First of all, I'd like to give a big shout-out to Jorge. Jorge is this seventeen-year-old dude who lives in the projects near my apartment. He comes over once or twice a week and lets me sexually service him -- and sometimes a couple of his cousins -- in exchange for drugs. After a long hard day of recapping The Real World London, nothing restores my dignity and sense of value like popping some straight porn into my DVD player so that Jorge will have something to inspire him while I give him a hummer. This week, Jorge came over with some plastic tubing, a couple of Pyrex beakers, and a box of Melita coffee filters to show me how to stretch out the last of the pharmaceutical-grade cocaine I was able to score from Dr. Rabinowitz by cooking it into freebase form. It was just like You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again after Spielberg removes Julia Phillips from the set of Close Encounters and she spends the few years in a small room in her basement cooking up freebase and getting slapped around by her much younger boyfriend. I thanked Jorge for providing me with this exciting non-bourgeois experience, and although he doesn't speak English, I could feel tenderness in his hands as he pushed my head down so that he could keep watching Candy Stripers III.
B-roll of some neo-classical-style buildings in London, a Union Jack flag blowing in the breeze, and the outside of Attention Deficit Manor. Mike is making cold calls in a last-ditch effort to line up a race-car sponsor. He is wearing a forest-green long-sleeved t-shirt and, thankfully, a baseball cap. Apparently, racing season starts in a couple of weeks, and Mike has neither a car nor a team. Wow -- that's surprising considering all the time and energy Mike's been putting into getting a sponsor. To top it all off, Mike's dad is coming to visit. Before he leaves, he telephones Mike from the U.S. and makes a bitchy remark about not needing to bring Mike's racing helmet with him since Mike won't need it. If I were a more sensitive person who wasn't, in fact, heading straight to hell, I'd make a compassionate comparison between Mike's father and the "man" that Mike turned out to be. But since my hatred for Mike is so visceral, I'm all, "Go, Mike's dad!" Mike asks his dad whether he may raid his trust fund for the money he needs to race. Mike's dad tells him that it's his fund and that he can do what he wants with it, but that Mike will have to come home and handle the transaction himself. Mike asks his dad whether he's really mad at Mike for going to England. Mike's dad denies that he's mad. Mike points out that he's always made to feel guilty every time they talk. Mike's dad denies intending to make Mike feel guilty. In another lifetime, Mike's dad was clearly one of those Jewish mothers who says stuff like, "No, I'll be okay. I'll just sit here all alone in the dark and think of you." "I think that you're going to have fun," says Mike's dad. "But you have to deal with what the end result is." He wishes Mike "luck."
Later that night, Mike makes the groundbreaking discovery (in front of a very bored-looking Lars and Jay) that (a) his father wants him to fail, (b) he's turning into his father, and (c) he's always sought his father's approval. Ooh! Time to write a letter to Alan Ball. Maybe he'll write a screenplay about your life. But seriously, Mike, you are your father. You are OCD white male trash with no manners, self-awareness, or communication skills. What's this "becoming" shit? Hey, maybe now's a good time to play "Father Figure" by George Michael or "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin.
A stray dog roams the streets of London, picking through garbage cans. A reference to Jacinda's dog Legend? A sexual conquest of Mike's? A viewer like me trying to find something exciting to write about? Who knows? Some girl who is not Jay's girlfriend is on the phone with Jay. Jay explains in an interview that the girl is Marisa, and that she went to writing camp with him. Apparently, her mother is giving her the money to go to London. Jay is ecstatic. Okay, sorry; I know that there are places called writing camps -- I even see ads for them in the back of The New York Times Magazine to the ads for fat camps -- but all I can think about at the mention of "writing camp" is a bunch of homesick kids strapped to their laptops with lanyards sitting around some campfire while some mean fat counselor singles out one of the more delicate kids and shames him in front of his entire cabin for ending a sentence with a preposition. Jay tells us that Marisa was his first love, but that she didn't feel the same way he did. Well, not until camera crews started following him around London, anyway. In the living room, Mike and Jay play pool. Jay tells Mike that Marisa is gorgeous, but that she's not Mike's type. I'm guessing that's because she's neither a man in drag nor a blackout drinker. Mike bites anyway and asks Jay what he means. Jay replies that she's a "poet." Yeah, that whole "literacy" thing is always a turnoff for Mike.
