always seems a little uncomfortable.

Olivia, though, has the who-do-you-know affectations down flat. In Whitney’s explanatory voiceover, she introduces Olivia as “a socialite—or as she likes to say, ‘a social.’” (What’s left unsaid is that true socialites don’t need to point out their status.) And at a Manolo Blahnik meet-and-greet at Barneys, Olivia takes pains to explain to Whitney that Blahnik is an old family friend, and that she first wore a pair of Manolos at her debutante ball. When they reach Blahnik, though, he shows no sign of recognizing Olivia, who lamely repeats her line about debuting in his shoes. The scene holds a glimmer of hope for those who still want to see Whitney as “the smart one”—the smirk she shares with a buyer at the event proves she’s not fully susceptible to Olivia’s posturing. And all of Olivia’s reaction shots—sour, generally, around the mouth—suggest that if nothing else, she’ll be a rich source for drama if she doesn’t get what she wants later in the season.

Unfortunately, Whitney’s eyeroll at Olivia’s behavior is about the only moment in the show so far that suggests anything positive—or even anything substantive—about Whitney’s personality. Her interactions with Jay and competing love-interest Alex certainly don’t. Whitney’s behavior on dates only serves to substantiate Ginia Bellafante’s claim in the Times last year that she is “perhaps the best approximation of a Shakespearean mute that reality TV has ever produced.”

If Jay has a Hills counterpart, it’s the widely-reviled Justin Bobby, a cocky layabout who keeps Audrina Partridge on edge with his refusal to commit. Like Justin Bobby, Jay has a massive ego and floppy black hair, but unlike Justin Bobby, he is Australian and almost too boring to comment upon. His bizarre attempt at an American accent passes for humor on the date—a sure strike against Whitney. Again, she is most impressed by his connections—the first thing she tells her friend Erin about a date with Jay is that “he took me to a restaurant where he kind of knew everybody there.”

What, in the end, feels most familiar about The City to those who actually live there—besides the no-bullshit attitude demonstrated by Kelly Cutrone—is the B-roll footage. Like The Hills, The City features short between-scenes montages of “city life”—from joggers to construction workers ogling Whitney as she walks by. Thankfully, it’s not too Hills-reminiscent—these zoom-dolly shots are more Angels in America than City of Angels. It’s pleasant, somehow. Sure, the aerial shots of Central Park and Financial District skyscrapers offer a glossed-over version of the city, but like its predecessor, The City essentially presents a fiction. The real New York may not be like this one—but for a half-hour a week, there’s no harm in pretending not to know that.