Paris Is Burning!

The big premiere kicked off with what looked to be some awful MTV pre-party. Yes, to hype up The Hills' mighty return to the air, MTV apparently did their usual thing: stuck a bunch of a teenage girls in a room and forced them to watch as some annoying VJ babbled on about who knows what. I sadly missed all of the "pre-party," but if the two seconds I caught just before the show started were any indication, I'm sure it was a very, very awkward event.

Nevertheless, the premiere truly began with what else? An extended recap of the season so far. It was all the usual stuff: Heidi and Spencer fighting, Lauren and Brody sort of dating, Whitney going slack-jawed at the sight of a soap bubble. Ultimately, the trip down memory lane ended with Lauren warning us that her impending voyage to France might just be a turning point in her life. "A part of me knew Paris was about to change everything," she said, adding, "For instance, I now no longer wear deodorant. And I love Woody Allen. Have you seen Bananas yet? It's fantastic."

We then cut to Lauren and Whitney emerging in the awfulness that is Charles De Gaulle Airport. Having been a recent visitor to France myself, I've become well acquainted with this airport, and as much as I love cramped spaces, Charles De Gaulle just isn't my favorite. Side note: Vicky from The Real Housewives of Orange County was on my red-eye to Paris. Just think about that for a second: flying across the Atlantic, waking up, and seeing HER first thing in the morning. It's like getting slapped across the face with a stale baguette. MON DIEU!

Anyway, Lauren and Whitney stepped off their plane looking surprisingly refreshed, and soon they met their chauffeur, a dour looking man named Stephane. He actually turned out to be quite personable; although, I noticed he didn't offer to help the girls with their bags. It probably was his subtle way of saying, "Lazy americains!!!" Later, when Lauren noted that she could already feel the cold air inside the terminal, I half expected Stephane to seethe, "That is just the frosty touch of my INDIFFERENCE! ALORS!!!"

Well, the girls hopped into Stephane's Towncar and quickly engaged in some awkward small talk with their driver, who informed them that in Paris, "Everything is different."

"How's it different?" Lauren asked. Um, let's see. For starters, they speak FRENCH. You know, because it's FRANCE, not CALIFORNIA. Oh, but look at me. I'm such a show off!

Nevertheless, the girls were positively giddy — as they should have been. "What do you want to do?" Whitney asked, seemingly ready to throw herself from the car at the sight of the nearest brasserie. Before Lauren had a chance to answer her friend, the girls discovered itineraries in the back seat, and I could practically hear Lisa Love cackling in Los Angeles: "What do you want to do? I'll tell you what you'll want to do. WHATEVER I DAMN WELL CHOOSE FOR YOU!" Cut to the girls churning butter in the French countryside while Lisa laughs haughtily in her office.

Well, after sufficiently mangling some French designers' names (way to bone up on your industry), the girls faced their first big dilemma. "Oh my gosh!" Whitney declared. "We're supposed to go to Colette first to pick up shoes for the two debutantes." OH. MY. GOD.

Wait, what?

Okay, let's back up here for a second. Lauren and Whitney were in town to cover a a fashion shoot happening in conjunction with a debutante ball. As part of that, the girls needed to pick up some gowns for themselves, but they also had to get some shoes for their models. Which to do first? I mean, yeah, you would think the models would take priority because they were the ones that were, you know, being photographed, but dammit, those gowns weren't going to pick themselves up! Unsurprisingly, the girls opted to fetch their dresses first, rationalizing their decision by downplaying the importance of the shoes. Besides, it's not like anyone would be waiting for them at the store, they figured. "I doubt they're appointments," Whitney said confidently. Dunh dunh DUNH!!!!!

After the opening credits, we learned the name of tonight's episode: "Paris Changes Everything." And what better way to demonstrate that than by cutting to... Colorado? Yes, we had returned to the scenic world of Crescent Butte (a.k.a. Heidiville), and to underscore both Heidi's romantic woes AND her high altitude, the producers keenly introduced the scene with none other than Jordin Spark's song, "No Air." Oooh, a scathing commentary on atmospheric pressure in the Rockies!

