Why 'The City' is better than 'The Hills'

Friends, it's time for me to make a difficult confession. I love "The City." For the uninitiated, "The City" is a MTV reality show that's a spin-off of "The Hills."

The difference between the two though, is that the people on "The City" are likeable and entertaining, whereas "The Hills" is filled with spoiled rich kids who are unwatchable.

"The City" follows "Hills" alum Whitney Port (pictured above) as she navigates her way through New York City while starting her own fashion line. She is surrounded by the usual group of beautiful people, but what makes "The City" different is that these people seem like actual friends, not let's-hang-out-while-the-cameras-are-on-friends.

Whitney is supported by her friend Roxy who works at fashion PR firm People's Revolution, which is owned by one of my favorite people on the planet, Kelly Cutrone.

Cutrone is fantastic, because she doesn't stand for the foolishness that young girls on these shows usually bring with them. She has her own show on Bravo called "Kell on Earth" (which everyone should check out), but here she just acts as Whitney's mentor/second mother.

There is also the secondary plotline, that follows the show's villain Olivia as she works at Elle magazine. Last season detailed how Olivia and her boss Erin (pictured below), couldn't get along, because Olivia is incompetent and has her bosses fooled.

The show was trying to make Erin be the bad guy, but this season it's become clear that she's actually a nice girl who knows her stuff and Olivia is the witch.


In last week's episode Olivia passed on covering Whitney's line for Elle online, but was then served in front of all the editors when Erin brought in Whitney's book and everyone loved it.

This week she decided to skip interviewing Whitney in favor of doing an awful job covering her friend's jewelry line. When she didn't show up to the photo shoot, Erin had to break the news to Whitney who was disappointed and Kelly was swearing to rain holy hell down on Olivia.

When Erin confronts Olivia about her actions, she uses the excuse that she made it known she was covering something else. When Erin calls her on her unprofessional behavior, she ignores her and storms out of the office. Olivia has a habit of storming out of rooms when conversations aren't going her way.

This leads their fabulous boss Joe to tell Olivia to make things right with Whitney because her job is on the line. Cut to Olivia and Whitney having their dramatic showdown lunch, where Whitney, on the advice of her consigliare Kelly decides to not be nice for five minutes and calls Olivia on her sabotage.

Olivia of course can't handle this and storms out.

This may all sound like superficial drivel, and some of it is, but underneath that it's just fun TV.

Occasionally you just need to turn off your brain and check out and "The City" is perfect for that.

Whitney is such a down to Earth, nice girl that you can't help rooting for her success. And everything Kelly says is gold, so the show also becomes educational.

I also recommend that everyone go out and get Kelly's book "If You Have to Cry, Go Outside." It's part memoir, part motivational and a fantastic read.

On next week's show Whitney flirts with the hot photographer from her photo shoot and Olivia does a surprisingly good job at an Elle photo shoot. Of course I'm sure she'll storm out of a room at some point.