But then Marisa's plane lands and it becomes clear why Mike wouldn't like Marisa: Marisa is African-American. Not that anyone notices or anything. Marisa's also got huge knockers. She displays them to perfection the moment she steps off the plane. You know how the visiting girlfriends in these reality shows always look a little uncomfortable at first because they're not as used to the cameras as the regular cast members are? This is not an issue with Marisa; she is perfectly happy to work it for Bunim-Murray. Frankly, I think Marisa looks like one of those truly charismatic lesbians who went to my college and always had to transfer to Sarah Lawrence by their junior year because they'd already slept with and dumped all the available women on campus. Jay and Marisa ride the Underground from Heathrow into London and play footsie on the train. In a voice-over, Jay explains that he loved Marisa the moment he read her first play, even before he met her, and "then she turned out to be this gorgeous girl." Just wait until you get an AOL account, Jay. There are so many surprises in store for you, laddie boy!
Mike finds some ad in a magazine somewhere for a used race car or something. The editors don't explain what, exactly. This means that Mike is going to race. Maybe. He takes a train out to go meet "Dave and Cher," who run a BMW repair shop out of their home and also run the Ajec 3000 racing Pro-Sport team out of said shop. Whatever that means. It's so nice to hear that Mike has hooked up with some Pro-Sport people. Those Anti-Sport people can be such a drain on your self-esteem if you race cars for a living. But seriously, these are excellent race cars, and Mike is psyched to drive one, citing the "bubble cockpit and wing in the back." Whatever. Cher -- who turns out to be your basic English housewife with big hair and not a Bob Mackie-wearing, Academy-Award-Winning actress with a penchant for plastic surgery and younger unemployed boyfriends -- asks him how he's funding his racing. Mike tells her he's financing it himself "out of pocket." In an interview, Mike picks his nose and talks about how great it would be to have a sponsor by the time his father shows up.
B-roll of London at night. Several shots of Big Ben, and a shot of Planet Hollywood. Apparently, Planet Hollywood has been chosen as the setting for the auspicious occasion of Mike's father's reunion with Mike. I guess if there's anyplace in London that's going to make an American feel right at home, it's Planet Hollywood. And that's because they serve real American food at Planet Hollywood, like Chicken Parmesan with plenty of garlic powder sprinkled on top, served with a wedge of bread with grill cross-hatching on it. Furthermore, you get to eat this cuisine in a souvenir-filled room where, years before, Bruce Willis -- when he was still married to Demi Moore (when she still had a career) -- once performed songs from his 1987 CD, The Return of Bruno. Although, strangely, once Bruce collected his investor dividend check after his appearance at the opening party, he never returned to this establishment to enjoy a meal. Mike stands in the foyer nervously waiting for the Johnson family; lo and behold, they show up. Mike's dad is accompanied by a new woman, who is identified by that white squiggly writing as Mike's "stepmom." I can't tell whether Cathy, Mike's big-haired stepmom, is too young to be married to Mike's dad, or too old to be sporting Candace Cameron's steroidal hairdo from Full House. I will say that she looks pretty good for a woman who's just had reconstructive facial surgery after Mike's father bashed her face in for suggesting that he stop the car and ask someone for directions to the new location of Chili's on their way there for a Sunday family dinner. Mike and his father give each other a manly hug; in an interview, Mike says how exciting it was to see his folks. "It was like coming home from college," he says.
Mike shows his family around London, making a point of showing them the booth where they can get half-price tickets to plays "like Cats and stuff." Nice, Mike! God forbid you should know of another stage production currently running in the West End besides Catsand reveal some latent homosexual tendencies or something. Then he teaches his parents the meaning of the word "bollocks." Which he defines as "I don't care." Hey, neither do I! Duke Jr., Mike's brother -- the one of whom his father wasn't too ashamed to name after himself -- is all excited about learning "an English word."
The day, Mike shows his parents the house, including the "loo" (their second English word, I guess), and introduces them to Lars. When Lars appears, the Johnson family starts cracking up. Seriously. It's not even an editing thing: the camera follows the Johnsons through the house, Lars pops out of the doorway, and, without a cut, the entire family spontaneously bursts out laughing. I guess I understand. Lars must look weird to them since he's not wearing a baseball cap or a sweatshirt featuring the name of an American state university. But they're laughing so hard, you'd think the black dude they were lynching in their backyard took a crap in his pants or something.