Anyway, we soon found ourselves in the cutesy coffee shop Camp 4 Coffee where Heidi and her mom, Darlene, shed their ski goggles to have a heart to heart. Personally, the sight of Heidi's "I'm in Hollywood" face poking out from the top of ten layers of ski equipment was mighty amusing to me. She's the last person I ever expect to go skiing. Yes, I know she's from Colorado, but honestly, I always imagined that if you put two planks under her feet and sent her down a slope, you'd just be asking for a face plant. Full disclosure: I've never progressed beyond the Bunny Hill. I'm what you call "an uncoordinated mess." To my credit, I've never face planted, but that's only because if I reach any sort of appreciable speed, I freak out and fall on my ass. It's a system I've developed.

"I'm Nordic."

Well, Darlene was more than thrilled to have her daughter back in Crescent Butte. For those of you who've forgotten, Heidi had journeyed back home after her engagement to Spencer proved to be an eternal wellspring of tension and bickering. Now she was with Mom, who told Heidi, "You have a lot of growing to do. Both of you do individually." She then added, "You should probably do that growing on your own. Away from each other. NEVER GO BACK TO LOS ANGELES AGAIN!"

Actually, Darlene was a bit more subtle. She merely stated, "I'd like to see you starting fresh." But the translation was still "NEVER GO BACK TO LOS ANGELES AGAIN!!!"

Soon we returned to France where Whitney and Lauren were traipsing into the Alberta Ferretti store for their gowns. We knew this would be a glorious moment for the girls when they spotted that most hallowed of sartorial components: feathers!

"I love that there's feathers," gushed Lauren at one point, causing Whitney to slowly drawl back, "You love feathers... Wow..."

And that concludes tonight's thrilling installment of Feather Talk with Whitney and Lauren. Tune in next week when the girls encounter an errant sparrow! Lauren: "That bird has nice feathers." Whitney: "Yeah..."

Anyway, the girls picked up their gowns and jumped back in their car where Stephane asked them, "Was it good?" He then added, "Because I just had a wonderful croque monsieur. Ronh ronh ronh!!!"

(That was my attempt to write stereotypical French laughter)

The girls then headed off to Colette (the store, not the tombstone of the famed writer) to pick up those pesky shoes, but wouldn't you know it? The store was closed. It was like Oprah and Hermès ALL OVER AGAIN. If there's anything we know about those French designers, it's that they don't open the door for anyone, no matter how loud you yell, "I'll give you free tickets to the Color PUUUURRRPPLLEE!!!!!"

Les Misérables

It was at this point that Whitney had her first bombshell revelation of the night: "Clearly we should have gotten the shoes first and the dresses second." To which Lauren replied, "I'm sorry, I'm still thinking about those feathers. They were really great."

Poor Whitney. It had only been a few hours, and she'd already messed up. "I just get so nervous being so unprepared," she fretted. Yeah, it's too bad they don't have something to guide them along. You know, like a list of things to do and places to be at — kind of like an itinerary. OH WAIT.

We then headed to Los Angeles for tonight's one scene in California where we found Spencer all alone in his messy apartment, struggling with the many complexities of a sink faucet. Luckily, his sister Stephanie dropped by to say hi, and immediately, she started up with the hate. "Spencer, what is wrong with your place? It's disgusting!" she scoffed. She then added, "Oh, that's right. You live here. That makes more sense now."

Anyway, Spencer offloaded his latest romantic problems on his sister, and when he explained how Heidi had up and left for Colorado, She-Spencer quipped, "It's kind of like touché. You leave her, and now she leaves you." Touché indeed! The many ironies of The Hills!

Nevertheless, the browbeating didn't end there. Stephanie happily berated her brother for his treatment of Heidi: "Spencer, it's like you don't think." You've known him all your life, and you're just figuring this out now?

Finally, She-Spencer plunged the ultimate knife into her brother's heart, noting, "I guess you can just write a list of everything you've done, and do the exact OPPOSITE!" She then added, "Now excuse me. I'm off to the Leelee Sobieski convention."

