Today in TV History: Lauren Conrad Was the Girl Who Didn’t Go to Paris

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 2, 2006

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Hills, “Timing Is Everything” (Season 1, Episode 10). [Stream on Amazon Video.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The Hills took a while to really get rolling. Laguna Beach was a popular docu-series for MTV though not nearly the kind of crossover sensation that, say, Jersey Shore became. When Laguna‘s protagonist, Lauren Conrad, was spun off onto The Hills, she took none of her former friends (or enemies) with her. So needless to say, The Hills didn’t start off as the blockbuster, supermarket-gossip juggernaut it became. A lot of that slow start comes down to the fact that for the bulk of season 1, Lauren and her BFF Heidi were stuck in boring relationships with boring boyfriends. Lauren’s relationship with Jason, which was so volatile and juicy on the second season of Laguna Beach, became kind of low-key crappy when exported to Los Angeles in all its bigness.

Similarly, Lauren inching her way into the fashion industry via an internship at Teen Vogue wasn’t all that scintillating either. And yet, somehow, both of these threads came together in a season finale that became the first milestone moment for The Hills. A  moment that ended up summarizing everything about the show that was simultaneously relatable and over-the-top. Lauren was presented by her boss, the magnificently pitiless Lisa Love, with the kind of opportunity that a lowly intern dreams of: spend the summer working in Paris. Lauren wavered, however, because spending the summer in Paris would surely mean the end of her already-shaky relationship with dirtbag Jason. What was a too-dependent-on-boys girl to do? Ultimately, Lauren made the decision to stay in L.A. and spend the summer with Jason, giving up the Paris opportunity to her work bestie, Whitney.

It should be noted that any and all similarities between this Hills storyline and the part of The Devil Wears Prada where a Vogue assistant experiences existential drama over whether to take an opportunity to go to Paris or let her co-worker have it were almost certainly intentional. The Devil Wears Prada has opened merely a month earlier, sure, but the book had been around for a while.

So what happened? Lauren’s summer with Jason ended up with them broken up anyway. Whitney got to have her magical summer in Paris. But it was Lisa Love who was the big winner in the following season’s premiere, because she got to lord it over Lauren until the end of time, highlighted by the most perfect, mean, probably-scripted-but-who-cares line ever spoken in the whole series:

“She’s gonna always be known as the girl who didn’t go to Paris.” (That follow-up dig — “How was your summer at the beach with your boyfriend? Did that work out for you?” — is merely icing on the cake.)

[You can stream The Hills‘ “Timing Is Everything” on Amazon Video.]