Props to Potes for the primer, and to Little Hills for overall adventures in freakocity.
Previously on The Real World: I've seen all of this season's episodes in preparation for this recap, but I've kind of seen them out of order. So, I think that previously on The Real World: that creepy guy Marc climbed into every bed in Vegas trying to pinch an inch that isn't his own, and then in the episode the roommates got a job working for a creepy guy named Marc who seemed like he might one day be up to no good. How am I doing so far?
We join Vegas already in progress, as a montage of lights, hotels, casinos, and a general sense of Cher-impersonating trashy glamour pervade the hallowed Strip. We cut inside to the elevator at the Palms to discover trashiness of a whole different pedigree -- in the form of Trashelle herself -- as she consults the mirror and tells Brynn, "I love that color." Brynn -- decked out in a silver tank top that makes her look like she's about to bust into a rousing chorus of "Nothing Ever Happens on Mars" -- nods in an I'm-ignoring-you kind of way. God, that silver is all wrong. Brynn looks like she's from The Future. In a confessional, Brynn tells us, assumedly without irony, "I don't know that I really could be Trishelle's friend because I'm so jealous of her." Yes, Brynn, I can see how Trashelle's as-high-as-the-floor-they're-passing-IQ and her generally duck-like physical composition have driven so many women to Iago-esque bouts of crippling jealousy. The elevator continues its distracting EKG beeping as the floors tick up, and we're dumped out inside Ghostbar, where Trashelle quickly starts scoping out the menfolk and Brynn stands astride, tuning her second fiddle and looking generally unloved. And like the animal she is, Trashelle follows the scent to her first man of the night. And, as is so often the case with the men she seems to flock to, the scent she follows is that of Drakkar Noir.
Brynn's confessional continues on that "Trishelle has a really nice body. She has huge boobs." As if to put way too fine a point on Brynn's observation, PornoCam turns its gaze on Trashelle leaning way far over, because the general viewing audience of this show had never read What Are Boobs? An Owner's Manual or seen its illustrations cleverly marked "Figure 1-1: Huge Boobs." Thank you for the invaluable refresher course, PornoCam operator guy. Brynn's jealousy rages on, as she continues, "She's very sweet and cute and guys flocks to her." Trashelle, meanwhile, throws her split ends all a-flutter as she wails to Drakkar Noir, "Oh, I love Jack Johnson!" And who doesn't, really? Certainly not someone who needs to get laid to feel her inner worth who has just been asked the question, "Can I validate your damaged self-esteem by letting you tell me you love Jack Johnson?" Drakkar Noir asks Trashelle, "You wanna go with us?" The booze adds an extra four syllables to Trashelle's emphatic, "Yes!" Oh, my God. Jack Johnson doesn't get that excited about seeing Jack Johnson.
I love this show's establishing shots of the Palms. It makes it look like it's the tallest, only building in Vegas. We're outside the suite in what we're manipulated to believe is mere moments later. Brynn steps off the elevator alone and interrupts a conversation between Arissa and Irulan so boring that we're spared its wrath entirely. Brynn wouldn't care either way. She tank tops (it's so flashy an article of clothing that it somehow became an action verb) into the room and sits on the decidedly-one-person chair with Irulan (I think), who is wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up like we've interrupted her acting out the story of the Hurricane. Brynn laments, "Trishelle needs help. She's up to no good again." Irulissa nod sympathetically as Brynn moans on about Trashelle getting all up on the guys within ten minutes of walking in, while Brynn plays the wallflower (a band in many ways the antecedent to the work of Jack Johnson, I might stop and add here) for "three hours." Irulan employs the twisted logic, "I wonder if she feels like she has to beat you to the punch," which if nothing else confirms my earlier suspicion about boxing imagery and its relation to Irulan's hoody. Brynn notes, "If I could describe her in one word, it would be 'sweet,' but is she really that sweet?" And also, if you could describe her in one word, you wouldn't have just used seven. Six if you count the repeated use of "sweet." Arissa registers understanding in her big, mopey, heroin eyes, adding, "There's something there. It's like Sybil and Trishelle." Which I guess is a veiled way of saying Trashelle is the victim of a split personality disorder. Or that she was on Moonlighting.
