The final shot of the series had fun with the fact that the show often blurred the lines between being "reality TV" and being a generic scripted series, by having the farewell between Brody Jenner and Kristin Cavallari take place on what was revealed to be a soundstage. The episode also contained a deleted scene where Brody went back to his apartment and found Lauren Conrad waiting there for him.
The question of whether the show was the reality-TV program it claimed to be or a generally fabricated series with some genuine elements was never fully answered. Lauren Conrad stated at one point that the story the show told wasn't dishonest "but the way they represented it sometimes was", and many of the dating storylines involved people who had had limited or no social interactions in real life (for example, Kristin Cavallari was shown having "serious" romances with both Brody Jennfer and Bobby "Justin Bobby" Brescia, but after the series ended she confirmed that she had only brief dated Brody long ago and not only had never dated Bobby but had "zero" chemistry with him and only very reluctantly agreed to kiss him for show purposes). The series finale touched on this when it appeared that the last scene between Brody and Kristen was filmed on a soundstage and nullified a preceding sequence where Kristen left Brody and L.A. to travel in Europe. MTV eventually stated that "maybe the term 'reality TV' didn't apply perfectly to THE HILLS."