At this point, it looked like we'd be going to commercial, but instead, we found ourselves facing the first Dove/Alicia Keys vignette thingy. It was pretty awful. First off, Alicia Keys can't act. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Secondly, the whole thing played out like a lame reject from Undressed (a show that was infinitely more entertaining than this crap). Thirdly, there was entirely way too much texting in this vignette. Every two seconds I thought I was getting a message, but of course, it was only Alicia Keys tapping away at her phone. When I actually did get a text message during this clip, I completely ignored it because I just assumed the beeping was coming from the TV. Awful.

"I keep on falling... INTO CHARACTER!"

Thankfully, we soon returned to Lauren and Whitney's glamorous hotel, which certainly outclassed my two-star dump by a mile. Or rather, un kilometre. The girls had just woken up and had very little time to get ready for a photo shoot. At this point, the scene took a strange turn towards the soft-core as Lauren asked, "Have you already taken a shower?"

"No..." Whitney replied.

"Dirty girl!"

"Wanna shower first? How long do you take?" Whitney asked. Had this been on Cinemax, a cheesy saxophone would start playing on the soundtrack, followed by Lauren saying, "Maybe we should just take a shower together?" MTV, however, kept things clean and professional, and as the girls began laughing, we traveled all the way back to Colorado for further excitement in the land of Crescent Butte. There we found Heidi's stepdad, Tim, shoveling some snow, and while I'm sure he's quite adept at this, I have a hard time believing he cleared his entire, massive driveway with just his little shovel. I don't buy it. The phoniness of this set up offends me and my shovel sensibilities. Nevertheless, who should come rolling up that suspiciously shoveled driveway but Spencer. Yes, he'd arrived to win his lady back, but if this first interaction with Tim was to be any indication, this task would be more difficult than attempting the nearest black diamond trail blindfolded.

Luckily, Tim was very cordial right off the bat: "What the heck are you doing here?" Eh, okay. Maybe things didn't start off on a particularly friendly note, but at least things got better when Spencer professed his chivalrous intention to woo Heidi back. "Phone call? Phone call's a good idea," Tim then said. Ouch, this was not going well at all, and it most certainly did not get better. "She's happy here," Tim told Spence, adding, "JUST GO AWAY!"

Okay, maybe he didn't say that last part, but I'm sure he was thinking it —  especially after Spencer lingered around even longer, forcing Tim to invite him to take a seat inside. Personally, I'm surprised Tim didn't give Spencer a shovel and put him to work. "You want to be in with the Montags, you gotta work like the Montags. ARRRGGG!!!"

Anyway, in more fascinating corners of the globe we found Lauren and Whitney arriving at a Teen Vogue photo shoot, and the answer is no: there were no Colette shoes in sight. This was surely going to bite them in the ass. In the meantime, the girls met up with a guy named Kimball, whose previous claim to fame had been giving snooty looks during Whitney's Manhattan adventure last season. Or rather, last this season. You know what I'm talking about.

Well, the girls set about doing their various jobs on the set, and we got a chance to see two of the debutantes who'd be showing at the ball. I haven't seen a huge number of debutantes in my life, but these two had to be some of the dumpiest. They just plopped themselves in front of those cameras as if they were about to say, "BLAAAAH." In the midst of this, Lauren's phone rang, and guess who was on the line? Audrina! Surely this had to be important. Why else would she plunk down serious coin to call halfway around the world?

The emergency: she'd spotted Brody Jenner at Les Deux... with another girl! A girl he'd been calling his girlfriend. ZUT ALORS!!! You could have knocked me over with wheel of brie! Now, before I go on, I must issue an apology. About two weeks ago, a clip of this scene was leaked to the internet, and I wrote a whole thing about it, but for whatever reason, I thought Audrina had said "the zoo," not "Les Deux." Now my whole post has been rendered idiotic. Still, I have to say, it would have been a lot cooler had she run into Brody at the zoo instead. Just imagine Audrina looking at monkeys. It's pretty funny, right?

