Insanely watchable.

Deadpan and gorgeously shot, The Hills is an addictively watchable visit to the cool kids' table.

If "Laguna Beach" looked perpetually like late afternoon -- the mellow light of cocktail hour, the promise of a party -- "The Hills" looks like a workday.

It's a good thing reality TV has nothing to do with real life.

Compared with the superhit "Sweet 16," "The Hills" is more refined in its celebration of materialism, though no less celebratory.

There are a lot of studious, high-achiever kids. Lauren is an anomaly. She is the lucky one. The one with an MTV camera crew for a resume. The pretty one with petty friends who melt in bikinis by blue-green pools of entitlement and argue idly with quarrelsome, spoiled boyfriends.

All told, it's "The Simple Life" with less substance, featuring youths that have clearly studied both the reality TV manual and "The OC" to perfect their "characters."