Up on a rooftop clearly in a stratum of air above which human beings can string together coherent sentences, Steven and Trashelle stand perilously near the rickety, broken railing (in my deluded fantasy of how this scene should end, that is), dancing the Drunken Conversational Tango. Trashelle tells Steven, "People in the house getting up all in our business is not cool with me." Steven flails his arms wildly and I briefly entertain the notion that he's about to see if he can fly (go, Steven, go!), but he responds with equal drunken hubris, "They're just jealous of the fact that we're having sex." Or the fact that you're doing it five feet away from where they're sleeping. Or the fact that your relationship is a public, groping, junior-high-summer-camp game of "Seven Minutes In Heaven." In a confessional, Trashelle fills in the blanks: "Steven is a really good friend, but I want to go on dates with other guys." Back outside, Steven hugs her and explains it all, "I'm cool, you're cool, let's just keep that in our heads what's going on." Drunk talk. Sweet, beautiful, delusional drunk talk.
Sane Light Of Day in the suite. The Squiggly Hip Font Of Character Introduction lets us know that Arissa is on the phone with "Marc, 9 Group Director of Marketing." Yeah, well. Not for long. In a confessional, Arissa refuses to leave the recapping to the professionals, recapping her job promoting at Rain. Frank offers a bit of new information, voicing over, "Good to be Bad is the theme of Thursday night's party." "Good to be Bad"? I guess the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance was already taken, then? At Rain, Marc explains to the group, "The other thing is to find a nice solid block on the floor interacting with the customers and then promoting." See, now he's not even drunk, and that doesn't make a lick of sense, either. But apparently it has something to do with...skiing? We cut over to Sometime Later O'Clock to find the members of the house putting on giant boots that attach to skis. The Squiggly Hip Font Of Character Introduction reintroduces us to "Jean, 9 Group Event Promoter," who I think is meant to be telling them and us what the living hell is going on here, because when you're already confused as all-get-out, what better way to clear things up for the viewing audience than plot developing in French? "Ahnd today we a-juss gontuh get-ay veel vor de motion," Jean explains, and I wonder after those subtitles they use in loud bars that are so helpful in the complex task of translating English to English. Where are they now, I ask you? Frank tries to clear things up in a confessional, saying, "When we need costumes or to learn choreography, he's the man in charge." Oh. Well, d'accord, then. I leave myself entirely in his however-you-say-"hands"-in-French. I think Jean might tell you it's "ahnds."
I still don't know why they're on skis, but they strap themselves in anyway as Jean implores them to "trah to greate duh smooth motion, dat eets...you know what I mean?" I think I speak for us all when I beg you to make that question less rhetorical, Jean. In a confessional, Brynn indicates that this "ski dance" is all part of the stage show for Thursday night's event, a dance she finds "sensual, sexy, fun." Everyone is practicing moving on the skis, and Trashelle falls over awkwardly, explaining in a confessional, "I really don't like the ski routine. I feel like I'm not as flexible as the other girls." She and Frank practice, looking like they're putting together a routine for Sparkle Motion's talent show, as Jean subtly scoffs and You're A Clumsy Duck-Like Idiot music plays appropriately. In a confessional, Irulan makes a boom-boom-ain't-it-great-to-be-crazy hand motion, spinning her index finger to her head and telling us, "She's not all there when we're practicing." Back at Rain, Trashelle is unstrapped from the skis that bind, and she sits on a nearby stool, sighing deeply and cracking open a big bottle of woe.
More montages of Vegas by day. I've been in that city three times now, and I wasn't even sure it existed during the day. If it does, it shouldn't. I've spent more time outside in the last five seconds of TV time than the roommates have cumulatively since they've been there. We're at a shanty little store called "Emerson Costume Dancewear," Alton excitedly telling us, "I'm gonna be an angel. It's gonna be nice." After a quick shot of Alton emerging from the dressing room dressed in a pimp-daddy outfit so loud and retro you can barely drown out the Good Times theme song that's started playing annoyingly in your head (warning: may only be true if you're me), we cut to him shirtless wearing a pair of angel wings and admiring himself as only I am admiring him. He tells us that he feels like "a complete idiot," worrying that the outfit is going to arouse some sort of free-floating "suspicion." Yes, Alton. I'm sure people will think you're actually dead.