Anyway, Lauren did not seem very happy with this news about the Brodester. In fact, she seemed positively rattled, but that's probably because she thought Audrina was calling with some awful news about her cat, Ashes (a.k.a. Bella 2.0). Whatever happened to that damn cat anyway? Did Lisa Love take him as collateral for those ball gowns? Or maybe evil intern Emily absconded with him —  the ultimate revenge!

"Really Audrina? You called me for this?"

Nevertheless, Lauren and Whitney babbled on about Brody and how they couldn't believe he'd already found a new girl. I tried to feign interest in this development, but honestly, I couldn't. After two seasons of watching these two flirt with each other, I've grown impatient with their drama. Good riddance.

Well, after futzing with Lauren's mischievous bangs, Whitney proclaimed that if Brody could find a new girl in two days, they could find new boys in two days. That was all well and good, but just make sure to get the damn shoes first. I can't stand not having closure on this Colette situation.

Back in Colorado, we found Spencer and Tim enjoying a nice awkward moment in the living room when suddenly, Heidi walked in, and OH MY. Her face looked all sorts of different. Mostly it was her lips. What the hell happened to her up there on the slopes? I couldn't help wondering if she had wiped out face first into a giant pile of collagen.

MontagShock™

Nevertheless, the two former lovebirds had many things to sort out; so Darlene tried to give them their space. "Honey," she called out to Tim, "you want to help me with something?" Well played, Darlene. The only thing better would have been if she'd said, "So you want to help me with that thing we were talking about? You know... the THING." Amusingly, Darlene and Tim only stepped like three feet away from Heidi. Smooth. Very smooth.

Anyway, the two-headed monster that is Speidi bickered back and forth, and to my surprise, Heidi actually made several salient points. But it was all sort of boring; so let's go back to Paris, shall we?

In other news, Spencer has grown three feet.

Over on the Left Bank, Lauren and Whitney were done for the day, and now they were headed out to meet up with some guys from some band. And no, they still hadn't dropped by Colette. Dammit, I'm gonna go over there and get the shoes myself. Lisa Love will not be happy about this. Even I fear her wrath, and I don't even work for her. I feel like she'll look at me through the TV and say, "Well, Ben, we certainly know what you didn't do to remedy the situation."

Nevertheless, it was time to meet some prospective Frenchmen to be Lauren's next great rebound. First there was Paul, a greasy blond guy with terrible skin. Then there was Matthias, who was similarly greasy, but what he lacked in pimples he made up for in facial hair. Oh la la! Color Lauren smitten. How could she not be? This guy was sort of like the camembert to Brody's cheddar. Or at least, that's what we were supposed to think. Personally I thought he stank like a wedge of roquefort stuck behind a radiator.

"You like quiche lorraine? Because I like quiche LAUREN."

Anyway, Matthias quickly got to work doing what he does best: STARING LIKE A MANIAC. Oh wait, he was being seductive. My bad. Yes, he seemed to spend the entire conversation trying to pierce Lauren with his eyes, almost as if he was trying really, really hard to use some power of telekinesis on her. I'm shocked he didn't announce, "Lauren, with my eyes, I will turn you into a beautiful papillion! Alors!"

Amazingly, the borderline psychotic glares seemed to work on Lauren, empowering Matthias to move onto phase two of Operation: Hot Croissant. He asked Lauren if she'd been to the Eiffel Tower yet, and she nearly melted at the suggestion. Why, no. No she hadn't been there! Sure enough, the whole gang decided to up and go to this famous landmark, and as they stepped out the door, Lauren remarked, "Oh my God, I can see it!" Well, uh, yeah, it was just down the street. I don't really know why she was so surprised, actually. You'd think she would have seen it when she walked into the bar, but hey, we all notice different things at different times. And who knows, maybe she got distracted by some roving mime. For the record, I was very sad that I did not see one mime when I was in Paris. Maybe they were all mourning Marcel Marceau, who died when I was there. Vicky and Marcel Marceau: could my trip have been any more randomly punctuated by pop culture references?

Well, the group eventually made their way to the base of the Eiffel Tower, and as they cracked open a bottle of champagne, we cut to commercial, leaving us to wonder whether or not they were ever accosted by a roving gang of gypsies. Seriously, everyone in Paris kept warning us about the gypsies at the Eiffel Tower. I'm happy to announce that I emerged with wallet intact.

