This episode begins with numerous establishing shots of cars covered in snow, streets covered in snow, and a leather-clad Jason and Genesis standing outside of the firehouse swathed in the USDA maximum daily allowance of faux-detached pouty self-righteousness. Multiple packs into what seems to be the waning hours of an all-night nicotine binge, the smoke from their cigarettes becomes so dense it actually begins to seep through my television's speakers and form a thick, choking cloud inside of my own room, obscuring my view of the screen and ironically causing me to miss the first four billion commercials for thetruth.com, which for some reason sees fit to advertise during this carcinogenic marathon. But on the positive side, no more choc full o' Amaya promos for New Orleans! Over in a confessional, Genesis admits that she feels "like an extreme outsider," worrying that even new friend Jason is fitting in with the rest of the house better than she is. Staring reproachfully out of the upstairs window, Elka has apparently decided to let her own lungs be filled with the cleansing breath of devout Catholicism as she becomes addicted to that daddy-sanctioned vice of Our Lord, all the while informing us that she "was bothered by Jason and Genesis's clique that they had already made. They had already found someone, and so I still needed to test the waters with the rest of the housemates before I would have decided to become a friend." There's some righteous in-good-faith rhetoric for you, Elka. And if I've said it once, I've said it -- well, twice maybe -- if you don't lose the aqua grandma sweater from the one confessional we've seen you in so far, I find it mondo-difficult to believe that the rest of your shallow, House of Style-bred roommates wouldn't find reason to keep you socially alienated based solely on the tacky un-fashion show you parade around in. Oh, and also because you hate people who are black or gay. See, 'cause that right there could act as a bit of a social inhibitor as well. I'm just sayin'.
From the first landing of the firehouse's entry stairway, Kameelah cues the synthetic-ska-raggae-hybrid-moving-in-montage with that trademark call of the liberated feminist, "I say all the men start bringing the luggage upstairs." In one of the final sequences in which Syrus appears in multiple shots of the same episode, actually in the house, actually with his pants on, he tells Kameelah that it's "no problem, honey," and begins to collect her bags. So everything is going smashingly then, eh? EH? No, siree, there is nothing "eh" about it. For as goddammed ironic as it is for the peace on earth of the Boston house to be disrupted by the looming specter of religious intolerance, Elka's general house inquiry "Is anybody Catholic?" is met with an icy, almost satanic indifference. By everyone, that is, except for Sean, who agrees that they can start going to church together "weekend." Cut to about fifty disparate shots of Montana looking alarmed, perhaps worried that the subtle editing of this sequence would not alert the stable of idiots MTV must think watches this show to her "God cursed me with these bangs, and so I react with indignant atheistic fervor" foreshadowing. In other news, Syrus has forgotten to bring hangers. In another room, the producers slip Kameelah a twenty to comment on all the cool stuff in the house so the Urban Outfitters housewares department doesn't sue for product-placement breach of contract. Downstairs, the beleaguered Polaroid is dragged out anew to record this unique moving in moment, and Sean takes numerous pictures of the rest of the house in poses ranging from wacky to significantly more wacky. All of which will allow for each member of the house to closely examine said photographs long after their tenure in Boston has ended and marvel, "Wait, this experience wasn't so bad after all. Oh, wait, Sean. He was taking the picture. I had almost forgotten about Sean."
Later that evening, Montana and Syrus take off to "get a six pack," and are soon joined en route by Jason. He wastes no time in launching into a prepared speech about everyone else in the house, beginning with Kameelah's "I don't put any alcohol in my body" introduction from the day. Discontent being bred on both sides, we cut to Kameelah on the phone discussing Jason, and her first impression of him is so spot-on perfect I'm going to go with a verbatim reiteration of her feelings for him. Let's listen in! "He's, like, cute white boy, ring in his nose, very, I guess supposedly hip, trendy, kind of thing. But he just turns me off." Exactly, Kameelah. Except for the "cute" part. Oh, and I think MTV wants us to find it significant that Jason described Kameelah as "black" and she described him as "white," but I'm sorry, I'm not biting. Back on the street, Jason and Syrus discuss their own cultural differences, coming from Boulder (white!) and Santa Monica (integrated! Go figure!), while Kameelah tells the mysterious caller that "everyone is tentatively cool, in their own way, till they play themselves out." An intercut confessional lets us know that Genesis thinks Kameelah is "overbearing and extremely overwhelming and bossy." Yikes. Jason, meanwhile, again tears at the delicate fabric of the house when he asks Montana and Syrus, "Who can you see yourself getting along with and not getting along with?" Montana tells Jason about her pleasurable train ride to Boston with Sean and expresses a definite like for him, but she is so not-assured as a person that she feels she must add, "I didn't think I would," when Jason is skeptical. Leave her alone, man! For crying out loud. Jason: cattier than Sars's apartment.
