A low-fi audition tape rolls on a chair in front of wood paneling. Cynthia -- a petite, cute black girl -- walks on and sits down. "Okeee-dokee!" she says. All-righty-rooney! This is like the casting special, only they didn't have those back in 1996 when this show originally aired. See, Bunim-Murray learned some things along the way, ha ha, not.
Joe, a Noo Yawker, sits in another chair for a videophone talk. He's wearing a suit and tie like this is a freaking job interview. That's one way to go, I guess. Another would be to press one's nose firmly in the ass region and start snuggling. Following in the Bunim-Murray tradition of pointing out the obvious, he says, "I'm talking to the camera." Maybe he's a narc.
Sarah -- an athletic, goofy blonde -- dances in baggy jeans and a T-shirt in her apartment and says to the camera, "Pretend like I have go-go boots on, and hot pants..." Go ahead, perverts, imagine away. Or you could just watch the Hawaii season and squint at the blurry parts.
Flora, the pesky Ruskie, gets a mic clipped on her shirt by somebody. "Like a professional," she rasps. She grabs it and says, "Hello," just like the professionals say.
Joe, all neat and tidy in his job interview outfit, says, "I've actually wanted to be on the show for a really long time." Pucker up and keep on sucking, baby, you're almost there.
Dan is very animated. It says "Rutgers University Student" on the screen as he screams, "Okay, what is this, what is this thing, on my head, that bounces around the whole time?!" It's only a cowlick, dude. Your own hair, okay? Relaaax.
Mike, the boring one, says to HIS camera, "Well, you wanted to know how I felt about The Real World and everything..."
Back to Cynthia! Take this as a cue to mean that from now on, what Mike thinks does not matter. Cynthia says, "I actually feel like I'm going to make it." Ooh, I wonder if she will!? The suspense kills.
Dan says, "If I get cut at this point I'll be disappointed." We really, really care, really.
Melissa says, "There has never been a Real World where they had their own business." And after the failure of this season, never again! ["Whoops, is that a spoiler? Ha, as if." -- Wing Chun]
Mike goes, "Being a restaurant manager, I'm going to have my own ideas about how things should be run." We're sure you have ideas on how napkins should be folded, can't wait to hear the rest.
Sarah tells the camera, "I just wanna go to Florida and get a tan. That's the only reason I wanna be on The Real World. That's it! I don't even wanna be on the lousy show, I just want to get a tan." I love Sarah.
Finally, the stupid credits, with Miami Sound Machine-type percussive stuff and whistles. Even the credits make an effort to typecast: Sarah yells the "This is the true story!" part. Flora gets smacked with a wave and tries to look as sexy as possible while saying the thing about when people stop being polite; there's Sarah and Joe and Cynthia falling off the diving board with a splash. Joe says the thing about starting a business and Dan yells, "Landon's here!" Mike rides a Jet Ski and says the "people start getting real" thing. As if THAT ever happens.
We're at the Oakland Applebee's, the screen says. Is this The Oakland Applebee Real World, where people stop eating sensibly and start gorging themselves on disgusting food? Cynthia toils away in her uniform. "I hate side work," she says, and relishes doing each mundane task for the last time for a while. That certainly rings true. A co-worker asks, "Are you going to Florida today?" No, first she's going to San Diego to pick up her new roommate.
Southern Culture on the Skids plays as we see Sarah in her cool-as-hell office at a comic book company. Ooh, I'm so jealous! She has toys and stuff everywhere! ["Dude, Sarah's office looks exactly like mine. And that is where my similarities to Sarah end." -- Wing Chun] She answers the phone with a pig puppet on her hand! WHOOP WHOOP! That's the fun-o-meter going off. Cut to her riding a skateboard, zooming up and catching a ride on the moving camera (from a car, I think). She's got a big smile on her face as she says, "I edit comic books, I eat candy, I make fun of my friends, and we're going down a hill super duper fast, that's what I'm doing, blagh blagh!" Then they cut back to the office where some big guy comes in and houses her in front of the person she's meeting with. Sarah apologizes to the bewildered person.
Back in The Oakland Applebee Real World, Cynthia is running to avoid the rain. "Whoo!" Then she gets confessional: "I've never been anywhere before." Cut to her kitchen where she sits with her mom. "You're going to San Diego? Your nails look nice." They're bright, inch-long talons. Cyn jokes, "They won't look like this after four months!" I think they have beauty shops in Miami -- don't panic. More details about Cyn's mom: "She was both my mom and my dad for twelve years. My father and sister died within a year of each other, so she's like, go, go and do this, go and do something different." That's a cool mom.