Anyway, after the break, we found Lauren and Whitney practicing / butchering some French in their hotel room. It was another night, and they were getting ready to go out to a posh club in the city. Unfortunately, Lauren hadn't brought any fancy dresses to Paris. Everything she had were pencil dresses (or whatever she called them). Of course, she could always wear her ball gown, but as Whitney said, that was just "psycho talk."

OR WAS IT?

Ever the slave to fashion, Lauren decided that she would take a risk and wear her ball gown out to the club. The smoky, smoky club. And you thought I was stressed over those stupid shoes. This was about ten times worse. And it didn't get any better when Lauren announced that she was going to sew the bottom part of the dress up into the hem. WHAT??!?! You're going to take needle and thread to your free ball gown? This had disaster written all over it. I could already foresee some unfortunate incident involving the dress and an ill-placed bowl of moules frites.

Meanwhile, back in Crescent Snooze, or rather Butte, Heidi and her family were now having dinner at a restaurant, and for some reason Spencer was with them, even though literally all three Montags had expressed their desire for him to go home. Awwwkward. When Heidi wasn't shooting daggers at her him, Spencer tried to make small-talk, noting that the "Weather's beautiful." This caused Darlene to babble away (you can tell she loves the small talk) until Heidi put an end to this madness by raising her glass to a toast.

"To my parents, who've always loved me and supported me," she said. Then she looked at Spencer and said, "And that's about it." Oh SNAP! Didn't see that one coming. Heidi needs to hang with more British people. Her passive-aggression is entirely too obvious. Of course, who am I to ever turn down some P.A. on a reality show? Even if it's clunky, I lap it all up, and fortunately for me, Heidi had more up her sleeve. She let loose a bunch of awkward passive aggression, to the point where Spencer then wound up appealing his case to Darlene. It was all very strange. Even worse, Spencer then called Heidi a hypocrite -- in front of her parents!! What in the what what? I thought Tim might punch him in the face (or at least take a swipe with that shovel), but soon Spencer was in repentant mode, apologizing for his behavior before this big fight.

Heidi would have none of it. She turned to her mom and asked, "You almost done?"

"Uh, no. Do you want me to be almost done?" she asked. Hey Darlene, how many hints do you need? FINISH UP. Can't you see how awkward your dinner's become?

Thankfully, the opening notes of "Flashing Lights" ushered us perfectly back to Paris (excellent song transition, music coordinator), and we saw Lauren in her sewn up dress, waltzing into some club called Neo. The girls took to the place quite well, and Whitney for one seemed to have fallen in love with it. She couldn't stop gushing about it, stopping only to apologize for turning her back on Vincent John, the all important tambourine player in Matthias's band. Nothing says rock star like a French man on tambourine.

Anyway, between Vincent John, Paul, and Matthias, there was so much grease on screen, my TV had a heart attack. Adding to the shininess was Edouard, one of the escorts at the debutante ball. He totally tried to hit on Lauren, but he had nothing on Matthias and his sultry glares. The best Edouard could do was try out some stale material like, "Do you surf?" but it all fell flat like a bad dish of escargots.

Still, Edouard proved to be an effective interloper, and Lauren was barely able to talk to Matthias all night long. When she left, she even forgot to say goodbye to her would-be lovah, but fear not. Matthias tracked her down on the street, and after startling her to death, he tried to some coy charm on her. "You are moving without kissing me bye-bye?" he asked. All I gotta say is that Matthias is lucky he has an accent. If some chump from Michigan ever said that to Lauren at Les Deux, he'd get a whole faceful of the Conrad eye-roll.

Ultimately, the two parted ways, but not before Lauren promised Matthias one last night together. So romantic. I just want to roll them up in some puff-pastry dough and turn them into a vol-au-vent.

"I wear special cologne for you. It smell like, how you say, bleu cheese."