Frederick's of Hollywood spends its product-placement dimes well, as we cut to all four ladies entering the store and loudly and repeatedly proclaiming, "I'm a shill for the whole fall line!" They hold up a variety of clothing items, each one doing nothing more for me than causing the occasional comment, "That too would probably not look bad on Alton." I can feel myself reaching through time and space just to make him uncomfortable. In the store, Brynn continues fretting that her roommates are all so sexy and blah blah blah, adding, "I'm sexy, but not in that...I don't know. I don't think guys think I'm sexy. I have no boobs and love handles." No love handles? Quoi? Help us out, Jean? Holed up in a dressing room, Brynn experiments with silicone implants and tells Irulissa that she can't try on a certain outfit because she's "too fat." Irulissa roll their eyes, in the process almost snapping themselves in half, they're so gaunt and scary. Arissa in particular. Jean steps disturbingly into the dressing room and assures Brynn, "Frahm men poinuv view, you loogreht. Ah dun't knoh what yo-aies zee, but my-aies zee good." Doesn't he have a handlebar moustache to twist in a sinister fashion and a damsel in distress to tie to train tracks somewhere? Brynn thinks about her her her as Trashelle attempts to create a cohesive character arc where none naturally exists, confessionalizing into the void, "Ever since Steven and Brynn's fight, I feel like things are changing between Brynn and I [sic]. I feel like we're floating apart, and I don't want that to happen." Oh, my God, that plot line is so over, Trashelle. So last week. We talked. We resolved. We hugged. We wrapped it up. We literalized metaphors and actually stuck a fork in it when it was done. Brynn isn't not talking to you because of you and Steven. She's not talking to you because she thinks you're kind of a waste. Now get back into the dressing room and put on that duck costume before...oh, wait. That's not a costume at all.
Rain by day. We're back in ski instructing, Brynn telling us, "We thought it would be fun and sexy for two girls to do a ski dance together." She and Irulan show the class something they've choreographed together, Frank drooling from afar and lecherously commenting, "I feel like I need to pay money to watch this." Lecherous bastard. Throw him out of the house! Trashelle frets in a confessional that she'll never look as good as they do, and we cut back to the club to find her talking to Jean, trying to weasel her way out of doing a ski dance at all. But everyone knows that the animal kingdom is set up such that weaseling out of things is best achieved by the weasel, so the other animals (like, say, the duck) are consigned to a life of ski dancing. She tells Jean, "I'm not very limber. But if you want me to I will." We cut to Brynn in a confessional, almost shouting in her disbelief, "I mean, I know she's not dumb..." At which point we desperately need some wholly ironic montage by which we rejoin the action to find Trashelle, like, reading a book that she's holding upside-down or something, because there has been, to this point in the season, no indication that she is even the slightest bit of an intelligent person. I'm just saying, it's nice of Brynn to cut her such a big slice of slack, is all. But she continues on, clarifying slightly, "She can be so duh it's annoying." She can. And it is. And this is also why I carry the often unpopular opinion of kind of digging Brynn. "She can be so duh it's annoying." Exactly. You can see through the eyes that the brain is working. And that ain't true for all of them. I'm just saying.
Back at Rain, Jean suddenly gets annoyed (read: just discovered he is late for a Jerry Lewis Film Festival and still has to put gas in Le Car) and wraps things up in a hurry, telling the cast that only four of them will be participating in the ski dance, adding, "I'm not going to waste everybody's time and effort and energy." He says it all "Fronch fries. Fronch bread. And to drink...Peru!" of course, but the transcription was getting exhausting and what he says here is actually kind of important. Pick up the Francophone, Jean calling. Someone (Frank, I think?) assures Jean that they're not wasting his time, but Jean clarifies that he meant they were wasting his time. Trashelle looks guilty as Brynn continues evaluating Trashelle's Mensa application in confessional: "I can't tell if the airheadedness is fake, or if it's really just how she is." Ask the viewing audience, if they can stop laughing at her idiocy long enough to answer. Ask Jack Johnson, if he's done writing his new touching ballad, "I Have Met the Dumbest Girl (On the Whole Planet, A Planet I'm Sure She Doesn't Even Know the Name Of)." Ask Trashelle herself, the time she removes some barfly's tongue from her mouth long enough to actually offer a response. You guys? I think I hate Trashelle.
