Reverent, awe-struck props topped with nuts and a maraschino cherry to Sars, for skipping an entire day's worth of watching The Powerpuff Girls, or whatever the hell is usually broadcast for the middle eleven hours of a typical Saturday afternoon, and instead "running the Boston Marathon" in its excruciating entirety.
The first three minutes of this episode didn't exactly make it onto the videotape, so I will have to utilize my vast knowledge of this season's generically contrived story arc (er, I mean "natural and organic developments in the lives of real people with credible back stories") and the visual style of the show's other seasons to fill in some early blanks. Creative writing fun times ahoy: The "seven strangers" intro ends with the words The Real World shown floating in a bowl of clam chowder perched atop a regal statue of Paul Revere set against a backdrop of the snowy, snowy banks of the Charles River. The privilege of announcing that this is The Real World: Boston has been delegated to Syrus, due to his impassioned and ultimately convincing argument that "a woman's place is in the kitchen, not in the opening credits" he so doubtlessly broached during the arduous audition process. Cut to a long aerial tracking shot of a giant Texas Longhorn graphic depiction of some kind and a license plate on the back of an enormous pick-up truck reading "Texas: The Lone Star State," followed by a shot of a water tower in the shape of a giant ten-gallon hat across which is written in twenty-foot-high letters in that woe-be-it-to-our-inability-to-subvert-our-own-cultural-stereotypes kind of way, "Everything is Bigger in Texas." I would now proceed to weep bitter tears for the shamelessly reductive generalizations MTV sees fit to formulate about every place in the world that isn't Times Square, but this emoting would be rendered futile as it would be drowned out by the blaring instrumental vamp of "Semi-Charmed Life," which I am all too sure would be aurally accompanying this montage as it unfolds. Or so I imagine it might have happened.
Okay, this part really happened. Inside of a moving automobile, we meet an "Elka's dad," who asks the car's passenger we must have already learned is Elka, "Who's going to put the stuff on there?" Elka and her father have just chosen a Christmas tree for the house, and the predominant conversation about the decorating of said tree contains two or three thousand references to her mom's "illness" last year. Amidst a collection of gratuitous "big men carry tree" shots that feature Elka standing pointlessly off to the side in that damn-maybe-I-should-be-baking-a-pie-or-something kind of way, we learn from an intercut confessional that "my mother's death is affecting me, but I'm not letting it get in the way of my normal life." Cut to what MTV dictates is "normal life" in Elka's house, where the doorbell rings and a postal worker of some kind announces a delivery and hands Elka a box. As her two friends quite self-consciously avoid looking directly into the camera and maintain their "yeah, but how many more takes of this until we get to meet Kurt Loder" half-smiles, Elka cracks open the box and reads the enclosed letter, "Dear Elka, On behalf of Bunim-Murray Productions, I would like to say congratulations," before breaking into a jubilant scream and hugging her too-conveniently-present best friends. So wow, then. I guess this Elka character has been chosen to be one of the inhabitants of the house on this, the sixth Real World season on MTV. How amazing for her. I guess part of this celebration must come from the dawning relief Elka must feel at figuring out just why the hell black-clad cameramen toting suitcases of equipment embossed with stickers reading "Property of MTV" had been following her around for the better part of the past three or four days, ready to record this moment of unbridled excitement, spontaneous and unexpected as it may have been.
Cut to a bustling urban street corner, which even under an equalizing blanket of snow I instantly identify is New York and most certainly not Montana, as the writing on the screen would have me believe. In counterpoint to the Daddy's Little Girl stock character we just met in the Elka sequence, this new character embodies the tough-talking city-gal myth of barking at taxi cabs and hurling sarcastic barbs at a world who can't take the time to listen to her manifold needs. But considering MTV's need to reach a certain teen and twentysomething demographic, I find it a boldly liberal development that they would accept the application of a washed-out, forty year old alcoholic for participation on the show. Look at those tired, tired eyes. Speaking of which, nice bangs. Cut to a skyline shot of New York City, labeled correctly this time as "New York City." Oh. I guess it's her name that's Montana, then. Oops. I'm dumb, a little. Yeah, well it's a stupid name anyway.