Jay, in an interview, describes Mike's father as "one of those guys who's well-off and makes a lot of jokes and everything, you know." Oh, one of those guys. What an eye for character you have, Jay. Are you a playwright or something? Neil enters in an orange jumpsuit, the kind of thing Claude Montana would have designed for Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran back in 1986. Again, the Johnsons bust out laughing for no discernible reason. I guess the sight of Neil in orange is almost as funny to them as the time the illegal Mexican who mows the Johnsons' lawn for nine cents an hour slipped on an algae-covered rock while trying to cross the Rio Grande on his way to work and cracked his head open.
Okay, I take it all back. Apparently Mike has every excuse to be the loser he is. I apologize for every foul thing I've said about his hair or his lack of social skills. Clearly, he is doing very well considering who raised him. "Mike makes a lot more sense in the context of Duke, Dukie, Duke Jr. and Cathy," says Neil in an interview. "They're kind of like the Bundys but with more money." Okay, by the Bundys, Neil, are you referring to the family on Married with Children or are you referring to Ted's parents? 'Cause I could go either way, here.
Sheryl Crow wails about wanting to have a little fun before she dies. Oh, I hear you, sister. I've got twelve more of these episodes to go and I'm not sure how much longer my stash is going to last. Jay and Marisa walk around London, taking in the sights of the West End while Jay voice-overs the twists and turns of their relationship. They met at writing camp, and then went their separate ways; later, Marisa came to Portland for a visit just to "say goodbye." He claims that Marisa had some "questions about his writing." When we go to the actual scene, Marisa is basically asking whether Jay has written anything at all. Jay says that he's been writing letters. I guess we'll have to wait a while for the A Streetcar Named Desire, but there will be many more lead singers of top-forty bands dedicating songs to "Jay the playwright" in the not-so-distant future. Jay gets a bit defensive at this question, but Marisa explains that the only reason she asked is that she knows he can write and thinks that he should. "I love you so much for saying that," says Jay. Okay, I never thought I'd say this to anyone male or female but, read The Rules, Jay! You could really learn a lot from that whole chapter on being a "challenge." "Marisa was just scared that if I let more time pass, that I'd lose touch with the whole writing side of myself," says Jay in an interview. "You gotta love somebody like that." Yeah, Jay -- Marisa is only here to make sure you're writing. The television exposure resulting from her visit has absolutely nothing to do with this sudden interest in your creative process.
The Johnsons do some sightseeing. "I plan to see the stuff I haven't seen yet," says Mike, talking about London and not, say, the gentle loving touch of a reasonably sane biological woman who doesn't need a green card. "So we'll probably look like typical American tourists, taking pictures of everything." Ya think? "Do we have 'American' written on our faces?" asks Cathy during a dinner at a fancy London restaurant at which both of her stepsons are wearing baseball caps and ski parkas at the table. "It's not like we look real different or anything," she claims. Cathy, the doctor was pretty specific about how often you were supposed to take that codeine. He said one pill, three times a day, not three pills once a day. The subject changes to the fact that Mike can't wait to come home and relax at their lakefront vacation home. "What have you been doing?" asks Mike's father, letting out a hearty guffaw. "You couldn't be any more unwound that ya are now!" They suggest that Mike "get a job" in case the "racing doesn't pan out." Mike gets that look on his face. I know that face. It's the same look I'm sure I had on my face when my boss told me I looked like I needed something to do because I fell asleep at my desk after I'd been up all night finishing a product my boss forgot to warn me about until twenty-four hours before the deadline. ['That boss is not me, by the way." -- Wing Chun] Mike points out, correctly, that he's making more money than anyone else in the house is. Never mind that Mike is essentially participating in the creation of a television show as we speak. They bug him some more about getting a job. Mike, if you are reading this recap, I am truly sorry. I had no idea, and I swear that, for the two paragraphs I won't say another word about your foul hair or your lack of sexual prospects. I understand!