After the commercial break, we found Whitney and Lauren back in their hotel room home base talking about the upcoming ball, which was now just hours away. Whit made some passing comments about being bummed with her job —  she wasn't doing as much styling as she would have liked. Plus, there weren't enough stairs for her to fall down. Lauren, meanwhile, was removing the stitches she had sewn in her ball gown. It should be noted that this constituted the most exciting de-stitching I had ever witnessed. With each one, we knew she was inching closer and closer to disaster. Sooner or later, she was going to tear a hole or do something stupid. But when? WHEN? Tragedy was most certainly on the horizon.

And then it happened. The cameras aggressively zoomed in on the dress, and before we even knew what was going on, we could tell that something had gone very, very wrong. After all, since when do cameras on The Hills zoom into things? Well, the good news for Lauren was that she didn't poke a hole in her expensive dress. The bad news was that it was even worse. This Titanic of a ball gown finally hit its iceberg. An iceberg in the form of... A STAIN!!! That's right. Somehow, Lauren had gotten a big, ruddy-colored splotch all over her dress. DIS-ASTER.

Sacrebleu!

Drawing from her extensive career as a CSI stain analyst, Lauren immediately suggested that this was the working of coffee gone awry. A café au lait from HELL. Lauren sniffed the stains (oh yes, there was more than one), but the olfactory sleuthing proved to be inconclusive. There had to be an explanation. Coffee just didn't sit right. And that's when she made the dreaded discovery. The curling iron had been left on. That's right: the dress had been BURNED.

QUELLE HORREUR!!!

C'est la vie!

Suddenly, Cinderella had no dress to wear to the ball. What would she do? As tears gathered in Lauren's eyes, Whitney took control of the situation. She called up Ferretti and announced, "We have a little bit of a setback." Yeah, nothing too major. The intern just charred your dress. Minor hiccup really.

Luckily for the girls, the people at Ferretti were all too starved for the publicity and happily provided Lauren with a new gown. "I'll take very good care of it!" LC promised, adding, "No more incinerating for me tonight! No siree. Now excuse me while I rest this dress on a candelabra."

With Little Miss Firestarter's crisis averted, we then headed back to Colorado... again... for more back-and-forth with Heidi and Spencer. Honestly, this whole thing was getting very, very tiresome. As the two sat down to coffee in what looked to be the Montag family restaurant, Heidi asked, "So when are you leaving?" To some that might sound like a rude question, but honestly, she has a point. She told him to get lost like hours ago. Maybe even days! AND HE WAS STILL THERE.

Anyway, Heidi dropped the facade for a little bit as she yearned for the days of yore when she used to have, you know, friends. She expressed how she wanted her whole life back, not just the part with Spencer. As you can imagine, he didn't take too well to this.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked. "It's like teehhhh. Hehhhhh." Well, I'm not sure what Heidi wanted him to say, but I'm sure she was hoping for more than just non distinct sounds. Maybe a word? A few consonants?

Ultimately, Heidi said she felt like she was in a one-way relationship, causing Spencer to threaten to dump her. She wasn't very happy with this (even though it was she who had been pushing him away for the past several hours); so Heidi announced that when she returned to Los Angeles (somewhere, Darlene's heart just broke), she wanted Spencer moved out.

"You're delusional," he snapped back. He then added, "I don't have any stuff. So HA!"

Meanwhile, in Paris, the girls showed up at the big Crillon Ball with nary a burn (nor a feather, sadly) in sight. Oh, but what about those shoes? They were so gonna get busted!

Or not. Turns out that nothing ever happened with those shoes. I guess they found them somewhere along the way. Whatever it was, no one, not even Kimball, scolded these girls about it. I'm still holding out hope that Lisa Love could come down with a thrashing next week (and honestly, I'd rather wait a week than get a second-rate bitching from Kimball), but I tend to think the shoes are a thing of the past.

Anyway, not much exciting happened at the ball. Lauren and Whitney did get to experience the singular rush of cramming together through a rotating door, and who doesn't love that? Actually, I'm not sure I really see the joy in it. It's like going up to a normal door and saying, "Hey! Rather than walk through that doorway one at a time, let's both go through together, get wedged in there, make ourselves uncomfortable, and then pop out!" It just doesn't have the same caché when you're, I don't know, not six.

