Welcome to my Real World: London recaps. I think that the reason Wing gave me this assignment is because I used to live in England, and so from time to time I'll be telling my own stories of being in England, plus some encounters I've had in the States with English people. Who knows, maybe I'll even talk about some of my favorite AbFab episodes or that Julia Roberts movie from last summer. In the meantime, shout-outs to Strega (for taping all twenty-two episodes for me), Daisygirly, my Real World "go-to gal," and Jackie Cush, my "go-to gal" for all things British.
St. Louis, Missouri. One of those really ugly high-priced faux-colonial homes. The walls are painted peach, and all the furniture matches perfectly. Ouch. I was just watching a documentary on JonBenet Ramsay and this house looks just like hers. Michael Johnson of St. Louis, Missouri, is a racecar driver and he seems to think that's pretty amazing. So is some footage of him circling a track in a car that bears his name on the side. Oh, I can't wait to see this guy in Europe, giving Europeans a wonderful impression of Americans. His mother doesn't say a word but she smiles for the camera. Her hairdo is way too long for her age. He's shown packing in his bedroom, which has been painted deep blue, and all the furniture matches as well. In a voice-over, Michael recounts a dream of his in which he arrives at the house and everyone is already friends and excludes him. I'd like to tell Michael that he's just feeling insecure but actually, I think he's being prophetic.
His father takes him to the airport and unloads, like, fifty pieces of luggage onto the sidewalk. They are both wearing father/son matching Nascar racing jackets. His father hands him some money, "for Europe." On close inspection with freeze-frame, the denomination of the bill is five dollars. What the hell is Michael Johnson supposed to do with five dollars in London? I think his father might have spent that much to get some English prostitute an illegal abortion when he was stationed there during WWII or something. Then there's a charming scene where his father, who looks like he can't wait to get his son onto the plane, explains to Michael that Big Ben is a clock. Michael asks his father if he thinks he's going to stand out in London. Mr. Johnson explains that the English "like Americans." Oh yeah.
Ever wonder what ever happened to Thomas Dolby, the adorable but nerdy pop singer who reigned in the eighties with such hits as "Blinded Me With Science"? Well, he's wandering the streets of London right now, looking really pissed off about the loss of his career. Oh wait. This guy's name is Neil and he's another Real World-er. Watch him put on a pair of leather pants and scream into the microphone, as he explains that he's dropping out of the Oxford PhD program to pursue his a music career. Neil looks really pleased with himself. I guess he thinks that the leather jacket and the spiky blond hair have successfully thrown us off the scent of his upper middle-class English upbringing. Hey, and Neil's got some really nifty ideas about music. He thinks -- get this -- that music shouldn't just be "mindless noise." No wonder this guy got into the Oxford PhD program...for psychology. And wait, there's more. Neil is "misanthropic and xenophobic," which makes him wonder about how he'll get along with his other housemates. Love those twenty-five-cent words -- almost as much as I love the smell of oncoming conflict in the air. Oh, and Neil? You are going to have so much street cred amongst your hard-core punk friends when they see those shots of you walking around London to the music of Ace of Base.
Now we're in NYC and we meet Kat, an NYU student from Tacoma, Washington, with awesome hair. I guess she's supposed to be the innocent we're all supposed to identify with, because she's shown in a midtown deli ordering a sandwich and trying to ignore a big fight between the deli owners and a scary bunch of black men. Kat's got a lot of friends and a lot of designer clothing, which we see her saying goodbye to as she gets ready to leave for London. "You know what excites me about moving to London?" says Kat in a backward Newsies-style cap and Fair Isle sweater. "Cultural differences." Then Kat is shown walking the streets of NYC, while Neil is shown in alternate shots walking the streets of London. I guess this is supposed to underscore the idea of cultural differences and foreshadow the hooking up of Kat and Neil. Just in case we didn't get it the first time, we get some alternating talking heads of Neil and Kat talking about what they expect about living with foreigners. Kat talks about how nervous she is while Neil says that Americans' "up-front friendliness smacks of insincerity." Yeah Neil, and your up-front snittiness makes you a paragon of frankness and maturity.