Back at the suite, Trashelle cuts green beans in close-up (wha?) while complaining to Frank, "I feel like we're pissing all our bosses off. Well, me." Frank many-a-truth-are-said-in-jests, "Yeah, definitely you." Pause. "Nah, I'm kidding." Pause again. "Well, there might be some truth to that." Jesus. And she's Sybil? There are already too many people in that place, I'm not sure I need The Three Faces of Frank complicating things any more. Trashelle stares with vacant eyes into the camera (an activity she doubtlessly refers to later as "talking to the nice robot man in the empty, empty room") as she explains by way of a confessional, "I think that confidence is something that you get whenever you're growing up back home." Wow. Well, I rest my case re: intellect with that line. Frank assures Trashelle that she's a good dancer and that she just needs to show that to the world, but it's too late. The Lessons Of Whenever You're Growing Up Back Home have already taken seed in her damaged soul, and her daddy didn't love her enough to make her be able to dance on land skis. This logic = simple math. Not that she could do math either.
Irulan and Brynn are looking sexy sexy on their skis, and we cut back to Rain to find the number of ski-able housemates slightly depleted. Alton talks to Jean about how he could still "be of help," and we cut to Alton in confessional freaking out, "He puts me with Steve. I was totally gonna do the ski thing with a girl. I wasn't paired up with no [sic] guy." Alton? You're smart. Don't let your grammar fail you because you have to dance with a guy. If that had been my defense mechanism against dancing with guys, I would have failed out of college on the very first day. Intercut with shots of Alton and Steve dancing their Ski Dance Of Lies, he continues bitching: "I have to do what I have to do. Part of my job is performing, so therefore I'm gonna try my hardest to make it look good. If it can at all possibly look good." Oh, trust me. It looks plenty good. And if you were that insecure about your sexuality, what the hell were you doing walking into a store called "Emerson Costume Dancewear" to begin with?
In the middle, I'm sure, of a deeply heterosexual conversation about football and very straight porn and also football, Alton and Steve enter the suite. One of the girls calls from the bathroom, "So you and Jean made up?" Alton yells back a defensive "Shut up!" because he thought she said "made out." Yawn. The homophobe housemate plot line, without even having a hardlining gay roommate? It seems almost moot. Alton holds himself up on the table as if The Superpower Of Gay is trying to drain his withering straight soul (and someone ought to tell him that position he's in looks remarkably like he's about to...oh, never mind), muttering something about "blah blah blah dance with a guy." Alton asks Steve if he cares about having to dance with a guy and Steve kind of says not really, and Alton bends over the pool table (and someone ought to tell him that position he's in looks remarkably like he's about to...oh, never mind) and fervently whispers, "I care." In a confessional, Steve offers us One To Grow On that all gay people are not evil and that all evil people are not gay, and that gay people are "manly men who like other manly men." This is clearly someone whose perception of sexual identity and politics has been shaped entirely by movies with motorcycles and moustaches and white leather couches and Rocco Ziffredi and "made in, by, and for the '70s" stamped across the side. His bar back home needs to update its collection. Brynn notes that Alton is "a little homophobic" while Alton continues ranting on about "body paints, wings, and a halo" (oh my!) and so on, concluding, "It looks pretty gay." You made your bed, Alton. Now you've gotta lie in it in violation of the applicable laws of at least thirty-three states. Ha ha. Sucker. But, um, not in a gay way, of course.
A rather telling montage including shots of Siegfried & Roy, Danny Gans, and the splashy rainbow sign of The Palms gays us over to a hair salon, where the roommates are all getting fixed up for the event I guess is now that night. Bitch bitch bitching about costumes, and we're suddenly montaged (including a shot of a marquee advertising concerts by Little Feat and Sugar Ray, just to make sure they get in each of the manifold definitions of what's encompassed somewhere in the word "gay") to the big event. In a dressing room, Irulan (dressed as an angel) talks tactical issues with Arissa (devil...finally they delineate themselves for a scene), while Brynn (devil) hates her costume and seethes quietly. Oh, yeah. Love handles. I'm taking down the funhouse mirror she's obviously been evaluating her body in and slamming her over the head with it. Alton, meanwhile, recaptures center stage like he's Peter Allen at the climax of his Legs Diamond stage show, plowing on in a confessional, "And then Jean brings these little shorts, and I'm like, 'no.'" In the dressing room, Alton screams the horrible line, "I know nine and a half inches ain't much, but it's too much for this!" The attending roommates respond with a groan that isn't actually as horrified as my own, and he finally emerges from the dressing room and has the fight with Jean I feel like is being referenced later when they come home. Because I don't think he had a fight with Jean before, but he's certainly having one now. Alton says he feels like an idiot, and Jean responds that he only wants them all to look good, and that he didn't know Alton would respond so negatively to the outfit. "Ah deedn't knodat. Ahm zorry," he says by way of explanation. Jean is sucking a lollipop I think is actually shaped like a pink triangle. Alton, the whole world wants you to be gay. This is actually how the recruiting process works.
