First, I must note a Miami Real World recapping milestone: I just switched over to tape two, the twelfth episode. Huge shout-outs to Wing, Glark, and Sars for ruling and rocking my world, to everyone on the Miami boards for getting along and being cool, and to the Queens of the Stone Age for rocking my world.
Okay, back to the show. Did I mention I made it to tape two? Well, I missed a bit of this episode (eight minutes, to be exact) so we miss the part where Sarah's homies (Abe, Hank and Paul, all cuties) arrive, and the part where they and the rest of the Miami Clown Machine (tm sgib) go out to eat and Melissa dares to suggest that Sarah's friends look slobby or something, and Sarah's friends totally burn Melissa by picking up the check with their American Express card, and Melissa has to eat her snooty words. My tape does have the oh-so-brilliant Snickers ad with the guy and his Panda Fancy magazine cornering his co-workers who don't want to have "panda lunch" with him. You know what pandas have for lunch, don't you? They have bamboo. Someone give that guy my phone number; I'll have panda lunch with him. Really. I like nerds. I do!
Anyway, we see some shots of the house at night, then move inside to see Sarah roughhousing with her three homies. Cynthia calls them "nice guys, silly and mature at the same time." Sounds good to me. Then, suddenly, it's daytime and the same crew is hanging out by the pool, with Sarah in a string bikini. Someone else say woo-hoo; I already have boobies. Cynthia is talking about Melissa's dis of Sarah's friends, saying, "She should know all your friends are cool!" Sarah says Melissa measures success by appearance, adding, "I feel way more accomplished than her. We contributed more than she ever will." Yes, this was back in the day, before Bill Gates and other dot-com billionaires like Wing, Sars, and Glark came along to change our perceptions of what success looks like. ["At this precise moment, success looks like dirty hair and pyjamas at 4:30 PM. Heh." -- Wing Chun] Of course, now a lot of dot-coms have busted, but hey, things change. Everyone has a laugh at Melissa's expense. She is the Rae Dawn Chong of the house -- pretty, but it didn't quite happen for her like people though it would. Ha ha ha!
It's night again at the house. The hours pass so quickly here. Melissa is sitting in her bed, gabbing with Flora and Cynthia. "I have no problem saying I'm sorry," says Melissa. "I said it twice." Cynthia murmurs that she thought Melissa apologized to Sarah's friends, but not to Sarah herself. Melissa, quick like a bunny, changes the subject, asking "So we have a business meeting tomorrow? I've been trying to do like one thing a day for the business." Wow, a real unitasker. I bet Sarah and her homies would have to be more accomplished than Melissa Rae Dawn Chong is! One thing a day? Isn't that some underachiever vitamin? In a voice-over Cynthia says that Melissa is newly motivated and has met a clothing manufacturer, "being the snoop that she is." That's foreshadowing, people; remember that remark. Back to the nighty-night scene, and Melissa talking about her clothing label ideas: their label should be called "Bow-Wow, Inc," or "Bow-uh-Know." Say it out loud, like you're stupid. Now put your hands in the air and wave them all around like you just don't care. Hee. Melissa explains why she wants to name the company Bow-uh-Know: "People ask us what we know about fashion, we say 'bow-uh-know.' That's our generation. We don't know anything about anything." Oh, how I hate deprecating remarks (even self-deprecating ones) about "our generation." It makes me wish I were an old-time gold rush person. Consarnit.
