Monday, May 21, 2012
THIS IS THE TRUE STORY OF SEVEN STRANGERS: Want to feel old? The Real World debuted 20 years ago today. Now, 26 seasons later (Season 27: The Real World: St. Thomas, arrives this summer), let's take a moment to share favorite seasons (how big a gap is there between Hawaii and the next best one?), favorite plotlines, and favorite personalities. I gave up around New Orleans 1, but maybe you kept watching.
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Hawaii and San Francisco are co-leaders for me, but I think this is a very age-dependent question; it's about being old enough to look down on the participants, but not so much older that you can't relate.
ReplyDelete<p>I started watching currently-aired Real World with Miami. I would have been 15, I guess. Then I went back and watched the previous seasons in reruns.
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</p><p>Somewhere around Back to New York I think I started focusing more heavily on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. The last RW season I remember watching at all was San Diego.
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</p><p>My memory of individual seasons is actually pretty weak, but I do have a VERY strong memory of how exciting it was for a new season to be starting, and how sentimental it was for a season to be ending. I internalized it so much, it felt almost exactly like the first and last day of camp to me.
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</p><p>The other strong feeling, given that I watched it faithfully from around 15 to around 23, was going from a very aspirational feeling to, frankly, watching these people and realizing that I was a grownup now. That I was watching people going through things I'd already passed by in life.
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</p><p>Looking at this list of seasons and cast members, the only season for which I can look at the list and conjure a face for each and every name is Hawaii. But certain cast members from that era: Melissa and Flora from Miami, Genesis and Montana from Boston, Irene and Stephen from Seattle, are clear as day. And of course Pedro is the one that really stands out from the very early seasons. And Puck, let's face it.
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I started watching around Hawaii (junior high, I think) and I think my all-time favorite roommate is Isaac from Sydney. The cast around him was a particular insane one, but he was a sturdy tower of one-liners among the chaos.
ReplyDeleteUnderrated season: Key West. They actually gave a crap about their job, survived a hurricane and launched a few of the great competitors in Challenge history (Johnny Bananas, Paula, Tyler).
I echo Christy's thoughts about the premieres and finales. Every first episode was filled with such a sense of optimism (We are not going to fight like every other cast in history!) and every finale filled with such nostalgia that even if you didn't watch any other episodes of the season, they were always enjoyable. I basically only dip in now to do some light scouting for the Challenge, but occasionally there will be a fun season worth following.
I gave up during London. The transition between "Social Experiment" and "It's fun to watch kids get drunk and screw." It was the "True Story of 7 strangers forced to live together and not really do much."
ReplyDeleteI gotta go with the first season. I was the same age as everyone, which must've helped. But they also didn't know they were supposed to act for the cameras and which "reality roles" they were supposed to fill. They were creating them, I guess--angry black man, clueless small-town girl, world-wise snarky artist, vapid male model, etc. I watched religiously through Back to New York and then gave up.
ReplyDeleteI think things started going down the tubes when they stopped living their lives and had projects to work on together. It became less of "figuring out how to be a 22-year-old" and more of a drunken jacuzzi party.
Good lord, easily San Francscio for me. People figuring things out as they start adulthood, the whole Puck and Pedro storyline, Judd Winick struglling with having a homosexual friend for the first time, mirroring what was starting for a lot of people in America, a cast of people for the most part with jobs and reasonable aspirations, and Judd and Pam Ling meeting. (Really, name a better couple from all the seasons of Real World.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's the one season to inspire an actual piece of art, Winick's excellent Pedro and Me.
Hawaii is a good second though. And the Chicago season can go to hell, the bunch of lazy twits.
New York 1 and SF, hands down. LA takes the bronze with honoarble mention going to Seattle.
ReplyDeleteI watched NY (Season 1) in real time, missed most of the next several years, checked in again for the SEattle/Chicago/Hawaii/New Orleans/Las Vegas/New York 2/Austin/Denver/San Diego 1 run, and then was out again for most of the rest. I watched most of the challenges until a couple of years ago, when I got tired of Evan and Johnny Bananas. I feel like I checked out emotionally when Coral decided she was too old for that shit, though. The greatest moment of all Bunim Murray was when Mormon Julie was in some kind of spat with Coral and challenged her to wrestle. At the end of the day, Coral wasn't all that tough, but she had unparalleled tough-girl patter. So Julie, quintessential suburban skinny nerd, says, "c'mon Coral, you want to wrestle me?" And Coral shoots her this witheringly dismissive look, and just lays it out: "I don't wrestle girls. I beat bitches up." Second best, of course, was when nobody could spell a god-damned word on the spelling bee, and even TJ, who is not exactly a rocket scientist, couldn't keep from cracking up at these total lunkheads. Third best: Probably David's rap from -- was it New Orleans?
