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If there’s one consequence I didn’t anticipate to come back out of the California wildfires, it was a flop Heidi Montag album from 2010 topping the iTunes charts and her husband, former most-hated-by-millennials Spencer Pratt, happening TV to cry about it. But, right here we’re, dwelling in a timeline the place Superficial (sure, the album you might need seen as soon as on Perez Hilton’s weblog and instantly forgotten about) is getting the resurgence nobody requested for however TikTok demanded.
Let’s rewind: The California wildfires have been devastating, prompting widespread evacuations. Many regular folks have misplaced their houses, their livelihoods, their pets and even their lives. So have many celebrities.
Spencer and Heidi, who’ve spent the higher a part of the final decade constructing their “crystal-loving reformed villains” model, posted a tearful TikTok about having to flee their house. Largely below the radar (in movie star phrases) since their heyday on The Hills, it turned out the 2 had been quietly dwelling an expensive life-style with their sons within the Pacific Palisades. And now every part they’d constructed had fairly actually gone up in flames. It was a genuinely unhappy story, instructed engagingly by a heart-on-his-sleeve Spencer.
Then, in basic Speidi style, Spencer couldn’t resist plugging Heidi’s album Superficial as a soundtrack for the chaos.
By some means, this unhinged advertising ploy labored. TikTokers latched on to the absurdity of the second, with such noughties heroes as Diplo and Taste Flav main the cost (“Put your fingers collectively for my lady Heidi Montag!” wrote Taste Flav in a 17-second video of himself dancing to essentially the most viral of the tracks, I’ll Do It. “That is wonderful thanks,” replied Spencer within the feedback beneath.)
For the uninitiated, The Hills was the MTV actuality TV juggernaut of the late 2000s. It adopted a gaggle of twenty-somethings navigating life, love, and impossibly good lighting in Los Angeles. A derivative of Laguna Seashore, it blended scripted drama and real-life messiness, making it must-watch tv for anybody with a penchant for petty fights over lunch at The Ivy. Lengthy earlier than Retaining Up with the Kardashians or Jersey Shore, this was rubbernecking in its earliest gestational interval.
Enter Spencer and Heidi, the present’s unintentional antiheroes. Heidi began as Lauren Conrad’s candy and barely naïve roommate however shortly fell below Spencer’s spell, igniting one of the vital notorious buddy breakups in actuality TV historical past.

Spencer, in the meantime, was a one-man chaos machine. Along with his bleached beard and bottomless urge for food for drama, he orchestrated limitless feuds — most notably the fallout between Heidi and Lauren, punctuated by that unforgettable line: “You recognize what you probably did!” (The road was so clearly scripted that it was used because the identify of the episode — and individuals are so obsessive about it that journalists wrote entire articles mentioning continuity errors years after it aired.)
Spencer’s calculated villainy and Heidi’s transformation from small-town lady to Barbie-esque actuality queen made them the duo everybody liked to hate. The episode in series six the place Heidi visits her horrified mom to disclose her new face amongst a laundry listing of plastic surgical procedures she just lately underwent makes for genuinely unhappy viewing.

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Whether or not they have been crashing events, hijacking plotlines, or dramatically crying about their very own dangerous press, they have been unapologetically themselves, which, on the time, made them infuriatingly compelling to look at. Again when California was every part, they have been so California: Spencer was a quartz-toting Machiavelli, one thing that would have solely existed on the early-2000s west coast of America.
The couple has been fairly upfront about the truth that their personas on The Hills have been pretend. In a 2021 look on the Hollywood Uncooked podcast, Spencer described how some storylines weren’t simply “scripted actuality,” however completely concocted. And in a 10-year retrospective with Us Weekly, he was much more candid: “The producers would inform me to do loopy stuff and I’d do it. It was a bummer considering I wouldn’t be making thousands and thousands consuming lunch on digicam. I’d say 5 % mirrored actuality. We have been good actors.” Even the house he supposedly lived in wasn’t his, he added.
But, their antics throughout The Hills’ heyday prolonged effectively past the present. Regulars on the covers of gossip magazines, they offered tales about Heidi’s being pregnant, about honeymooning throughout the swine flu, and about spending critical quantities of their actuality TV fortune on hummingbird feeders. And in 2024, it continues.

The rediscovery of Superficial isn’t nearly nostalgia; it’s a reminder of how deeply dedicated to their bit Spencer and Heidi have been — and apparently nonetheless are. It appears Speidi has managed to replace their model by leaning all the way in which into the irony. Memes of Heidi crooning, “I’m in love with a boy and he’s a scorching mess” (“Physique Language,”2007) now soundtrack clips of individuals packing their apocalypse go-bags. In the meantime, Spencer, ever the PR maestro, has leaned into his redemption arc, making teary-eyed appearances about “waves of emotion” and “conflict zone”-like circumstances on social media and TMZ. (”Thank God we made Heidi’s album,” he added throughout his TMZ interview, segueing from the lack of his father’s home into an inventory of which international locations Superficial is trending in as solely a professional can.)
It’s vital to notice that The Hills isn’t solely being branded as postmodern on reflection. The ultimate scene of the ultimate episode — the place the digicam pans away from a supposedly real interplay between two characters, revealing that they’re standing on a Hollywood set being shouted at by a director — was most likely one of the vital well-known “breaking of the fourth wall” moments ever witnessed. Am I going to say The Hills was the Duchamp’s urinal of the small display, and due to this fact it’s truly unsurprising to see it make a 2024 comeback on this approach? Sure, sure I’m.
So, the place does this depart Spencer and Heidi? Someplace between laughingstocks, cultural relics, and unlikely survivors of the early “actuality” TV period. Say what you’ll about them, however Speidi has at all times identified the way to trip a wave. Perhaps the apocalypse actually is their time to shine.