Recapper General Warning: in a Real World season that gave reality television the divine right to mirror the same intense levels of droning boredom most real people actually do achieve during the course of an average boring day, it seems almost redundant to string together the this-is-where-we-suffer-ennui episode at all. But season-to-season B-M formula dictates otherwise, and this is that episode right here. For my recapping dollar, they may as well have just aired a still photograph of Strom Thurmond reading out of a cookbook during the middling moments of a C-SPAN congressional filibuster for twenty-two TV minutes. Because this episode is boring, people. This is boring-for-people-who-dig-The-Yule-Log boring. This is boring-for-people-who-can't-watch-TV-on-a-Saturday-afternoon-because-the-heart-stopping-spectacle-of-golf-isn't-good-for-their-blood-pressure boring. This is...well, you get the idea. And you thought this season was boring before, didn't you? Well, then, you were absolutely right. You were right all along. You're just more right now than ever.
We begin with an opening montage of snow-covered snow that gets the executive corps of Stock Footage Inc. all in a tizzy because they've finally tracked down the location of those lost reels they haven't seen since they appeared in the mountaintop crash sequence of Alive. The electric guitar soundtrack is a-pumping as The Angry Snow of Cast Dissatisfaction is juxtaposed against images of the firehouse in a state of yucky disrepair. Dirty dishes in the sink. Open pizza boxes on the floor. Unmade beds in every room. Sean's continued existence for any reason whatsoever. As you can see, nothing is going right. Kameelah gives voice to these concerns, confessionalizing, "The kitchen is a mess, the house in general is so disgusting. We're slobs. We all are." Over at the CCC, Sean, Montana, Syrus, and Elka discuss, natch, the fact that the house is dirty. Sean volunteers that "the house is gross and it smells," and Syrus adds, "The upstairs is gross and it smells, too." Syrus, dude, I know you haven't been hanging around the firehouse all that much over the course of the last, say, sixteen episodes or so, but I will say, in the rest of the house's defense, that every time you do walk in that front door, you're most often carrying in large bags of skanky trash. Now, is that any way to keep a house clean? Ha ha, I've used that joke already. And unlike Kameelah's "we're all in this grossness together" confessional from a moment before, this conversation is filled with passive-aggressive blame. Montana observes, "We have to start getting vicious about the plates. When somebody leaves them down there, we take them out of the kitchen and put them in your bed." Syrus pipes up for emphasis, "We put 'em on the bed!" Yeah, thanks for the clarification between "in" the bed and "on" the bed. No wonder you're getting edited ruthlessly out of every episode, Superfluous Joe.
Cut to, sweet Georgia peach, another snow montage. It snows in the northeast. We get it, Boston. What is this, Old Farmer's Almanac: The Movie?
Firehouse exterior, with the voice-over line, "Are you in your underwear again?" coming from inside. Damn, I don't like where this is going one bit. It was Montana speaking, and speaking to Sean, and we cut to inside the bathroom where Shirtless Sean and Montana are flinging water at each other and generally acting out wacky hijinks as Kameelah rolls an eye and speaks the truth in a confessional: "The relationship that Sean and Montana have has definitely surpassed any kind of brotherly/sisterly love. They are just way out of control." Cut back to more of same, where this Battle of Culinary Hilarity moves from the bathroom to every other room and from water and shaving cream to a variety of food products scraped from between couch cushions and rubbed all over Sean's bed. At the other end, Montana is lying in Sean's bed, rubbing this horrific mess all over his sheets. As he muses on where he's going to sleep tonight and the rest of the roommates howl with laughter, Sean looks at the actual composition of the food and punch lines, "Where in the hell did you get an éclair?" Because this is so exactly the kind of mischief these kooky kids would be up to if they weren't vying to be tagged as "The Fun One" when this episode airs. Well, at least it's the camera that's gobbling that éclair up, rather than a curious Sean (whose burgeoning handles of love we're subjected to by virtue of his unsolicited and perpetual shirtlessness), who doesn't need to be knowing just where it came from at all. The Folksy Acoustic Guitar of Childhood Innocence strums lightly as we shoot over to the CCC, where Poor, Poor Anthony is announcing, "This weekend, I need you to be with the kids. Like, for the whole weekend." He is telling this to only Jason, but we then cut outside to find Anthony pulling Syrus into his office and giving him the same speech, adding, "I want to make it absolutely crystal clear about what's expected of you this weekend. We need to be with the children. Okay? Not, like, hanging out with your friends and things like that." Verbatim speech to Montana. They all assent to be the most helpful of all. It's only too bad Poor, Poor Anthony didn't have the opportunity to offer said homily to the uninvited chaperone "Ironic Foreshadowing," who took this downtime at the CCC to sneak out and pick up his new pair of skis and also to run home to get his permission slip signed.