Cut to the interior of a taxi, where Montana and a significantly younger man of indeterminate age (Son? House boy? Twelve-step director?) pull up to Penn Station as a somber ballad rings in the bitter, northeastern air. Walking through the train station, Montana tells her pock-plagued boyfriend "Vaj" that he shouldn't be sad when she leaves, and Vaj curiously observes that "there's a difference between being sad and depressed," failing to specify which one he'll be, if either. He's yucky. His face is rather like being trapped inside a color close-up out of my high school astronomy textbook, and curing this deformity would be more than one small step for a board-certified dermatologist. Dour moments ensue as Montana's voice over clues us in to their relationship: "Me and Vaj have been together for almost two years. We were scared that the relationship wasn't going to make it." As May/December romances so infrequently do, I suppose. Montana would feel better if she knew that Vaj was going to survive in her absence. He responds in that I-so-know-I'm-on-TV kind of way, and it takes barely one full iteration of "Oh, believe you, me" for me to solidify my problematic relationship with Vaj. My problem, of course, being that he's procured almost twenty full seconds of screen time and has not, as of yet, been eaten by a horde of large, angry bears. I do not like Vaj. And I'm trying to cultivate a bit of respect for Montana here, but it's tough to form that instant TV bond with someone who would describe her taste in men as "surface of the moon."
I also do not like Sean. And those issues are sure to run even deeper because I think that that train to Boston is actually planning to depart with him on it. Can't say I'm in full support of that idea right there. Sean's first voice over clues us immediately into his wha?-tastic character, whose only drawback is a total inability to make sense about anything he says concerning anything ever. To wit: "I'm meeting this person named Montana under the Amtrak big board, so I'm thinking it's going to be some kind of rustic Montana dude." Oh... eh? Um, say Sean? Why don't you just look for the person, gender notwithstanding, with all the cameras pointing to her? This might be a good place to begin the search, Sean. We come to learn that Sean is from Minnesota. And while I'm sure that we can all remember that fleeting cultural moment (the tail end of which coincided with the original airing of this episode, or thereabouts) which came as part of the Fargo fallout, during which it was completely acceptable to harp the mid-western accent perfected by Frances McDormand and could inspire instant hilarity by simply offering to "make you some eggs" or asking if "you had sex with the little fella," this inflection does not serve Sean well when employed on a full-time basis. He's the kind of person who would get off the train in Boston and walk around for less than five seconds before too-loudly proclaiming, "I can't believe how dumb the accents are here, ya know." Montana introduces Sean to Vaj, and Sean loudly and almost disbelievably repeats, "Vaj?" practically turning around and announcing this unheard of moniker to the entire train station as if he'd just been introduced to someone named Farty Fartolious. Yeah, Sean, it's a dumb name. It sounds like an eighth grader's slang for a woman's private parts in the porno he found underneath his older brother's mattress. Now leave it alone and step away. He'll be stuck with it for a lot longer than you will. Man, this isn't going well at all.
Vaj looks on, marooned, while Montana and Sean get to know each other a bit. Sean's first question to Montana is the essential, "How old are you," and I have to rewind the VCR tape at least once for each year Montana has spent lying about her rapidly advancing age since she hit puberty during the Coolidge administration. She tells him that she's twenty-one. Excuse me? Twenty-one what, Montana? Years from legal retirement? Tequila shots from sobriety? Times taller than your boyfriend? Sean's twenty-five, and he stumbles over his announcement that he's a second year law student, the pause an indication that perhaps he is suddenly cognizant of the fact that the January through May period he'll be spending in Boston is known to the law-school-attending community as the somewhat mandatory period known as "second semester." Sean asks Vaj what he thinks of Montana going to Boston, and he observes that he "hate[s] it." Hey, careful with the power of that word, there, Vaj. Wouldn't want it getting lodged in the audience's mind for later use in a you-related context, now would you? Oops, too late. You suck.
Back in Brownsville, Elka's private chat with the camera displays the first of her conservative, Catholic school girl sweaters ripped from the Sunday Sears circular and accentuated by her hair style supplied by the Celine Dion Collection at her local Glamor Shots salon. As she hugs her father in the airport and steps onto the plane, her coming-of-age characterization is solidified with the admission that "I knew that this is what I had to do. I needed to get out of Brownsville. I hadn't had a chance to really go off and find myself, so to speak, and to experience new things, and to learn to do things for myself." Oh, yeah. She gets really, really wild, all right. Try to stay calm, Mr. Elka's dad. Someone's about to discover that God invented cigarettes and eye shadow.