Melissa wanders around the house with an envelope and some slides asking various roomies, "Is this yours? Is this yours?" It's slides from the movie The Birdcage, the oh-so-shitty remake of La Cage Aux Folles. Mike says via voice-over that he "doesn't agree with" what Melissa is doing, which is opening an unmarked, unsealed envelope, examining the contents, and asking everyone to whom the contents belong. A bit nosy, I'd say. Not exactly worth making a federal case over either, I think. But let's wait and see. Some jarring ska horns play and the scene segues into Dan arriving home and being told what happened with his Birdcage slides. "I'm livid," he says. In a confessional, he holds the slides up and says, "These slides are your tombstone, Melissa. The audacity." So, he freaked, we get it. Those masters of subtlety over at B-M start blasting the Stray Cats "Rock this Town" super loud and show Dan running around the house with a Nerf bat pretending to go off on Melissa, as Sarah and Mike laugh and egg him on. Mike actually says, "Make her cry, Dan." Oh, WHATEVER! ["Mike's still on this show? He's the Jon Brennan of Miami." -- Wing Chun]
The patented Tense Guitars play as Melissa walks in the door. As she stands by the front door, we see -- in a neat shot over her shoulder -- down a long corridor to the computer, where Dan has parked himself like a vulture awaiting her return. There's a pause. Melissa knows something's up. Dan blurts, "I have a major bone to pick with you." Hee hee, "major bone." Melissa asks why and Dan stomps up the circular staircase to get the slides. Just as quickly he stomps back and holds the slides an inch in front of her face and demands, "Are these yours? Do you know what these are?" Melissa says weakly that yeah, she does, it's two slides of The Birdcage, and she left them right over there. Dan fumes on: "Was it yours to open up? Was it yours? Was it yours, you stupid bitch?!" Whoa! Right now I'd like to point out that it wasn't until the Real World Reunion (which Kim has lovingly recapped for you) that it came out that Dan's mom found out he's gay by opening and reading a letter of his. That is, of course, a horrible invasion of privacy and violation of trust. BUT! I don't think Melissa earned this abuse AT ALL. It's totally lame of Dan to ambush her like that when she was just being nosy. Anyway, the camera zooms right in on her shocked and hurt-looking face. God, I hate this fucking show sometimes. It's just cruel! Melissa manages, "Excuse me?" Dan mimics her (earning him a virtual slap in the face from me) and yells something to the effect of, "Those slides could have cost me my JOB!" Oh, WHATEVER. Melissa gets her spine back and snaps, "FYI, it was on the floor, your valuable one-hundred-dollar slides! It was on the FLOOR!" Hee hee, hundred-dollar slides. Dan keeps yelling, "Was it yours!" Melissa says, "I had to see what was in it!" She's just nosy, that's all. "If it has said 'Dan' I wouldn't have opened it!" "Yes you would have!" Melissa grows a ten foot-long spine and screams, "Don't EVER call me a bitch! EVER! You fucking flamer. EVER!" Then she shoves past him and stomps on up the stairs. The closed-captioning says "[loud footsteps, door slamming]," and we're out.
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Some good Tense Guitars prepare is for the scene: Sonic Youth. Dan has followed Melissa up to her room. Melissa is pointing her finger in Dan's face and screaming "don't you ever!" some more. Does everyone get it now? Don't ever call Melissa a bitch. Ever. They fight (tm Ace). Finally, Dan takes his throne and dons his crown as Reigning Drama Queen and asks, "Do you have any morals at all?" Oh, PLEASE. Looking at unmarked promotional slides is not immoral. Melissa changes tack and tries to sarcastically ingratiate herself. "I'm so sorry if I'm being a bitch. My best friend has AIDS, my grandfather's dying, and I can't be Mrs. Nice Person all the time. Now get out of my room." Dan refuses to leave and Melissa charges out, upset. Dan gets in this nice shot: "Go cry to your mother." Shame on you, Dan!
Melissa drives her white sports car alone at night. So sad. Voice-over reveals that she's "never gone off on anyone like that in [her] life." Lenny Kravitz sings, "Welcome to the reeeal wooorld! You betta be strong!" Then an anvil drops from the sky to hit you over the head, just in case you didn't get it.
Daytime. Sarah's chilling with Dan. She pops open a can of something. Beer? Soda? Anyone's guess. Drama Queen Dan says Melissa HIT HIM: "Where do you go from there?" Um, NO, she did NOT hit you. You did call her a fucking bitch though. Sarah, still mad at Melissa, says, "She's not a friend."
More Tense Guitars play as Dan hogs the phone/computer area and Melissa sits at the table. There's a bad edit/cut and now Melissa is standing by Dan with her hand on the phone's hang-up button, saying, "I still need to use the phone, we still have to live together, there's a level of respect we need to maintain." She drags a chair over, primly sits in it, and they talk. "Hit you? You call this [gentle shove on chest] hitting you?" Neither do I, woman. Dan asks what is going on. Melissa restates the facts about the current troubles in her life, and remembers how, early on in their roommate-hood, Melissa took the time to listen to and talk with Dan about his feelings, and "never once have you asked me how I'm feeling or if anything's wrong." Melissa gets misty and says she never yelled at anyone like that before and that "that was my father that came out, not me." Dan apologizes (yay!) about twenty times and says it won't happen again: "I was being stupid and immature." Yes indeed! Thanks for not making me point that out. ["Well, not anymore, anyway." -- Wing Chun]
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Night time, again. Sarah, her three homies, Cyn, and Melissa are sitting around playing Truth or Dare. Dude, if I'm that bored, I'd rather play Spin the Bottle. Hank is videotaping the non-event. Foreshadowing, people. Then, Hank dares Melissa to jump into the pool, and she does! She looks really pretty in the water. Sarah dives in too, and Hank, as Cyn stands on the sidelines and expresses her general disbelief at Melissa's newfound free-spiritedness. Flying in the face of convention, Melissa jumps in the pool again. Splash.
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