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth the two scenes go. Sean tells Kameelah that he has a girlfriend (he does?), Kameelah responds that there is no man in her life, and Elka tells a tale about her "boyfriend" who "lives" in "Ireland." I'll admit it: Even though it turns out to be perhaps the strongest relationship of anyone in the house, I was quite doubtful of the truth of this story the first time I watched this episode. I thought it patently impossible that the little princess from Brownsville would have met someone abroad that she has been dating for six months, even though they have only been together for "a week." And so until he visits later in the series, I must allow these preformed notions to taint the recapping process. Try and deal with it. Sean volunteers that he can't believe that Elka "spent a week with this guy, and now you've been dating him for six months." Elka says that she doesn't "like to call it dating." What would you like to call it, then, Elka? Fantasizing? Downright concocting? Scripting a set of fictional children's stories entitled Choose Your Own Ersatz Romantic Entanglement? Want to try on some of those words for size? Take 'em. Take 'em all.
Back outside, Syrus thinks Elka "is cool," but Montana fears that "she was talking about going to church, though, and I'm a little bit scared about..." Syrus eloquently points out that just because Montana is her roommate, there is no reason that Montana has to join her religion. And I would probably be more inclined to defend Elka's religious beliefs against the any and all heretics present, if not for the existence of following sequence: Genesis (who has been alone in her room unpacking for this entire progression) reports in confessional that "Elka is a very conservative girl, 'cause I could tell she had never been around somebody gay before." In a suddenly whispery conversation between Elka and Sean, Sean hilariously tells us that "we were going to come in here and ask if anyone was a lesbian." Um, why? WHY, SEAN? Why anything you ever do, Sean? Elka, who was apparently able to outwit the entire grueling audition process and be chosen to appear on The Real World despite never having seen the show before or grasped its race/creed/sexuality seasonal quota, responds that she doesn't "think anybody is [a lesbian]. Or gay." Hmmm. Thanks for clearly defining the mutually exclusive nature of those terms, oh ye finely nuanced spokesperson for GLAAD. Sean adopts a know-it-all look, and Elka worries, "Montana's not, right?" Sean assures her that she is not, and Elka registers a look of relief as if she has just scarcely avoided nuclear annihilation. She slumps down on her bed and sighs, "Okay, the coast is clear." But watch out, oh you irresistible sexual prey you, for your virginal self can never be completely safe while The Lurking Lesbian unpacks her freakish, Godless possessions over in the room.
Back on the corner of River and Mt. Vernon, Jason product-places a particularly hideous chess board while the entire family sits around drinking their choice of poison: beer, wine, holy water, or otherwise. Sean deems the living room "funky," and Montana imitates his Minnesota accent in calling the state "the home of funk" in a way that actually makes me laugh un-hatefully. Continuing a trend began in the last episode, Syrus proposes a toast (enough with the toasts, Boston cast! When are these dullards going to put down their raised-on-high glasses and start getting it on already?) as such: "May we have fun the rest of our time together." Jason tacks on the most hypocritical rider possible to said toast in adding, "May we be honest with each other."