Backstory? Why, Genesis would love to, thanks: "We are going to Vermont this weekend to go skiing overnight with some of the kids from the youth center." We're going skiing overnight at a place called "Mount Snow." And so we do, cutting back to the CCC under the cover of darkness as Genesis's confessional predicts "total chaos." Cut back to Poor, Poor Anthony on a packed yellow school bus, attempting to rally an unwieldy horde of eight-year-olds into forgetting about their upcoming night of wetting a strange bed across state lines while wondering what they did to goad their parents into transferring custody of them permanently over to Viacom Inc. In his some-kind-of-New-England-accent, Poor, Poor Anthony tells them that they should be arriving in about an hour-and-a-half, then yells something else which causes all the kids to yell in hearty support, but to me just sounds like, "Chowdah chowdah choowdah." 'Cause that is some kind of New England accent, people. Ironic Foreshadowing sings too, his song a dirge-like death march for Poor, Poor Anthony's relationship with the members of the firehouse.
Cut to...oh, my, we're still on the bus, aren't we? What is this, Rope? Let's dispense with the real-time vérité and make with the time-sucking montages, shall we? Kameelah cashes in on what is clearly a baiting private joke of some kind, screaming out, "I disapprove ahead of time of alligator songs." Which is the cue for a call-and-response song about alligators, led by Poor, Poor Anthony in one of the final moments of joy he will ever, ever experience. Ironic Foreshadowing affixes his ski tag to the zipper of his puffy, Gore-Tex jacket.
Morning at Mount Slow...er, I mean "Mount Snow." Also known, by virtue of its constant blizzard and need for protective, asbestos-lined clothes and special footgear for traveling from point to slow-concealed point, as "Boston with Hills." Jason and Sean are bedecked in the latest in trendy B-M ski gear, Jason already peering around the place in search of the completely flat stretch of dry, snowless land -- where he can ski just 'cause he's dressed in real hip ski gear -- called The Dilettante Slope. Say what you will about Sean (and, oh my, haven't I), at least he looks like he knows what he's doing. Anyway, the two are already in hard-core Shirk Responsibility Mode, as Jason rationalizes to Poor, Poor Anthony, "I know the instructors aren't going to want us sitting there chilling and hanging out while the kids are taking their lesson." An instructor, standing to Anthony, confirms that she does, in fact, want everyone to stay together. Poor, Poor Anthony repeats, "Just make sure you're with the children." Sean expects us to in any way take his side when he voice-overs, "The instructor started off with the basics of, 'This is your ski, this is your binding' and I was just goin', 'Oh, my God this is gonna be a long day.'" Cut to Sean and Jason skating off with varying degrees of sure-footedness (Sean, some; Jason, less) as Sean continues, "We packed up and left and did our own thing." Ironic Foreshadowing straps on his skis and rides the ski lift with them to the top of the K-12, snickers with sinister, I-have-the-easiest-job-in-show-business glee, and pushes off down the mountain with a hearty "yeeeeee-ha!"
Syrus, Montana, and Elka are in the general area of the children, if not watching them per se, when they spot the ski lift carrying Sean and Jason floating by. They laugh at the child neglect of it all. And while the director had a moment to hammer home the theme of group fracture, The Post-Grunge Wailing of the Dispossessed Lesbian wails on the soundtrack as Genesis skis, skis, skis, all alone. Sniff. Elka voice-overs, "Genesis didn't even hang out with us as a group." Genesis counters in voice-over form, and more power to her, "I've had a lot of things going through my mind lately, that I needed to get away from the house, that I needed to get away from the roommates." Word. Back at the training area, Poor, Poor Anthony comes to the slow realization that two of his volunteers have pretty much un-volunteered, as he asks where they are and another CCC employee -- and one who clearly hates all of these people a lot ["but surely by no means the only one" -- Wing Chun] -- chimes in, "Jason and Sean are skiing. They just went away." Poor, Poor Anthony surveys the rest of the members of the house, asking them if Sean and Jason told anyone they were taking off. Nope. Anthony's jaw drops: "They just went off?" Cut to Sean and Jason skiing off down a mountain alone because we get it, thanks, as Anthony expresses shock. Well, if he wanted so badly for them to stick around, perhaps he could have clearly elucidated his need for the chaperones to stay with the children in the language indigenous to the Sovereign Nation of Assholia, in which Sean and Jason have clearly garnered their unwavering sense of responsibility.
