Revolving Dorks

Wow, this show's getting heavy in its second season, huh? Of course, it's all relative here in The Hills: Heavy is, like, the weight of a credit card (platinum, of course) as opposed to the heft of one (pretty, blond) strand of hair. At any rate, our golden girls are growing up, complete with promotions (yes, Heidi is inexplicably moving up at Bolthouse) and big breakups.

Thus we began our new season by finally dropping the dead weight known as Jason. LC hauled his stuff, including his prized golf clubs, over to his place in her black Mercedes convertible, getting rid of it and him for good. (It's hard not to have flashbacks to one's own first big breakup. Minus the pricey golf clubs, Mercedes, and beach house, anyway.) At least she had the sense to tell him she definitely does not want to be his ''buddy'' post-breakup. Let's keep it that way, and hold the mumbly Jason cameos to a minimum this season, shall we?

Apparently Teen Vogue's own Lisa Love agrees with me. Having clearly decided she needed a little more devil in her Prada, the mag's West Coast editor summoned her perma-interns LC and Whitney to her lair just to lash LC when she was already down: ''That was a good choice of yours to make, to go to Paris,'' she passive-aggressively purred to Whitney. ''Lauren didn't go to Paris....How was your summer at the beach with your boyfriend? Did that work out for you?'' Heidi, bless her slightly-softened-since-last-season heart, soothed Lauren while she sulked at home that night. ''The best part of Jason was you,'' she said. Awww.

Heidi, however, had her own problem — namely, avoiding Audrina's calls. It seems Audrina had decided to switch from going on random awkward dates with no relevance to any story lines to going on dates with Heidi's new beau. (Hey, Heidi, there's more than one way to get promoted.) The man in question, Spencer, fits right into the Hills-Laguna Beach mold for most-fought-over guys; their defining characteristic being that they're not all that attractive, clever, or interesting to the untrained eye. Oh, and they dodge dicey questions with the best of them. When Heidi started asking him about Audrina at dinner, Spencer smoothly deflected her by saying, ''This margarita's just too good! I couldn't be happier right now!''

And while Heidi was mooning over what she deemed a telltale sign that this relationship was going somewhere — when they meet people at clubs, she said, ''now he'll, like, start hiding behind me'' (um, could that also be a sign he's trying to duck some other chick he's dating?) — Spencer was bringing Audrina flowers on their lunch date. And offering to take her to Don Antonio's, where he'd just been with Heidi. And making plans to bring Audrina to a party Heidi was working. Gee, it was almost as if he were trying to get himself into a major story line on an MTV reality series. If only he knew someone on such a show...

So naturally this did not all go over well with Heidi when it came time for the party. (By the way, is anyone else wondering if this show is ever going to acknowledge that its stars are themselves paparazzi magnets? They show others getting snapped on the red carpet but never our girls.) Heidi sort of confronted Spencer about the situation, but she really still seemed to blame most of it on Audrina, weirdly enough. Spencer summed up the tension thusly: ''We got beef in the streets.'' Well, yes, we do, Spencer — I wonder how that happened.

I'd like to end this with Spencer's eloquence; really, I would. But then they hit us with an honest-to-goodness cliff-hanger: Heidi perusing shampoo bottles at the pharmacy! Oh, no, the real cliff-hanger: her taking a pregnancy test out of the bag when she returned home. Is it me, or does this take her dangerously close to dealing with an actual serious issue?

What do you think? Do you like the nicer Heidi? Do you like the meaner Lisa? How will they resolve Heidi's situation? And has there even been a decent guy on either Laguna or The Hills?

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