Last night's episode of The Hills showed us just how far Southern California's most bemusing tarts have come.

Because they're big girls now, Lauren, Lo, and Audrina have moved from their overpriced apartments into one big overpriced house, as plush and spacious as any overexposed girl in their early 20s could hope for. Luckily, the house has a separate guest house in which to hide Audrina when the others want to talk trash on her behind her back—which is often.

Because they're also bitches now, Lauren and Lo provide one of the season's best awkward moments, when, making up a batch salsa with Audrina for their housewarming party, the subject of Justin Bobby surfaces. Lo takes a claws-out swipe at JB's amusing hat preferences, and all goes quiet, with dear Audrina looking around helplessly with her sweet, vacant eyes, wondering just how she'd ever come to live with these terrible monsters. The moment is so Mean Girls it's fair to wonder if L and L have been studying up on it in hopes of maxing their nastiness quotient.

But the one who has really grown up, in shirt size at least, is Laguna Beach's Stephen Colletti. He who chose Kristin Cavallari over LC back in the day, is now a deep-voiced bro, no longer that skinny high school/college dude we knew on Laguna Beach. (Dear god, how long have we been monitoring the lives of these kids?) He looks good, he's filled out, his shoulders have broadened. Lauren and Lo eye him like a prime cow at market in the tiki-torched soft light of their housewarming party. Yeah, Lauren, you better get on this while you can. In five years, he'll be just another SoCal guy with a paunch and a second chin coming in beneath a receding hairline. Strike while the meat is hot, girls.

But this being Lauren's awkward little life, nothing happens. Stephen takes her out to dinner at Il Cielo, a nice Italian place in Beverly Hills. Oh how far they've come since those Italian dinners in Laguna Beach at Pomodoro, when the chain restaurant was one of the few places where MTV could film. Lauren wears a dress that screams "I'm trying hard, please make a move, let us finally consummate our relationship for the cameras," but no such luck.

Colletti leaves Lauren to Lo and a gallon of ice cream, driving off into the dark of night, Hollywood's lights glittering around him. The pop music swells, the credits come up. We'd almost feel something at this point if Lauren weren't so lame, the song wasn't so cheesy, and we hadn't felt so bad for being so helplessly over-invested in this show. The only emotion we could muster was blind rage mixed with nauseated jealousy that registered-Republican LC gets to go home and eat ice cream and celebrate herself in some beautiful Hollywood home with a backyard and gleaming kitchen appliances, while we're left with a 300-square foot apartment with mice as roommates.

But hey, at least Justin Bobby finally cut his hair.