You can take 'The Hills' out of Orange County, but you can't take Lauren Conrad out of 'The Hills'. At least not without consequences. Season 6 opened without its blond starlet, who decided to move on after half a decade on the reality show circuit.After Conrad announced her decision to bail on TV in the hopes of leading a more private life focused on her fashion career, producers brought in Conrad's old schoolmate, Kristin Cavallari, as a replacement. Alongside Speidi, Audrina and the rest of the gang, Cavallari reprises the role she stepped into as a teenager on Hills precursor 'Laguna Beach': a flirtatious, manipulative man-eater, all shiny locks and come-hither stares. But so far Cavallari's episodes have failed to elicit the spark we've come to expect from the drama-filled half hour.
And viewers seem to agree. Ratings were down 30% for Cavallari's premiere episode, pulling only 2.1 million sets of eyes as opposed to the 3 million who tuned in to last season's opener. This seems to be a pattern for MTV: Ratings plummeted on 'Laguna' after Conrad left the sandy shores of her hometown for the glitz of Los Angeles.Perhaps that's because Lauren Conrad offers something very essential to her shows. She's the grounded protagonist, ambitious and relatively normal. For the viewer, Conrad is the identifiable core, a filter through which to experience all the chaos that goes on around her. Whereas Cavallari was introduced as the anti-heroine off the bat, a role already occupied to perfection by Heidi Montag. Having wasted no time feuding with the girls and playing all the guys, Cavallari leaves us without a gal to root for.
Credit: Pop Eater
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