While most of us are just settling into a new school year, a certain band of blondes — and one heavily highlighted brunette — are finally getting ready to move on. Audrina Patridge has made the decision to follow her co-star Lauren Conrad and “graduate” from The Hills, which means the beginning of the end for the soapy “reality” saga.

It was bound to happen eventually. The Hills has been desperately trying to hold on to its shrinking audience for years now — somewhere between Speidi’s fake engagement and fake marriage, America realized that this glittering, platinum-blond, veneered world is not the “reality” MTV claims it to be.

The Hills stars outgrew their roles years ago, and only now are they realizing they’re technically grown-ups — well past college age. They’ve been living a stilted, restrained half-life for years, some of them since they were teenagers. How can they grow up properly when their lives have been totally contrived since they were 16?

Girls like Lauren Conrad never had a chance to attempt to create a life for themselves without MTV’s help. Lauren, for example, lasted one semester at San Francisco State University before she moved back home and signed on for The Hills. And finally, once her life became so warped even she doesn’t know what’s reality and what’s not, Lauren decided to begin living like a real person — that is, as real as she could be considering her fame.

Unlike Lauren, however, the other stars of The Hills seem unable to graduate from the reality TV lifestyle. Audrina and Whitney both left the show, not to lead normal lives, but to star in their own spin-offs that are eerily similar to their original program. MTV is still holding on, desperate to maintain the audience that’s been steadily weakening on The Hills for the past two seasons. The network has brought back Kristin Cavallari of Laguna Beach fame to replace Lauren, hoping she would bring back some much-needed drama.

But even as the network struggles to hold on, The Hills, and the genre it represents, is ready to move on. Reality TV has been around for some time now, and we’re not as naïve as we used to be.

In 2005, it seemed, if a little dubious, at least somewhat possible that Lauren Conrad could land an apartment in West Hollywood and an internship at Teen Vogue on her own and have MTV simply follow her around with cameras. Now, everything on the show seems completely scripted and artificial. The entire genre of “unscripted TV”— shows that claim to be reality but actually “recreate” dramatic situations — is no longer plausible for today’s jaded TV audience. We can no longer suspend our disbelief enough to sit for a half hour and watch people pretend to live their lives.

Instead, more self-conscious reality shows, where the characters interview on-camera and don’t pretend they’re not on TV such as the Real Housewives series and NYC Prep in addition to reality competitions, are dominating the ratings. It’s time for The Hills to graduate from “unreality,” in which the characters pretend the soap opera recorded by the cameras is their real life, and begin life in the real world.