Don't blame it all on Lo

But a subtle intelligence is Lo's saving grace. It's all there in her withering gaze, usually directed away from her target, and possibly in whatever she's always typing into her cellphone. Last season, when she and Lauren visited Audrina in a recording studio where Alkaline Trio, a band on the label she works for, was working, her disinterest was palpable. But really -- Alkaline Trio?

You can see it too in the trailer for Season 4 (a screener of the season premiere was not available by press time). "This is the part where we need to make an effort," Lauren says to Lo, presumably about the troubles at home. Replies Lo, dismissively, "I feel like we are making an effort." She doesn't mean it, nor does she aspire to.

Cut to Audrina, different scene: "Lo's always super-bitchy. That's just how she is." And then Lo, defensively, to Audrina, presumably from the scene where things finally come to a head: "The blame is being put on me for you and Lauren drifting apart, and I don't think that's fair."

"Fair" isn't the word she should have used; "wrong" is. Lo's only doing the work being asked of her -- as is generally the case in war, she views herself as a blameless killer, serving only a higher ideal. In her role as reminder of the path less taken, of the not-yet corrupted, she is the only person on "The Hills" free to comment on its absurdity from within.

She has, of course, forsaken all that now. A life on "The Hills" is unforgiving, and it can't be long before Lo becomes as pathologized as her costars. "I have just been hanging out by the pool," she recently told US Weekly of her life post-graduation (she received a degree in art history from UCLA in June). "I would love to get my own style show or something like that." It could be called "The Disruptor."