When Heidi moved out of Lauren’s apartment she took her dog with her and when Audrina moved in to the same apartment she brought her cat with her. They couldn’t be better pieces of walking proof that our pets are another form of our selves. Lauren welcomed Audrina’s wiliness and purring tendencies when she invited her and her cat to share the apartment and let out Heidi’s canine loyalty when she watched Heidi’s reflection in that infamous U-Haul mirror float away.
Lauren and Audrina, using their animal instincts, were quick to attribute the metastasizing rumors of a Lauren-Jason sex tape to Heidi and Spencer, but Heidi appeared to really not know anything about what Lauren claimed she did. Lauren’s finally found a transgression worthy of ending a BFF-ship (Season Two’s Jen-Brody kiss drama probably doesn’t fall under that category), but, suspiciously, never cited any evidence that ensured Heidi’s guilt. The innocent-until-proven-guilty bit apparently means nothing to Lauren as she adapts to a Heidi-less existence. It also seems to mean nothing to the producers who make Heidi look uncharacteristically vindictive in the new season’s opening credits. If they’re any indication as to what the rest of the season’s going to be like, it looks like we’re in store for a major assault on Heidi’s character.
Apparently for Lauren all a rumor has to do to get out of control is reach her parents in Laguna. Now, I don’t think the Hollywood-Laguna rumor feed is a very long or complex chain of gossip especially when a piece of Lauren Conrad information is in question. When Whitney (who got the job she interviewed for at the end of Season Two as Lauren’s boss, but still somehow shares an office with her) posed the Heidi Question to Lauren there was utter silence. I’m not sure if Lauren was just in shock over the fact that she’d be sharing an office with newly promoted Whitney (I think Whitney’s promotion was really just a promotion in Lauren-friend status as she made a rare lunch cameo and club cameo in the same episode) or if she was just speechless over the Heidi situation.
Lauren and Heidi finally met face-to-face at shady mutual friend Frankie’s birthday party where Lauren told Heidi she’d never speak to her again after Heidi hand-delivered a heartfelt note to Lauren expressing that she missed Lauren at her Housewarming party (where Spencer’s thuggish and/or slutty friends made a good impression on Heidi) and denied any connection to the sex tape rumor. The self-satisfied grin on Spencer’s face as he drove a devastated Heidi home, though, was the real manifestation of evil at its finest.
Lauren and Heidi both claimed to be over each other even though their verbal diarrhea spouted out nothing but Lauren- and Heidi-centered musings. Lauren’s swift replacement of Heidi with Audrina was followed by a parallel replacement of Spencer with Audrina’s already shady on-and-off ex-boyfriend Justin (who, by the way, creepily resembles a John Stamos-Kurt Cobain lovechild). Within twenty minutes of Lauren and Audrina’s super-fleeting honeymoon (reality-TV time, that is), Justin’s arrival meant drama for the newly crowned BFF’s. Justin, who reportedly ditched Audrina in Las Vegas a year or two back, claimed to be a changed man looking for a fresh start with Audrina. Audrina almost immediately rejected Lauren’s anti-male, pro-BFF advice and agreed to give a serious relationship with Justin a try.
Lauren and Lo (whose always welcome cameo topped a list of refreshing cameo returns including Epic’s Chiara and Bolthouse’s Elodie), had an awkward greeting experience with Justin, who they instantly took a disliking to, that foreshadowed a Spencer-y future. The next morning, after Audrina gave Lauren’s club ticket to Justin, Audrina suggested Lauren go to dinner with Justin who supposedly really wants to get to know her (you know, her being Audrina’s BFF and all), a totally early-Season-Two-Spencer thing to do.
Lauren’s needed weekend sojourn to Laguna coincided with Heidi and Spencer’s romantic getaway (which followed Spencer’s endlessly amusing engagement ring purchase at some beachside shop where Spencer snagged the first ring he got because it was huge enough to house a GPS system and proceeded to discard the receipt because he so cockily believed he’d never need to return it). Ingenious parallelism is a ‘Hills’ staple (think airport-Jason’s condo sequence of Season One) and Lauren’s nostalgic trip home where she got some optimistic, though anti-LA advice from Mother Conrad couldn’t have been more appropriately opposite to Heidi and Spencer’s official-but-sort-of-not-really engagement to Spencer (she never once uttered the word yes) and once Audrina’s motorcycle tryst with Justin was thrown in there things couldn’t have been any more simple-yet-complicated and mature-yet-so-high-school. Lauren thinks she’s all wise and above the immature, doomed-from-the-start relationships around her, but, let’s face it, just like everyone else around her (with the exception of ultra-refined Whitney), she’ll never learn, and that’s why the cattiness and the popped-out soundtrack that makes it all the more meaningful will keep on coming like cotton-candy out of a solar-powered cotton-candy machine in Laguna Beach.