Back at the airport with Michael Johnson and his family, Michael's father warns him about what he'll find in Europe in the way of "gypsies, bombers and terrorists." Mike's mom nods along while secretly hoping that all that Mary Kay foundation is covering up the black eye Mike's father gave her that morning for not having breakfast served on time. Mike reveals in a voice-over that Mike's father always looks on the down side of things and worries a lot. I also have to point out here that some other actress is playing Michael's mom in this scene. Oh wait, this is documentary. Okay, I don't know who woman #2 is. Either she's an aunt of Michael's or some woman that his dad traded in his last wife for while Michael was packing for Europe. Maybe woman #1 didn't cut Mr. Johnson's sandwiches into triangles the way he likes them.
we meet Jay Frank, who is nineteen and from Portland, Oregon. I dare anyone not to love Jay. Okay, I'm a little put off initially by his young-playwright schtick, and he's a little too into musical theater for my tastes, but he reads, plays basketball and has a cute girlfriend who he seems to genuinely care for. Most importantly, he hasn't done anything idiotic to his hair. Jay is not sure he's going to be faithful to his girlfriend while he's in London. The plot thickens.
Jacinda is a twenty-two-year-old model from Australia by way of Paris, who looks like Ginger Spice (who to me always looked like a forty-ish barmaid from Bristol). We see her walking the streets of Paris in a long black cape with a nearly identical friend, while she complains about how much she has to travel for her job, and how refreshing it will be to settle down in one place for a while. Oh God, someone is doing the Real World for the domestic stability it provides. They also show us these clips of her "modeling." They never really explain what magazines or print ads she's modeling for, but I have a feeling she gets a lot of work from the Lebanon edition of Mademoiselle and various mail-order catalogs. Her boyfriend Paul, also a model, helps her pack and promises to try to visit.
Montage sequence of everyone saying goodbye to their families or loved ones except Neil.
Jay is on the plane listening to music and eating while they jump to little shots of him and his girlfriend. I guess this is supposed to show his internal thought process and the fact that he is already missing his girlfriend, but since this is (in theory at least) a verité documentary, and the camera can't record an internal thought process, Bunim-Murray needs to cut it out. Jay has a layover in New York on his way from Oregon, so he runs into Kat. Gee, how did they recognize each other? Oh yeah, they're the only two people at JFK who are being followed around by camera crews. They sit down together and bond over being from the Pacfic Northwest. In sit-down interviews, they both claim to have a lot in common, and Kat notices that Jay "likes people." Whatever. Kat tells Jay that she's going over to London to try to fence in the Junior Olympics. Jay tries not to get drool all over his blue pinstriped Members Only jacket. They get on their flight and toast each other with glasses of orange juice. "So, we're cool," says Jay in a sit-down interview. Whatever.
Okay, remember how at the end of that movie Edward Scissorhands, the townspeople chase Ed all they way up to that mountain where he came from, and he disappears, and Winona Ryder tells that little girl that she knows he's up there because every winter it snows? Well, Winona is wrong. Edward Scissorhands moved to Berlin, Germany, and changed his name to Lars. Okay, just kidding. But seriously, Lars is one strange-looking dude. Even by Berlin standards. He's one of those guys who always gets cast as an extra in some nightclub scene. You know, the hero of the movie goes into a strange nightclub to interview a witness, and he knows he's out of place because he bumps into someone like Lars who is wearing a pair of leather briefs and a dog collar. Lars seems really sweet, but he does look as though he's done so much ecstasy that smoking a cigarette requires a lot of concentration. Lars is a DJ. So was David Silver on . Get over it. ["I will not! Lars is my boyfriend." -- Wing Chun]
Michael Johnson arrives in London and has, for the first time, taken off his baseball cap. Please put it back on! Michael has really bad hair. If you have coarse strawberry-blonde hair like that, you either slick it back or cut it really short. Michael has buzzed the sides and let the top grow long, and has moussed it and blow dried it so he looks like a forgotten member of Culture Club. This might fly if (a) it were still the early eighties and (b) Michael had some clothes to wear that didn't bear the logo of an American sports team, but alas, neither one of things are true. He comes out of the airport and bumps into Sharon, our seventh Real World-er. I guess the most generous way to describe Sharon is "spirited." Imagine a black British Angela Lansbury on speed and you've got Sharon. Sharon is so excited to meet Michael that she practically bursts into flames. "I just wanted to run and jump on him and go, 'Hi, welcome to England!'" explains Sharon in a sit-down. ["Aw, don't be mean to Sharon. She's so sweet! Sharon is my favourite London cast member -- or rather, my favourite London cast member that I don't dream of having sex with." -- Wing Chun]
Meanwhile, Sharon can't keep her hands off Michael or stop shrieking. Michael seems scared. Hell, I'm scared for Michael. They get into a cab. Sharon explains to Michael that she's a singer. Then they show a clip of Sharon singing with a funk band. Oddly, she's wearing the exact same grey coat in the clip of her singing that she's wearing in both the sit-down interview and in the cab with Michael. Then again, she is so hyper, I can totally imagine that, instead of the producers having to edit those clips together, Sharon has in fact run from her singing gig to the airport and the sit-down interview in that short a time. I really hope that she was just warming up in that clip, because I wasn't exactly impressed with her voice.