Okay, I lied. Maybe if they cut to another housemate's activities at this point and the two paragraphs were about someone other than Mike, I might have been able to refrain from talking smack about him. But that didn't happen, so I'm going to renege on that pledge. Back home, Mike -- who still has that look on his face -- starts bitching out the other housemates for not buying paper towels. Apparently, Mike feels that since he has a job, the housemates who don't have jobs should be going out and buying the paper towels. I guess this makes sense on some level, but if you want someone to run errands, bringing up their lack of employment isn't exactly the most persuasive course of action. Needless to say, the house isn't having any of it. Lars gets in Mike's face and tells him to "go outside and run or cycle and don't sit here all day and bitch at us." Mike is all, "Why?" Lars is all, "What's the point of bitching at us all day?" "What's the point of not doing anything all week?" asks Mike. "What's the point of bitching at us all week?" asks Lars. "'Cause I'm going to bitch at you all week," says Mike and the conversation continues for, like, twenty more minutes along those lines. Finally, Lars points out to Mike that he was just complaining about his father's bitching and here he is, bitching at his housemates the same way that Mike's father bitches at him. Mike backs down, grabs his backpack, and exits the house while the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon, when you comin' home, Mike, I don't know when, but we'll get together then, Mike, you know we'll have a good time then!
Oh wait, Mike's parents haven't left yet. After a series of b-roll "sights of London" shots, the family is shown sitting down for a meal in an English pub. Mike's father orders decaf and asks the waiter what "you all in England think decaf is." Apparently, English decaf doesn't measure up to Mr. Johnson's exacting standards. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear what the waiter says or even see the expression on his face, but I can only imagine. Now, I don't know anything about the quality of decaf in London. I know that when you order decaf in Spain, for instance, you get a foil packet of Nescafe powder served beside a cup of hot water, but I was never under the impression that St. Louis was full of eating establishments that serve you freshly brewed Swiss process decaf either. I'm thinking that the decaf tastes funny to Mike's dad because everything the Johnsons have eaten or imbibed since they arrived on the continent contains a significant amount of their waiter's urine and/or saliva. Mike's parents nag him some more about getting a job. Mike drops more hints about how great it would be to find a sponsor. Mike's dad makes a crack about the Queen of England appearing out of nowhere and handing him the sponsorship money. I know there's a joke to be made here about a "queen" handing Mike money, but I can't really think of one that does this moment justice.
The house. Lars and Marisa are hanging out sans Jay. Lars, in an interview, says how well he gets along with Marisa. They both like clubbing and music. No, Lars and Marisa are not going to hook up, because that would actually be exciting. The reason Jay isn't with them is that he's sleeping. Lars and Marisa move some big-ass speakers into Jay's room and blast some "jungle" music to wake him up. When that doesn't work, Marisa and Lars pull the covers off him. I hate it when people do that to me. thing you know, Jay and Marisa are dancing at a club. Jay looks like he still hasn't fully awakened. "I liked Jay much better the days that Marisa was here," says Lars in an interview. "She really brought something out in him." Jay talks some more about how much he "loves" Marisa. We get it.
Back at the flat, Marisa reads her poetry aloud to Jay. You know those poems that you wrote in high school that didn't rhyme and were all e.e. cummings-ish with lower-case letters, "swear words," no punctuation, and all this graphic sexual content that made you think you were such a bad-ass for basically breaking it to your menopausal creative writing teacher that you have sex...even though you hadn't had sex yet because once you actually did start having sex you stopped writing poetry about it and shut the fuck up? And then when you find this poetry in a folder somewhere in your old bedroom several years later and re-read it, you curl up on the floor in a fetal position due to the horror you feel when you realize that the curt reaction your poems got from your creative writing teacher was not, in fact, due to their shockingly frank sexual content but from the fact that she had to sit there in her tiny apartment, read these atrocious poems about your obviously fictional sex life, and wrack her overly-caffeinated brain to find something to say about them besides "you really need to get laid" and thus, from that moment on, you are forever seized with this burning desire to call this woman up in whatever nursing home she's currently in and apologize profusely for the pain your attention-starved, bad-poetry-writing, teenage virgin self must have caused her back in 1985? (Um, not that I'm speaking from, um, personal experience or anything.) Well, Marisa is still writing poetry like that. Here is one of her poems. It's called "Thought you Knew," and it's pretty special.
This man and I were making love
Thought you'd like to know.