"Honk honk" go the cars, now we're in (gritty!) New York City. Björk starts singing, "It's oh so quiet," as Joe starts whining about "cookies, where are the cookies?" From out of the kitchen comes -- AAAUGH! -- a huge woman, with a red dress and red, straw-like hair. She make cookie? Me scared.
Cut to videotape: "My name is Joe, I'm twenty-five years old, I'm from Brooklyn, I'm a resident director of a building in Manhattan. I totally believe in sex on the first date. It gets people to trust each other right from the start." BA HA HA HA HA! RIGHT!! That precludes the notion that both people are trustWORTHY! What a joke. I guess you can trust that, in having sex on the first date, you will get fucked. Trust in that.
Back to monster-woman. Her name is Nic, the screen says. "I have to go to a shoot at 9 AM tomorrow, for Harper's Bazaar Magazine." BA HA HA HA HA HA! RIGHT!! She's a MODEL? Maybe a hand model -- check out the mitts on her. She continues in a gagsome baby talk, "I'm so proud of you..." Joe, who comes up to her waist, walks her down the hall. "We're going to the bedroom, you can't come!" Whew!
Ack! We are in the bedroom with Nic and Joe! She's prone on the floor as he straddles her! It's right out of Gulliver's Travels! Joe looks totally Lilliputian! Ack! My eyes!
Oh thank god, it's over. They're outside now, flinging snowballs at each other. Björk reaches the screamy part of her song as Joe tackles Nic and hurls her into a snowbank. Now run away, run away!
More videotaped confession from Joe. He grabs his forehead and looks pensive. "The woman, the woman. That's going to be a hell of an issue. This is the strongest, the closest I've ever gotten with a woman. Am I gonna lose that because I'm going to Miami?" I, for one, hope you get away.
Phone! It's Flora, Joe's new roommate. Nic seethes a bit when it's clear Flora's a woman. Joe calls her "Laura" and Flora nips that in the bud, demanding. "If we're gonna live together for six months you're gonna have to get my name right." Yes ma'am! Joe concedes, saying "Flo-ra. Like a flower!" Nic looks like a lawnmower. Arrgh! Me hate other woman!
Boston, future home of the season of this stupid show. We see Flora in her native hootchie habitat, the bar. She's mixing drinks in a gnarly aqua spandex top. Video: "I'm worried about telling my parents that I'm leaving again." Yeah, I think parents always love when their adult children live at home. "My mom is gong to say, oh, you're going to screw up your life again, you have to go to school!" Nice mom, not! And what happened before? I want to know the screw-up.
Flora and her parents speak Russian to each other. They came to America when she was four. Last year. Just kidding! Flora's older that that -- chronologically. She continues, "I haven't been getting along with my parents lately because of my Latin boyfriend, Mitchell." They show scenes of them smooching in the street, and in the kitchen. Flora says, "You're so cute when you wash dishes." Everyone is.
More Russian. Flora's mom says, "I'm concerned about how you're going to interact with your roommates. Flora giggles and says, "My Russian friends give me three weeks until I kill the first person." Aww, how lovable! Cut to video: "I will go up to a person's face and say, this is the deal, and if you don't like it, kiss my butt." Greaaat.
Cynthia says goodbye to her home in Oakland and walks out to the car with her mom. "Stuff like this is a trip! Stuff like this doesn't happen to me!" Does everyone get that Cyn is not so experienced? Good. "It's time for me to have some good luck. It's long overdue, long overdue." Okay, already.
Sarah answers the phone in her office. It's Cyn. "I'm gonna be your roommate!" Bobby Brown's "Humpin' Around" starts playing. Boy, that song is lame. Cyn comes in the office and makes the point that Sarah's job "matches her personality." Fun, toys, we get it. Two black guys start crushing out on Cynthia and they all flirt for a bit. Sarah says she expected this. Cyn says, "We're going down to Miami and kick it like big playas!" Sarah says, "I think they liked her big fingernails." Hee. Cyn notes, "Sarah has lots of different kinds of friends, but they're all the same way, cool."
They leave to office, and the camera zooms up on an invitation to a going-away party at Sarah's house. The party looks totally fun, and then that big guy comes up and houses Sarah again until she loses it and beats his ass down, screaming, "Son of a bitch!" Sirens wail and we cut to commercial.