Cut to another endless montage of the architecturally impenetrable firehouse, in which Elka describes the layout to her dial-a-boyfriend, "Walter." She segues pointlessly into another retread of the "I don't know about everyone's sexuality just yet." I can't even comment on this again. Oh, wait, of course I can. Shut up, Elka. Didn't say it would be clever. I just said it would be a comment. Sean the lecherous bastard admits to Kameelah that he's never roomed with a girl before. Thrills. Montana enters their room looking for Genesis to go out for a smoke. She smokes cigars. Outside, Genesis, Jason and Montana talk about what it's like "to be a lesbian in Mississippi," and unsurprisingly, Genesis is the only real authority on this particular topic. Back inside, Elka worries about Kameelah living with a boy and asks Kameelah if everybody else in the house smokes, to which Kameelah responds, "I hope not." Oh, relax. Sean, who I think has started smoking just so he can hang out with the cool kids, walks outside just in time for everyone else to decide it might be too cold to stay outside for the duration of their own cigarettes. Coincidence? Not so much. MTV almost loses complete control of this scene as we cut upstairs for some pointless filler about Elka being ridiculously sheltered and over-privileged and arrive back outside in the middle of what is doubtlessly Jason's too-true breakdown of the composite clichés each character on the show has become: "You're the lesbian, she's the religion." Oops. Cat's out of the bag to Sean, gleeful that he's been let in on the house's dirty little secret. Genesis is worried that Kameelah and Elka are the only people in the house who don't know, saying, "I guess I want to be friends with them, so they won't judge me as harshly if they already know me. 'Cause I've had my shares of 'you're gonna burn in hell', and I don't want it to be on the first night that I'm here." She displays mammoth amounts of restraint in the face of Montana's almost-as-equally-homophobic follow-up question, "You've never been with a man, do you think you ever want to?" Much to my surprise, Genesis does not respond with, "MAYBE YOU DIDN'T HEAR THE PART ABOUT WHERE I SAID I WAS A LESBIAN?" Which, really, seems to me the only acceptable response. Anyway.
Cue another gratuitous unpacking montage with takes us most of the way into week's episode. Polaroid obsessive Jason scans the pictures they took before the first of the gratuitous unpacking montages and comments, "I hate every picture of me. I hate them all." Coming from an audience of me that understands what it's like to maintain some severe issues with televised or photographed representations of Jason, I nod in tacit agreement and close my eyes briefly until I'm sure the camera has come to rest on someone else. Downstairs (Is this downstairs? How many floors does this place have?), Elka, Genesis, and Montana discover the many playthings and assorted toys MTV has strategically placed to keep the kids busy, and Genesis picks up a Nerf-esque pineapple thing and observes that "this feels like a fake breast." Genesis admits that she would like to get breast implants, and Montana for some reason possesses the vast stores of knowledge on the topic, such as, "When they put in the implants...you can't nurse...and also, your nipples are constantly erect. You no longer have sensation in your nipples, and they're always at full salute." Genesis cracks up at the hilarity, as Elka stares on in horrified silence. The soundtrack kicks in with a song containing the lyric, "Well, I just couldn't believe it," because, as numerous close-ups on Elka's dour constitution would have us believe, when it comes to this conversation, well, she just couldn't believe it. Again. Go figure. We get it. Love, all well-trained viewers of the first five seasons. P.S. We get it.
Cut to the swathing of dozens of woolen clothing articles and the donning of heavy wool jackets. Could this season be any more sexy? Clearly, it could not. The Boston folk take off on a search for a dinner locale, eventually settling on a restaurant that I'm sure they just happened to stumble upon, bereft of reservation and toting an MTV camera crew. So here's more free advertising: it's called "Artu," and yes, the food does look yummy. Lots of fresh bread dipped in olive oil, the hallmark of the mid-90s fine-dining experience. Once seated, the conversation quickly turns back to all things religion, and Elka discloses her attempt to live her life "the way the Bible says to live it," and she says she has been pretty darn successful "so far." Over in the same aqua-sweatered confessional, Elka admits that she is bothered that "people have been challenging my beliefs." They have indeed, and the attacks are almost universally dumb in their need to question her faith. I will gladly admit that. But until Genesis leans over to one of the roommates and whispers stealthily, "I'm glad I don't have to live with the Bible-banger. Her questionable belief system might be contagious. I guess the coast is clear," none of Elka's too-sanctimonious comments go unpunished. And I just don't see that happening, as she just sits and eats politely. Montana claims that "nobody can explain why we're here or how life first began. And I think that the whole universe has a way of working, and that things are kind of cyclical, and there is some kind of order." To everything in the world. Except for that argument. Cut to the post-dinner bitch session, where Kameelah and Elka walk ahead, Kameelah advising that "I've had people try to break me down in my religion before...Don't let them do that." It's a cogent argument, really. Must more so than Jason's "all she's been exposed to is dogmatic Christianity" tirade going on across town. Short montage of snow-covered houses of religion in the Boston metropolitan area. Gee, I wonder what the underlying metaphor of all those symbols are, and how they relate to this scene?
