The Hills just keeps getting sadder. Because she doesn't really do anything interesting, the MTV reality blah's star, Lauren Conrad, is getting pushed further and further into the background while the wretched and miserable supporting characters—Audrina, Spencer, Spencerina—dance hideously in the fore. This week's installment involved an awkward trip to the booze-smeared party mecca of Cabo San Lucas and an even-awkwarder Dinner With Friends. Sludge on through this with me, if you dare, after the jump. Audrina, still dimly reeling from the whole "I'm dating Australian Choire (heh) but had naked swimmy time with Justin Bobby" kadoodle, flitted off to Cabo with Lauren and a pack of Brosephs for Brody's birthday bash. Frankie was there, and so was gummy Frozen Burrito Heir Doug, and the brooding Justin Bobby. How conveniently uncomfortable for old Audy! The boys and girls club got crunked, and Audrina had hissy little conversations with JB about who is dating who and what is fair and what is not fair and why does she feel so sad and so alone and so walked-over all the time. Audrina initially existed as that supporting character for whom nothing ever went right so the main character would appear bold and successful in contrast. Except now Audrina is the main character, which just makes the whole endeavor shattering and devastating. If watching an insecure, worrying sadsack get trampled by a parade of shitty boys is what we're being offered, then I could just watch a rerun of Too Many Girls I Knew Freshman Year At Boston College instead of paying this cable bill. In the end of this whole debacle, Doug announced that Brody's present would be arriving. It turned out to be a sexy and sexist parade of dimbulb bimbos who smushed their crotches in the boys' faces and made Lauren and Audrina grumble. Well, it made Audrina grumble and crumble, as she watched JB writhe around with someone who was probably named Ashlyn or Valby. Somewhere, across the country in stony Massachusetts, a young woman from New Jersey was sitting glumly on a sofa in Rubenstein while the senior boy she really really likes played Beirut with his buddies while grabbing that girl from his philosophy class's ass and a strange cross-continental astral kinship was formed. You are not alone, dear ladies! Elsewhere in la la land, Spencer and Heidi—perhaps our faking-it reality couple?—grumpily sat at a restaurant awaiting their guests, sister Spencerina and her mewling little boyfriend Cameron. They were forty minutes late, giving Spencer just the right fuel to glower under his fleshbeard and fix his beady little Mattel doll eyes on Cameron, a former broby of Brody. I don't really even remember what the conversation entailed, except that Spencer brought up Spencerina's former boyfriends and Cameron meekly tried to change the subject by saying "I like... your sister... she makes... me laugh" and my roommate and I shrieked to the high heavens and covered our eyes because it was the most insanely awful thing ever done by a human being. Spencer scoffed in that way of his, and continued to become more and more ceaselessly and needlessly sour. His human form is diminishing and he's turning into a stiff old Sour Patch Kid that you find under your couch while cleaning before your parents come for a visit. Ick. So cameras swirled and music soared and everyone everywhere felt ugly and mean and sad and lonely. Audrina plummeted further and further, Spencerina whined desperately with her eyes, Heidi sang the song in her head that she's been singing, louder and louder, for the past three years of her life, and the girl at the dorm hopefully came to and left the party and walked outside and felt the crisp October air on her face and took the long way back to the Newton bus and maybe had a nice chat with that sweet boy from the third floor on the way home and somewhere inside gears turned and matter shifted and molecules rearranged and growth happened, small and imperceptible at first, as it always is. Well, hopefully. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully.