The Hills Recap: The One Where I Prefer A Hole In The Wall

When I tuned in to Monday's episode of The Hills, it was already 10:08 pm. I figured I couldn't have missed more than the "last time..." recap, some shots of people walking around the streets of West Hollywood, and a People's Revolution convo between Lauren, Whitney, and Whitney's sinuses.

But then by 10:10, I realized I had apparently missed something huge. Heidi's sister had moved in with her and Spencer, and Audrina and Lauren were no longer on speaking terms after a fight in Vegas. They went to Vegas? How had this all happened in the first 8 minutes of the show?

Well, it didn't. Although I wish the story really did move along that quickly because it would save us all a great deal of our precious time.

Turns out, there was a special episode of The Hills on Sunday night. Had I known this, I would have been thrilled to tune in for a bonus dose of maddening frivolity.

But instead, I spent all of Sunday night restlessly flipping through the channels. Eventually, I gave up hope of finding any quality programming and then went into the sort of TV coma one usually enters while hungover, or home sick with the flu, or in an otherwise weakened state. You know, the TV coma where instead of seeking out the best thing on TV, you begin to search for the worst.

And on Sunday night, the TV coma led me to a few interesting things. For instance, from 9-11pm, I watched back to back documentaries on TLC about the lives of 5-year-old beauty pageant contestants and the mothers that mold them into future meth addicts.

But before that, at 8pm, I watched Hole In The Wall on Fox. This is a new show where contestants have to fit themselves through a hole in the wall.

No, really.

You see, they gather contestants in 2 teams of 3, and then dress them up in hilarious silver outfits. With helmets!



Then, the contestants line up at the edge of a shallow pool of water and wait. Next, the host yells "It's time to face the hole!" (That's what she said.)

Then there's a countdown and a loud siren noise.

3...
2...
1...


And then a wall with 3 holes moves toward the contestants. Their objective is to fit through the holes, or they'll be knocked into the water.

Sometimes the holes are vaguely people-shaped.


Sometimes they are not.


And mostly, the contestants wind up in the pool.


This went on for 30 minutes on Sunday. But apparently for the rest of the season the episodes will be one hour long. One hour. Of holes. And walls.

What frustrates me is that I want to say something like, "Damn, they really do think Americans are stupid, putting this crap on TV." But instead, all I can say is, "It's funny when they get stuck in the holes."

While I was watching this, Devin was on the couch with me, but was reading Something Very Important and so wasn't paying much attention. Eventually he looked up, just in time to watch one of the contestants jump up to reach a hole a few feet off the ground, miss completely, slam into the wall, bounce off, and then fall into the pool.

"Wha...what's this?"

"Hole In The Wall."

"Yeah, but what show is this?"

"Hole In The Wall."

"This is the whole show?"

"Well...yes."

As you may have guessed, this show originated in Japan, the land of preposterous gameshows. The only difference is in the Japanese version they outfit contestants in yellow unitards with hoods, giving everyone a stick-of-margarine appearance.


I know, I didn't think the ensemble could get any better than the American one either.

And so because of Hole In The Wall and a couple of pageant moms, I'm down 4000 brain cells and, with my new pea-brain, I have to write about not one but TWO Hills episodes.

But don't worry, recaps are a'comin'!