After dinner, Syrus and Sean have stopped in for a beer, and we learn from Sean's sparkling confessional that "when we finished dinner I was like, 'Hey! Anybody want to stop in for a beer?' And Syrus was like, ya know, 'Hey! No problem! I'll stop in for a beer with you!'" Syrus preaches the value of not saying anything behind someone's back that he couldn't say to someone's face, adding quite truthfully that "people are talking already." Back at the house, Genesis talks on the phone to a "Shane," who we learn from the writing on the screen is "Genesis' friend." Somewhere, Montana shows Elka photos of the remains of a neglected pizza left out in the rain for over a month which -- oh, never mind, they're just pictures of Vaj. My bad. Continuing to unpack, Montana uncovers her accouterment for the room, a Virgin Mary night-light. Elka asks Montana why in the doubtlessly existing heavens she would have purchased a night-light of the Virgin Mary, and this quick-to-bond roommate takes another step toward the Hellmouth with her response, "I don't believe in the Virgin Mary. I think it's kind of, y'know, funny." Oh, good God.
Over in some rustic smoky basement bar called "The Littlest Bar" (awwww...raise your hand if you think Boston is quaint!), Sean has become progressively drunker and has given himself over to absolutely bellowed repeated shouts of, for some reason, "I want the money!" I don't know what's more offensive about Sean in this sequence: that he is apparently attempting to meet new people -- girls, even -- by harping an overused-the-first-time-it-was-uttered, yes, even, in 1997, catch phrase from Jerry Maguire, or that he's actually saying it incorrectly. Either way, kill me. The phone rings in the firehouse, where the other five are in the funky living room (thus instituting a permanent "no tank top" rule for Jason) in various stages of pajamas. Elka picks it up to a screamed retread of, "I want the money!" Clearly, it is Sean. Jason puts his hand over the phone to make fun of Sean's proclamation that he wants "to shake his ass." Cut to said inexcusable shot of said club, where Sean shakes his ass like to a true white boy and Syrus is talkin' up the ladies, as we cut back to the house and Kameelah asking, "Are you with girls?" Sean says no, because chicks don't need to know the truth about nothin'. Montana agrees that they will all come to meet them, and we cut to a general primping montage in which Jason admits he wears eye shadow, y'know, "for kicks." Back in Elka's confessional, she muses, "It was the first time I've ever put make-up on a guy. But there's a first time for everything, huh?" True, true. And while it's nice to see Elka coming to a higher level of enlightenment about something, anything, I'd probably be a little less wary of this sudden evolution if she weren't still in the same confessional as the one where she extolled the manifold values of God smiting those who did not respect the way of the Lord. Hey, MTV? time you choose to tape a season's worth of "personal enlightenment" confessionals in one sitting, have her change the aqua sweater at least once, okay?
The rest of the house arrives in the club, Montana and Kameelah telling Sean that they can't stay because Elka is only eighteen and they won't let her in. But Sean's undeniable powers of cool (he must have used that "I want the money" line on them) make them instantly forget about the trifling outside world, and they forget their cares, their woes, and their roommates waiting outside for them. Just Genesis and Elka. How perfect. Finally, the two of them hail a cab and take off for home, each confessionalizing (you don't have to say Hail Marys when you leave that room, so I kind of balk at choosing the verb form for this process as the more conventional "confessing" lest Elka take issue) their thoughts on the other. Genesis: "I did not want her to come home by herself and think about everybody else out there having a good time but her." Elka: "That was really nice of her." They take the requisite Polaroids of themselves and each other, and about twelve cumulative seconds of screen time pass before Elka pops the boyfriend question. Actually, Genesis has a girlfriend back home. Elka, who somehow sees herself as being an integral part of Genesis' sexuality, requests "a few minutes" before she can speak again. Over in the most fabulous confessional ever (same sweater, no really), Elka reports that "I kind of had a stereotype of what a lesbian would look like, probably a little more manly." And then she takes a little pause and delivers her line in the style befitting Dr. Evil the first time he informs his degenerate cadre of underground bad guys of the diverse powers of the untapped weapon he likes to refer to as the [big quote marks] "ozone layer." And here it is: "It turns out she's something called a [big quote marks] lipstick lesbian." She says she's cool with it. In an at-least-I-don't-have-to-come-with-you-when-you-die kind of way. And just like that, I feel as if we've all learned a little something today.