A female cop asks Sarah, "Do you want to take responsibility for the party?" Sarah says, "I think I took responsibility for the last one." Buh-dum-dum-CRASH. The people laugh and the cop even cracks a tiny smile...as she writes up a ticket. Cut to video of Sarah saying, "The landlady came over as we were clearing out the party and someone grabbed her butt or something. The morning we got evicted. But I was like, 'I'm going to Miami today, who cares!'" Then we see her and Cyn happily dragging their luggage around the airport.
New York. Joe and Flora meet; she's in an airport limo and he's boarding. Flora is sour: "I need my coffee and you're late." Joe just laughs. Flora says in a video, "He smiles too much. That's not good for the soul. I think you have to be sad sometimes." Pass the vodka, Flora, you're hogging it all. Joe says of Flora, "She's attractive, she's strong. She didn't even want me to carry her bags." We see them trucking through the airport with their bags. Flora has on a stupid bomber jacket with a peace sign patch. Yuck.
Miami, FINALLY. We fly over the blue water. It's beautiful. Cut to Mike, driving in his car. He's from Florida, but is freaked out to be in the "Spanish part of town." They show street signs that have been spray-painted over and Mike asking for directions to 4th Street. Then he says, "I'm going to pick up a girl. I'm hoping that she's smaller than me, has a full set of teeth and speaks English." Pig. Or maybe he thought he'd be the prettiest one there.
The Miami Sound Machine plays as the camera shows us a parrot. Is that the roommate? No, it's Melissa. Whoops -- she's speaking Spanish. Look out, Mike! Is that a conflict I smell?
Melissa lives in a ritzy, airy house. There's the grooviest, '80s-ish portrait of her hanging over the fireplace. Hee hee! Ding-dong! It's Mike, of course. She's chewing as she answers the door, saying she was having lunch. Mike grumbles, "Already?" Then he calls her "very beautiful." His eyes work.
Melissa says she's from Miami but her parents are originally from Cuba. Of Mike, she says, "He's an American guy, blue eyes, chiseled face." Whatever! Cut to Mike hassling her: "You knew I was coming so you took all the street signs down?" It must be Mike's first time in the 'hood. Melissa says, "I feel like I have nothing in common with American people. I have acquaintances but the close friendship never develops." She gets in Mike's car and says goodbye to her parents in Spanish. Then: "I'm afraid they're gonna bond and I'm gonna be the ethnic girl." It's okay to be afraid, Melissa! She and Mike make chitchat in the car. Well, Mike blabs about all the sports his likes to play. Melissa says, "Whatever tickles your pickle." My boyfriend, Sam, says "yuck" at this. He said it.
Cut to Flora bossing Joe around as they get their luggage out of a car. She's lost the bomber jacket, thank god. "Give me!" Joe says, "What?" "Give me please!" Flora corrects herself. Joe giggles, "Yesterday you didn't let me carry your bags." "Today you got the honors, brother," Flora says. She has daisy dukes on. James Brown plays "Living in America" as she flirts with a jet-skier and generally wiggles around making a spectacle of herself.
Sarah and Cyn are in a colorful taxi cruising the beachfront. They ogle all the pretty people and -- boy, is this ever dated -- "Rico Suave" by Gerrardo plays. They make fun of the buff dudes on Rollerblades and skinny girls. Then they get to the house.
Since Cyn is the naïve one, the cameras follow her around exclaiming at the house. Here's the transcript: "Ooh, look! I never laid in one of those [a hammock] before! Ooh! Look at the pool! Gosh! Oh-ho, girl! Ooh, look! Oh! Oh! Girl! GIRL! Look at the -- ooh! This is HELLA cool [a teapot]. I never had ANYTHING like in that house." Ooh! Hella.
The water taxi zooms up and honks. The camera zooms over their house. It's so beautiful I could plotz. The four meet: Flora, Joe, Sarah and Cyn. Cyn says, "Right off the bat, I liked Joe." Flora says, "Cynthia is sweet, a petite little thing." That sounds a bit patronizing. They decide to flip for beds and put down their stuff. Flora hopes Joe is not the only guy. Then, Mike and Melissa come through the door. They all have a room fight when Melissa sees they've already picked rooms. They have to wait until everyone gets here. Cyn says yeah, and tense keyboards play. Commercial.