Sharon is just so absolutely so excited that Michael has never seen England before that she insists on taking him on a huge tour of everything London has to offer: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Bridge etc. Kat and Jay are in a cab too. A montage sequence unfolds of London sights to Elton John's "Made In England." Kat and Jay arrive at the house. It's located in Notting Hill. I know the movie with Julia Roberts came after this but I'm still annoyed. Kat and Jay enter the place and pretend to be surprised at how luxurious it is. It is a really nice house, I have to admit. It's got this neo-Medieval thing going on. Neil enters carrying a book bag made out of black rubber spikes and a keyboard. Kat thinks he looks mean. Neil thought that, despite the fact that Jay and Kat were Americans, they "had brains."
Okay, at this point I'd like to point out that when my family moved to England, I was four. I'd done kindergarden in the States and when I registered for school in Cambridge, England, they put me in this class where I was the only student who could read or write. A couple of days later, I was taken out of that class and bumped up to the English equivalent of first grade because I wasn't being challenged enough. I still wasn't being challenged enough, but I was so traumatized by the thought of being a new kid in yet another class that I dumbed myself down so I wouldn't have to move again. And this was a private school too (They call them public schools, but you know what I mean). Whenever some English person looks down their nose at my American public-school education, I have to laugh.
Anyway, Mike and Sharon arrive and Kat thinks that Mike looks like "a J. Crew ad." Someone needs to explain to Kat that J. Crew models tend to be attractive. Sharon gushes over how fabulous she thinks the house is. I'm getting the feeling that Sharon would gush over how fabulous it is inside my large intestine.
Lars arrives. The gang pretends not to be horrified by how creepy he looks. Jacinda arrives, introduces herself, does this really Stevie Nicks-like spin in the living room and then makes a point of kissing the goldfish through the tank. Everyone thinks she's a princess.
Room selection. Sharon gets the single room because she sleeps with the light on. Well, that's what they said. I think they really just gave it to her because no one wanted to deal with her. Kat and Jacinda, the two long-haired honey-blondes, take one room. Neil and Lars, the Euro-trash twins, take another room while Jay and Mike, the American geeks, take the final room. There's a whole floor of boys and a whole floor of girls. For some reason, everyone finds this terribly exciting. They all move their stuff and cook dinner. Then there's this hilarious scene where Sharon bakes something and it burns. Okay, it's not a hilarious scene per se, but it is loud. Sharon needs a hug. While eating dinner Lars proposes a toast that they all become friends and stay friends for the rest of their lives. Jacinda cements herself into the pretty-Real-World-er-girl-who-does-nothing role by encouraging Jay to tell her all about his girlfriend and then suggesting that he call her. Jay calls his girlfriend and she's excited to hear from him. In a sit-down, Jay wonders if he has the right to be in his girlfriend's life while he's in London. Whatever. The episode ends with the gang going to sleep and some b-roll of London at night.