ReplyDeleteBut Chicago did have that girl -- can't remember her name, it started with a C -- hooking up with Big Head Todd. That's about as random a thing as you could possibly have happen.
ReplyDeleteOoh, great topic! My parents refused to get cable when I was a teenager specifically to keep "that MTV trash" out of the house. For real. So...I used to get my fix when I was babysitting. After the kids would go to bed I'd get all caught up on The Real World. Ah, memories! I wish MTV would rerun all of the seasons, because I would totally spend a weekend chilling on my couch watching the early seasons of Real World.
ReplyDeleteMy faves are New York (original recipe), L.A. and San Francisco. Also loved Hawaii, Seattle and Boston. I totally agree with Jen that the first season in New York was great because it really was the true story of seven strangers being (pretty) real. As for L.A., I really enjoyed the friendships that developed between Aaron and Dominic (the Irish guy) and Jon and Tami.
The show was so much better when the people had actual lives/jobs outside of the show itself and everything didn't just revolve around getting wasted and hooking up.
On a side note, Heather B. from season one used to come into my store all the time when I worked a second job at a Pier 1 clearance store in NJ during my early/mid 20s. It took a lot for me not to ask if she was still friends with Julie.
I can't recommend Meredith Blake's AV Club recaps of the first NY season highly enough.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.avclub.com/tvclub/tvshow/the-real-world,177/
I watched that season and checked in on Las Vegas -- which was entertaining at the time, but was a totally different show.
I believe it was Cara. She was annoying.
ReplyDeleteI can vividly remember watching Real World (I think the San Francisco season) with my much older family friends. I was probably 11 or 12. I remember watching old episodes of the NY Season and some of the other earlier seasons. When I think back on the first season and the San Francisco season I think of how novel it was to see real people on television. I think things started going totally downhill with the Las Vegas season.
ReplyDeleteYep, Cara, going by an EW article from the time (and in looking this up, I leared to dislike everyone involved in the Chicago season all over again).
ReplyDeleteI watched regularly until Austin or Key West, whichever was later and tuned back in for DC because I live here and Cancun. I would probably pick original recipe New York with Miami as a close second. Melissa's "Don't you ever, ever call me a bitch again." was a staple in joke arguments with my sisters. Right up there with Roni from Road Rules complaining that "someone stole my Victorias Secret underwears." Good lord did I love Road Rules.
ReplyDeletePrior to the Real World NY 1 episodes they did a test of the concept and someone I grew up with was part of it (also, the woman who voiced Daria who was an MTV PA was in that test pilot). I watched the originals from the beginning. I applied to the San Fransisco season (made it to an in-person interview, but didn't make it on the show) and I think I can objectively say that even without my presence I felt like San Fran was the best of all the seasons. London got boring. I think the last season I watched with any regularity was San Diago. Part of that is the casting for controversy aspect and part of that is I grew up. At the age of 41 I just don't care about the "deep thoughts" (or lack there-of) of 22 year olds.
ReplyDeleteI only watched the first four or five seasons - through London, which got so boring that I was done with it. So basing this only on the first few, I have to say NY (first season) and San Francisco were the best. NYC because it was people who were truly embodying the concept without a road map for how they were supposed to act, and San Francisco for the most memorable characters and storylines (Pedro and his boyfriend getting married, Pedro's AIDS education, Puck's attitude nearly destroying the house, Rachel's conservative politics mixing with her liberal lifestyle, Judd and Pam meeting, etc.)
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who is embarrassingly obsessed with The Challenge? (Formerly the Real World/Road Rules Challenge until they stopped making Road Rules). It's like Survivor with alcohol and sex.
ReplyDeleteNO! I still watch it religiously even though I don't know who a lot of the new people are. I think I stopped watching RW when they were in Austin, but I love watching the old RW/RR people on it.
ReplyDeleteSan Francisco wins by a country mile, but I also kinda liked the original New York, Back To New York and and the San Diego casts. I always thought one of the best nicknames ever given on the old Television Without Pity was the person who decided Coral from the Back to the New York cast should be named Quarrel instead.
ReplyDeleteI stopped watching the Challenge years ago, but I was addicted to it for a time. I do remember Bill Simmons' debates on where Sarah's continual ability to withstand elimination in the Gauntlet ranked on the scale of outstanding athletic accomplishments.
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