Primus plays their stupid slap-bass stuff as they all have the now-clichéd room fight. Then they bicker about who the final roommate will be. Mike says "her," Flora, "Him." Mike's like, "You know that?" Melissa says, "Oh come on, no more girls. It has to be a guy." Eww, issues much? Then Dan walks in. He says, "Hi roomies," totally nicely, and they all introduce themselves. Mike says, "He's like a cross between the Joker from Batman, and Satan." Whatever that means. Sarah says, "Dan's a clown," and we see him screeching at the view from their balcony. "Oh my god, we live here!" It is super-nice. Dan says he's from Rutgers University (as was Ruthie from Hawaii!) and grew up in Kansas, where "nothing ever happens." Tell it to Dorothy, honey.
More room fight. The three guys are in the room with three beds, and Sarah is fine sleeping downstairs. So Melissa, Cyn and Flora draw for the nice upstairs room with the huge bathroom. Cyn wins (yay!) and then Melissa draws and wins. She gets a bit screechy and Flora curses that she's stuck downstairs. Sarah says she'll take the bed by the window and Flora snaps, "That's gonna be a problem. We'll flip for it." Sarah just laughs.
Ska music plays as everyone moves in. Sarah and Joe decide to jump in the pool fully clothed. Splash! Then they track water all over the house. Melissa and Flora gripe about this: "The house was impeccable!" Joe and Sarah wipe up the water, and Sarah whispers, "That was rad!"
Sunset. Cyn hangs her poster of beefcake-y men up. Oh my! Everyone have a look at the hunky hunk hunks! Dan subtly cranes his neck and Cyn says, "I don't know if you'd be interested, it's just a bunch of men and stuff." Heh. Stampede! Dan and Mike crowd around, shoving each other out of the way to get a better look. Mike actually says, "Sexual chocolate!" Sarah takes a gander and says, all Wisconsin-y, "Oh my gosh! You like 'em big for such a small girl!" Cyn confirms this: "All my boyfriends have been two hundred pounds and over." Well, that's not much to me, but Cyn's like 5"1', so that's big to her.
Phone. Dan gets it and screams, "Which one's Joe?" Um, the short dude (though Dan says "stud," as if) right in front of you. Joe giggles. Dan continues, "Oh, I've been flirting with him all night, babe." Yeah, Sammy, sounds swingin', babe. Joe gets on the speakerphone so that Dan can babble some more, and introduces Nic to him. Nic has the good sense to say, "I want to be with my man in private!" Dan yells tastelessly, "But I already DID Nic, it's too late!" Mm-hmmm. Dan tells the camera, "Joe was the only other person who asked me if I was gay." So I guess that's good. Nic threatens to throw Joe's Snoopy collection out "seventeen stories," and Dan teases Joe some more, yelling, "Aww, he has a SNOOPY collection!" Oh, barf.
Melissa is on the phone with her mom. "Let me tell you about the people. The most normal one is Joe." Cut to Joe wearing a Statue of Liberty Hat, which is pretty interesting considering the fact that Nic, his woman, is about the same size as the Statue of Liberty. There you go: Joe loves Giantesses. Melissa's mom chirps that she thought Mike was normal? Oh nooo, Mike is "weird." Cut to him with a big nose ring on, asking, "Why, is this weird?" Not really. Cut to Mike on the phone, saying the girl he picked up is "a total babe." Yeah, she's cute, and later on in the season SOMETHING happens with you and she and another chick in a shower. Back to Melissa on the phone: "Dan is from Kansas, he's a real arty type, he sings opera." Cut to Dan laughing maniacally. Wow, is that true, opera? I don't think it ever comes up on the show. Maybe it's a euphemism for something, nudge nudge. Melissa continues: "The girls are all weird." Hint: Melissa has a stick hidden where? We see Flora in an Indian headdress, whooping like in idiot, and Melissa says, "They all look normal, but they lie." Sarah accidentally breaks the leg off a giraffe statue and says "Oh my gosh, it broke!" Enya's stupid "Orinoco Flow" starts up as we see Cyn talking on the phone to her mom: "Mom, you are not going to believe this house, it is HELLA big!" This house is hella stupid, this house is hella lame, this house is hella dumb, hella hella hella.
Cyn looks meditatively over the water and says, "I feel like this is my first day of a whole new world for me, a dream." OKAY, we GET IT. Sail away, sail away, la la la!