In the same year "Teen Mom" premiered, MTV embarked on another "more real" reality show tentatively titled "Bridge and Tunnel." Camille Dodero (2011), who profiled the never-aired series for the Village Voice, called "Bridge and Tunnel" "the anti-'Hills,' a blue-collar rebuttal to the grossly loaded California clan that begat plastic-surgery monster Heidi Montag.

While "The Hills" and "The City" presented the easy success of wealthy, white Americans living in Los Angeles and New York City, respectively, "Bridge and Tunnel" was created to focus on working-class kids striving toward a better life in the ethnically circumscribed neighborhoods of Staten Island, New York. In other words, the series wanted the class status of the cast emphasized.