Cut to a woeful montage of Sean and Jason slo-mo snowboarding (or, in Jason's case, inventing that new winter sport "snowfalling") in white wifebeaters. Because it seems that God, y'know, hates me. Back on the bus, Poor, Poor Anthony attempts to keep the mood light when he yells, "You guys, Montana wants to hear the alligator song, chowdah chowdah chowdah." Sigh.
And we're back in Boston, the hard-rockin' guitar that accompanies that first shot of the CCC an indicator that Anthony was not able to leave his issues with the housemates' irresponsibility on top of Mount Slow. Sean sits in Anthony's office with his feet up on a bookshelf, and we cut in on Sean non-apologetically non-rationalizing, "It's not to say that I don't enjoy being here." Anthony, standing defensively behind his desk, speaks the one-sentence truth, "You disappeared on the mountain." Sean points a finger accusingly and begins, "Anthony..." Yeah, Sean? What? No, really. WHAT? Anthony continues, "You took it upon yourself to leave," which Sean deems "not a big issue," when in fact it was the only issue Anthony put forth for the entire weekend. In a confessional, Sean admits, "We didn't actually do what we were supposed to do on the field trip." Back at the CCC, Anthony kind of folds and tells Sean, "I was disappointed last night. That's how I feel." Back in voice-over, Sean tells us that he was "a little selfish" and then shrugs it off. I'm going to go ahead and let this one pass without comment, so self-evident is his raging awfulness. Except for this one little comment: smug, hypocritical, entitled, kid-hating bastard. Ahem. Sorry.
Snowy Night in Boston montage as Genesis offers free advertising and firehouse pathos in one elegant sentence, "We went to dinner at the Back Bay Brewing Company, which was very weird, 'cause it was the first time the seven of us had actually sat down together and talked." Nice commercial, Genesis. I half-expect her to tag on: "The Back Bay Brewing Company! So fun, you can even go with people you hate!" But she doesn't. Sitting in a circle not eating or drinking, we cut in on Sean gesturing to the rest of the group madly and announcing, "Both of you guys [Genesis and Kameelah], I don't talk to you, you don't talk to me." Genesis one-ups him on the ol' Alienated Housemate Spectrum, pointing out, "I don't talk to you [Sean], you [Elka], you [Montana], Syrus [not present, natch], sometimes even Jason. I don't talk to Jason for two days sometimes, I don't even see him for two days. So it's nothing personal against you [Sean]. I just don't choose to have conversations with any one of you." Yikes. Syrus voice-overs, "I've done nothing but be overly nice to that girl, but I know now to not go out of my way." Syrus mysteriously appears in a shot sitting to Genesis and is gone again in a moment, as Sean clarifies, "Us [he and Syrus] and Montana, you don't enjoy hanging out with, because you have nothing in common with us." Genesis shakes her head in agreement. Ha ha. Way to step up and speak some truth. Sean gets all Smarmy Lawyer Guy and argues, "If you don't want to have a relationship with me, then we won't even talk, that's fine. But I'm not making that decision, you are." He continues that he's okay ignoring her for the rest of the time they're in the house, and she claims that they'll never be "one big happy family." A song with the words "you're wasting his time, and my time as well" cranks up as Genesis stands up and storms off. Clever. One can only hope the "his" in that song stands for "Djb's." Because man, it should.
Cavalcade of unsolicited reactions to the dinner just completed. Montana kicks it off with a confessional: "I have no idea why Genesis is here. She should leave, if she doesn't like being in the house. She says she doesn't like hanging out with us? Good, then get the [expletive, perhaps 'dispossessed lesbian,' deleted] out." Luckily for Montana, Ironic Foreshadowing broke an ankle on the K-12 and is currently too busy with his cast-covered leg elevated, sipping hot chocolate at the Mount Slow Lodge, and won't be able to return to Boston to bite Montana in the ass for the comment for almost three full weeks.