Aside from that, there wasn't else very noteworthy. Most of the ball was presented to us in a semi-montage. At one point, I thought Whitney might have a mishap with her designer cue-cards that she was holding up for the press (especially after one French guy seemed to get in a tizzy about something or another), but again, everything went off without a hitch. The debutantes all made their stirring entrances with their escorts, high society watched approvingly, and all was right with the world. I must say I was bummed that the Countess Luann Delesseps was a no-show. Surely, the invite was lost in the mail.

Towards the end of the night, Kimball had a little heart to heart with Wh-wh-wh-Whitney, asking her if she was enjoying her job and its responsibilities. When Whit revealed that it wasn't totally her favorite thing in the world, Kimball commented that he could kind of tell. She just didn't seem like she was that into it. Whitney then noted that she wanted to go into styling, something that Kimball heavily encouraged her to follow. Translation: "Yeah, you better leave Teen Vogue. I didn't work here for ten years just to have you and your MTV cameras push me out of a job." (alternate translation: "Tranny tranny tranny hot mess tranny tranny fierce.")

With their work done for the night, Lauren and Whitney walked outside, and who was there? Just Monsieur Greaseball himself, Matthias. He offered Lauren a ride on his petit Vespa, and she gladly accepted. Besides, what could go wrong on a motorcyle. In the rain. IN THE GOWN YOU PLEDGED TO TAKE CARE OF.

Luckily, Matthias proved to be a safe driver, and the two zipped around town without incident. It was all very cute and sweet, in a Catherine Deneuve/Gerard Depardieu sort of way. And then it ended. Au revoir, Matthias. May your grease flow proudly like the drippings of a Foreman Grill.

"Pardonez-moi. I have, how you say, soufflé crumb in the eye."

We then went to commercial again, and before we came back, we were treated to another glimpse inside the MTV Hills party in New York City. This time, we found the hostess (some girl with an accent) wedged between Mariah Carey and Lauren Conrad. Of course, based on this segment, you never would have known Lauren was the star of this show since the hostess didn't ask her a single question. I mean, I get it —  there's Mariah Carey and then there's Lauren Conrad (imagine me making a scales gesture with my hands -- with Mariah weighing more in the fame department). But seriously, you should throw a token bone to poor Lauren.

Instead, the hostess asked Mariah if she had ever burned a dress before, adding that surely after all these years of touring, it must have happened once or twice. Mariah amusingly responded, "I haven't had that with a dress yet." She then added, "I mean, I'm not a total retard. Oh, I'm sorry Lauren. I didn't see you standing there."

Well, after Mariah finished a lengthy story about burning her hair in Europe once, we then got back into the show for its brief coda. Lauren told Whitney all about her joyous ride through Paris, saying how Matthias had picked her up on a Vespa.

"A vespa?" Whitney said with shock. I half expected her to add, "Wow, that's reeeeally lame. I mean, no, that's awesome! How nice for you!"

The girls then got all philosophical about their time in France, with Whitney noting, "It's so weird to come here and then come home with a whole new perspective on things, you know?" For instance, now she has a totally new appreciation for fire safety laws. Thanks, Paris!

Whitney then babbled on about wanting to do more styling (yes, Whitney, we KNOW). "I'm ready to do something else other than work behind a desk at Teen Vogue," she said. Really? You don't like working behind a desk? But your office is so nice. I mean, yeah, it's a tiny storage closet, but if you stick at it, you might be able to nab that opening up in the boiler room. OH WELL.

As the girls packed up, we then went back to Colorado where Spencer was saying goodbye to his lady lover. "I just need a little time," Heidi said, adding, "I want to let my lips shrink a little. You don't seem to understand. I was stung by thirty-five bees all at once. I need to rest."

Finally, the show came to an end with Lauren and Whitney back in their Towncar, driving to the airport. LC smiled triumphantly, marveling that they went to a fancy ball. "Who are we?" she laughed. Oh, you know, only MTV's most valuable assets. Funny how that'll get you into places.

What did you guys think about the episode? Did you enjoy the trip to France? Ready to get back to Los Angeles? Do you miss Marcel Marceau?