On the Amtrak train to Boston where the same coming-of-age story would fear to tread (one believes he already knows everything, the other has not that many more ages to come to), Sean and Montana discuss Sean's trip to Australia to participate in something called "a lumberjack contest." This phrase cues a montage of a pre-Real World Sean involved in contests featuring him throwing an axe and running on a log in a pool, all of which serve no valuable purpose other than providing me the inspiration to speak aloud the genuinely quizzical, "Is he, like, going to law school through the mail, or what?" Montana takes this opportunity to cement her own character as "the wacky one" in singing a song about lumberjacks. Well, it sure is easier than listening to his story in its entirety, I guess. And for this I am forced to thank her.
Over at Logan Airport, elegantly edited shots of planes we're supposed to believe are carrying Elka cut to her aqua-sweatered confessional concerning her first meeting with Kameelah: "I just knew she was going to be black. I mean, that name just screams black. Y'know, for me." And you care why? "Because they're cheap?" No, Elka, those are the Jews. Try to keep your prejudged slurs and assumptions about people who are different from you and daddy straight, won't you? Speaking of "straight," if you're not you rot in hell, I suppose? Just so we're on the same page here. So "Elka" dares to make a judgment call on the name "Kameelah." Tough call, "Elka." A name which screams "feminine plural of mule-like forest dwelling animal" to me, by the way. Kameelah arrives. She is of average female height, wears a stylin' black leather jacket, hair pulled on top of her head and a pair of sunglasses propped on top of the whole thing. And yes, she happens to be black. How convenient for Elka, who now believes herself to know everything she needs to know about Kameelah. The first question Elka lobs at Kameelah is, "Is your tongue pierced?" It is, and Elka takes a step back in shock before uttering a sanctimonious "wow." Hey, MTV producers, that's about enough "well, golly jeepers" glares of awestruck wonder, okay? We get it. I'm about halfway to believing that if Kameelah were to so much as play a spirited round of "got your nose" with this provincial target, Elka would just about drop to her knees and pray for this exotic Nubian voodoo sorceress to spare her short, futile, God-fearing existence.
What follows is a sequence I would unironically denote as "pointless, filler, fluff," if those weren't the very words translated from their original Latin on the Real World family crest as the very point of the freakin' show. New character Syrus arrives in a station wagon he enigmatically refers to as a "cab." Elka should love him. Did I mention he's black, too? Syrus takes the same tour Jason and Genesis just shared, tossing out a few more zany "hey, we live in a firehouse" quips. I trust him not at all. The three present members drink wine and have a toast to, as Jason suggests, "being honest with one another." Whatever. Have they, like, never seen this show before?
How freakin' long is this train ride, anyway? Can't you see the New York and Boston skylines, like, from each other? It must just feel interminable to poor Montana, who I am beginning to like more and more based on my staunch belief that pity, in fact, can be a very underrated method of garnering attention. Back on the Amtrak to Nowhere, Sean asks Montana if she and Vaj will get married. Montana confides that they have agreed to see other people while she's in Boston, paradoxically because "we really want the relationship to work, and we just know it's hard to be apart for five months." Practically reaching for his belt buckle and keeping the location of the closest lavatory firmly in check (oooh! His glasses are off. This must be Sean's alter ego. Y'know, the one with sexual superpowers), Sean slimes closer to Montana's seat, sits at attention (ew, not like that), and inquires, "So do you think you'll have sex with someone in the five months?" Taking absolutely no pains to add "Socially Acceptable" to my relatively static list of Nice Things You Can Say About Montana Without Giggling Helplessly, she heads him right off at the pass with the airtight, segue-be-damned comeback, "I wouldn't want to date any of my roommates, because that would just be too complicated." Sean wonders what would happen if Montana thought that someone in the house was, like, "awesome, man." Gee, Sean. Whoever could you mean, I wonder? Someone physically desirable, perhaps? Oh, or you. Some of us must have missed your subtle material. Thank God at least Montana was paying attention. Thank God for us all.
Back in the house, Polaroid hijnks continue. As per the producer's request (er, I mean, "because the normal flow of conversation dictates it is so"), Syrus asks Genesis, "where's the man at [sic]?" It's a woman. She's this season's alternative lifestyle template. Huzzah. Syrus thinks he is reacting even slightly within the bounds of societal propriety in responding, "That's hot," as if her alternative lifestyle exists exclusively for the benefit of fulfilling a current void in his fantasy life. At least he didn't offer to "straighten her out." Jason takes pains to utter some proto-tolerant sociology he culled from the books-on-tape version of Facile Liberal Rhetoric for Dummies about gay marriages and Hawaii. Fascinating. Maybe he'll do a follow-up book report on the matter and decide "to journal" all about it for the betterment of us all.