And until then, the Jets (Montana, Sean, Elka) sit whispering in Elka's bed while the Sharks (Genesis, Jason, and someone the cameras won't let us see because I think it's time-traveling continuity victim Timber) talk at full volume because they're having this conversation at another place and time entirely. Sean whispers that he thinks Genesis hates him because he's "a straight, white male." Way to play the lesbian card, Sean, especially considering the one person she gets along with in the house is Jason, who is...oh, wait, a straight, white male. Never you mind. Genesis voice-overs that the house is "high school reinvented," and that the house has broken into cliques. Jason tells Genesis that his solution to the house fracture would be to say, "Sean, you be yourself, you be yourself, I'm gonna be myself, you be yourself, you be yourself, and we'll all function." Realizing that he's not famous or sensible enough to warrant the familiar star-and-rainbow icon indicating a The More You Know sequence has just taken place, we cut back to Montana, who puts way too fine a point on it as she whispers, "That's what sucks so bad, to live your whole life going to gay bars and listening to techno music, and that's all you know, and that's sad." That's not too much of a stretch. Gay bars and techno. That's the heart of it, right there. Getting rid of those = instant world peace.
The morning (well, it...whatever), Genesis carries a stack of paper over to a seated male, who The Squiggly Hip Font of Character Introduction lets us know is "Kevin, Genesis' friend." Kevin, Genesis's friend, should forgo his leisure time sitting around that house relaxing and use it for the positive social cause of teaching Sean and Jason how to wear a white wifebeater. Because Kevin knows a thing or two about wearing the wifebeater right there. Though I doubt that Kevin, Genesis's friend, will be seeing a wife of any kind. Unless he wants to throw me in his car and cross that Vermont border again and make me his bride straightaway. It's too convenient. We can even honeymoon at Mount Slow. Hello, Kevin, Genesis's friend. Anyway, Genesis hands her friend Kevin the stack of paper, across the top of which is written "Genesisms" in that Old English font most often seen when a seventh grader writes a paper on Shakespeare and wants to make it look really, really regal. It works to the same high level of effectiveness here. Kevin, Genesis's friend, reads from what Genesis calls "an accumulation of all [her] opinions and beliefs written down into lessons that [she's] learned through [her] entire life." Kevin, Genesis's friend, comments that she's learned a lot of the lessons contained therein since she's been living in the firehouse. Here's one now: "People only hurt others because they've been hurt in the past." Another? Well, okay. "Raising your voice is only to make you feel more powerful, not for the other person to hear you better." Okay, that's enough. If y'all want more wisdom along the same hackneyed lines, time you're going to have to get enough Chinese food to warrant three fortune cookies. Ye Olde Fortune Cookies, considering the font. Oh, damn. Kevin, Genesis's friend, reads another one, and I feel inclined to quote it because we're running off to Vermont together and I don't want him to be cranky. He can just get so cranky, sometimes. Here it is: "There are no demons that can harm you besides the demons already inside of your head." Elka ambles into the room looking particularly Catholic schoolgirl, commenting, "Cool. These are really cool, Genesis." Until, she gets to Genesism #143, "Shut up, you Catholic Schoolgirl Bitch," which, considering how aimed at the people around her these are, should be somewhere down that list.
Cut to Kameelah standing in the stairwell, staring at cutout "Genesisms" that have been taped all over the wall. More? Jeez, fine: "Lesson 75: Using your childhood as an excuse only makes you appear more immature, when you are an adult there are no more excuses." Sic, sic, SIC. I guess when you're an adult, there is also no more sentence structure. Two thoughts, two sentences. Like I'm one to talk. Anyway. "Lesson 83: 'Those that deny are the one's most deeply involved.'" Ack! Apostrophe Police, arrest that sanctimonious lesbian! Kameelah stands quietly, at least secure in the knowledge that her self-righteous list is tucked away in a rough-hewn Urban Outfitters notebook in a drawer somewhere. None-too-surprisingly, Montana has a thing to say on the matter in a confessional, and it's actually a pretty good one: "I don't know what a Genesism is, but I don't need somebody's dogma when I'm just trying to go to the 7-11 and walk down the stairs." A streetwalking bitch session between Sean, Syrus, and Montana leads Syrus back to the house, where he tears the signs off the wall and shakes hands with Sean to celebrate his job well done. For some reason, Genesis sits in the chair she was in earlier, pretending to Syrus and the world that she's asleep. Dude, she's not. Syrus accepts Sean's compliment of "nice job," adding that the only thing to do now is "wait for the hell to break loose." Much to the chagrin of the army of inexperienced temps holding down the fort at B-M Continuity Headquarters, Sean has gotten his hair unceremoniously cut with a hacksaw at some point. Nice one, Sean. History -- and Genesisms -- will have something to say on that matter, I am sure.