He tickled my
Ribs and we only let the tips of our tongues touch
He smothered by thighs with his self
I gave him my belly
And he thanked me for it
Over and over
Cause it was he and I
Touching and touching
Until I couldn't feel you anymore.
Marisa asks Jay what he thinks of the poem. He keeps hemming and hawing. For a second, there, it looks like Jay might actually surprise the hell out of me and tell Marisa that her poem, in fact, sucks. Finally he admits that he can't really evaluate the poetry properly because of what it's about -- namely Marisa's sex life with men who aren't Jay. Then they do this heavily edited sequence where, for all we know, Marisa and Jay had trouble deciding what kind of Chinese food to order but, from what we see after the editors "massaged" it, it would seem as though Marisa wanted to do the nasty but Jay scrapped the idea because of his commitment to his girlfriend back home. As Jay escorts Marisa to the airport to catch a flight home, he voice-overs, "Marisa is just a person who I feel knows me as well as anybody and I have this complete trust in her and I can't imagine either of us ever hurting each other." Um, Jay? Did anyone suggest to you that Marisa would hurt you? Was this ever an issue? Why, then, would you be assuring us that Marisa would never hurt you if you didn't think that yourself? I mean, if the first thing someone says about their significant other is that she doesn't beat the crap out of him on a daily basis, don't your ears sort of prick up? Anyway, congratulations, Marisa, for taking advantage of some guy who has a crush on you in order to read your poetry on TV. Erica Jong doesn't hold a candle to your sense of opportunism. After Marisa boards her plane and Jay turns away from the camera to walk to the nearest exit and catch a train home, we see very plainly that he has no ass whatsoever.
Okay, remember all that strife Mike and his father were having earlier? Well, apparently it just disappeared. It's a thing of the past. Why, you ask? Don't ask why -- just be in the moment. "Ever since my father came to visit," says Mike in a voice-over, "the two of us have gotten along better than we ever have." We then see Mike and his father touring a factory called Lola where they manufacture race cars. The Johnsons show their tender love for each other by punching each other's shoulders and being all excited together about seeing the latest in race-car technology. Mike is wearing that butt-ugly jacket he only wears on special occasions that's patent leather and has that checkered racing flag pattern on the sleeves and a bunch of other patches of various clashing primary colors and "Duke Racing" spelled out on the back. Apparently Mike's father is friends with the founder of Lola, so he puts up a little of his own money up front and arranges a deal with the Lola people to have them sponsor Mike for the upcoming racing season. Mike's father assures the Lola people that his son Mike is a talented driver and won't wreck their cars. Again, I repeat: Mike is a cast member of The Real World. If you sponsor him, you will be getting serious international visibility. Why hasn't someone pointed this out?
Mallory Park, a race track. For the first time in ten weeks, Mike gets behind the wheel of a racing car and takes it for a test drive. In a montage of his first day back in the saddle, he wears a variety of striking outfits: a pair of knee-length shorts that display his spindly white calves to their toothpick best; a racing helmet personalized with his last name written in script on the side (which, since his last name is a slang term for "dick," pretty much illustrates the fact that he's a "dickhead"); a bunch of nasty windbreakers with more patches of clashing primary colors; a head scarf that calls to mind that scene in Valley of the Dolls in which Neely O'Hara pulls off Helen Lawson's wig in the ladies' room to reveal a kerchief barely covering her thinning old-lady hair; and -- of course -- baseball caps galore. A capless interview reveals that Mike has gotten a new haircut for racing season. It's even longer on top and almost shaved bare around the sides -- the very opposite of the way his hair should be cut, unless, of course, Mike wants to look like he just underwent chemotherapy.
Mike recaps the events of earlier in the season in which his father refused to help him race cars in England because he was pissy about Mike's going to London in the first place, leaving Mike subsequently feeling abandoned and dissed. "I guess that's what a father is supposed to do," says Mike. "Send his son out on his own and then be there when he needs him." Actually, Mike, I seem to remember things a little differently. I thought your father reluctantly let you leave the country, undermined your attempts to succeed abroad, visited you in said country, gave you a hard time about not being home, and then helped you out only after having made you drink the urine of just about every restaurant employee in London. Mike bids farewell to his lovely family at their hotel room and thanks them for coming to visit him. Meanwhile, millions of Americans rejoice that the Johnsons have left Europe without single-handedly ruining several trade agreements or arms treaties.