morning. Jason, Kameelah, and Genesis (I'm sorry, I know these people have issues and all, but if I had to choose one clique over another, these are the people I'm hanging out with) mourn the passing of Ye Olde Fortune Cookies and their too-brief time on the firehouse walls. Kameelah wants to know why the other clique didn't just say something when they saw her putting them up, and Genesis lobs perhaps the only hypothesis that isn't to some extent true: "I guess they brooded over it all day, then figured out that they were just jealous before they were too f---kin' stupid to think of anything like that to put on the wall." Jason notes that "the things we thought about and wrote about were not a joke." Um, "we"? Genesis wonders if Montana didn't take some things personally, like the "using your childhood as an excuse." Jason expresses some surprise at this one (but Jason, I thought you wrote them), noting that a sentiment like that was, in fact, directed at Montana. Which it was. Kameelah is the only person on the planet displaying a little non-passive backbone, sitting at the computing and stating, "They're going back up, basically." And so Ye Olde Fortune Cookies will get another life.
Confessional. Sean holds up a pan to block the prepubescent, Bar Mitzvah boy moustache that has recently become acquainted with his face, waves said pan at the camera, and observes, "This is a pan." Thanks, Martha Stewart. Now what's that mystery appliance that toasts? Helpfully Identified Pan is filled with the remnants of a food product of some kind. He complains that the pan was put into the dishwasher just as it was, with "crap caked all over it." Cakes? Shout-out? Cut to a montage of Sean and Syrus cleaning the whole house, Syrus self-righteously reporting, "Cleanliness is Godliness, I've been taught that all my life." But conveniently forgot until it was suddenly essential for plot progression, I guess.
Genesis arrives home with Kameelah and Tank Top Kevin and comments, "I can't believe this house is actually clean and it wasn't me and Kameelah that cleaned it." She continues that they are the only people who lift a finger, and hilariously comments, "We can't be so lucky to think everybody moved out of here when we were gone. All I know is that nothing's better than walking into this house and finding it spotless with no one here." Word. And I totally believe that Genesis and Kameelah are the only people who ever clean. Syrus and Sean making such a big-ass deal about it leads me to believe that they only did it out of spite. And I know this sounds downright loopy, but waiting for all of your housemates to leave, scrubbing the place clean, and making yourself scarce when you know they're coming home is one of the most passive-aggressive activities I can think of as a roommate. Because there's no way you can argue with it. My senior year of college, we sniped behind each others' back constantly, disappeared accordingly, and by the end of the year we were using the toilet as a decorative fruit bowl. Okay, no we didn't. But we did fight a lot. To recap (and isn't that what I do? Sometimes?), cleaning is good. Cleaning plus indignant bullshit, bad. It's scrapy. It's scrapy as hell, man. And not in a good way.
And so the passive-aggressive cleaners view this one altruistic deed as their gift from God unto man. Some time later, they spy in the sink -- dun-DUN-duuuuuuun -- a dish! Run! They deduce somehow that it was Jason's dish, and so Sean, Syrus, and Montana break out some posterboard and a marker (knowing full well how much longer this recap is going to be with all this writing), and Montana writes, "Ye of much filth..." And then something about the kitchen stinking. Syrus, meanwhile, breaks out another piece of cardboard and writes "Pig of the Day" on it and covers it with the remainder of the food in the kitchen. Then they hang it on the wall and leave his dishes in his room. Clique #1 stumbles across the sign and retorts on the back: "Just because you cleaned the kitchen once doesn't make you God. Kiss my ass." And then a sign below is, "Sean: Asshole of the Year." And then below it, "ha ha."
And then, fight. Sean is standing on a chair, which I guess means his soapbox was so pathetically broken down from overuse and he still had to stand on something. And he's wearing that tank top again, clearly exhibiting that Tank Top Kevin didn't swing through with a fashion tip or ab reductor of any kind in the past fourteen TV minutes. Kameelah cowers in the corner with The Cat of Vulnerability while Genesis screams at Sean and he counters that she never sticks up for herself. Incidentally, this fight was Boston's conciliation entry in the MTV Real World poll for "Best Fight," because they had to nominate this season for something and they decided that "Most Boring Season" probably wouldn't be a great way to attract advertising dollars to these twelve hours of the marathon. Make no mistake, people: this is a boring, boring fight.