And we're downstairs at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, Trashelle and Frank mingling with the crowd while Alton remains upstairs putting on his frilly, frilly angel costume. Just a quick sidebar to say that I was in a show this summer, and one of the guys on the production staff brainstormed a marketing ploy by which he ended up standing outside, handing out fliers, wearing an outfit that looked...exactly like the one Alton is wearing. And do you know what we called him? In public? To him? To each other? "Gay Angel." Because, I mean, c'mon. I would post a link to a photograph of it, but I think Snapfish would have me arrested. But you don't need to see a picture of it. Because you can just look at Alton. He slams his way out of the dressing room door, fuming, "This is the worst possible situation I could be in." Comparing this plight to, say, a refugee in war-torn Kabul seems reductive and cruel on a number of levels, so I'll just leave that comment exactly where it is and move...
...back downstairs, where Trashelle talks to "Ryan, Ghostbar Bartender" (thanks, Squiggly Hip Font!). Frank recaps (sigh) that Trashelle gave up mingling and started concentrating on just the bartender, and Arissa corroborates in a confessional, "Here I am, alone, working my ass off, and here's Trishelle, having the best time in the world." Wait, she's a devil now? Oh, crap, I think I got confused again.
The ski dance is a big freakin' success. Brynn and Irulan groove it up, and Alton is having way too much fun to be faking it with Steven. Arissa even stands offstage hooting as a drag queen (I think it's a drag queen...either that or it's Melanie Griffith) approaches Alton, a dollar bill in hand. Alton takes the bill from him/her and places it gingerly in his pants. Okay, that was a little full-service for what s/he wanted to do, Alton, but you're learning, so it's fine.
We cut to after the party, Alton riding shotgun in the car of "Denise," who he identifies as "a go-go dancer for Rain." I guess The Squiggly Hip Pen is out of ink for the week, then. He asks her if Denise knows Jean personally, and then pretty much talks over her answer as he admits, "I felt like Jean was trying to make me look like a gay." I'm sorry, did he say "a gay"? Because that would really be priceless. But the reason he brings it up isn't to complain about it more, but to tell us, "I felt so much worse by the way I reacted to the whole situation...Learning from that mistake...I'm growing up a little bit." Basically, I just strung together all of the disparate bits of Alton's congressional filibuster until I could create one cohesive thought. I'm sorry I had to do it like a quote on a movie poster for Freddy Got Fingered, all, "It...was...not...the...worst." Anyway, Alton feels like he grew from the experience of shirtless grinding with another man. Though not a gay himself, of course. Hee. "A gay." I knew a gay once. But we weren't gay together ever, because he was also an ugly.
Trashelle takes off her makeup as the other three women cozy up drunkenly in the confessional booth and scream and giggle about Trashelle. They bitch about her indiscretions at the party and non-promoting approach to promoting. And, as Real World law dictates, when any more than one person is present in the confessional booth, their conversational volume grows by seismic proportions, and is always magically overheard by the exact person they're in there talking about. But I kind of love it when this show breaks down its own fourth wall and becomes Meta-Real World, so I'm on board. Trashelle stands right outside the door as Irulan declares herself "tired as the dumb-as-rocks routine." Okay, that gives the routine way too much credit and the rocks way too little. It's not a routine. Really. And at least rocks know how to dance when you skip them on water. Arissa piles on in a bumpkin voice I rather enjoy: "I have the brain span of an avocado." Wait. What's "brain span"? The distance one has to travel from you people to smart? Brynn notes foreshadowingly, "This confessional's not completely soundproof," and they strike a Spice Girls pose for the camera before guiltily piling out past a waiting Trashelle without a word. In a confessional, Trashelle cries that the girls are all against her, thinking, "Maybe they're jealous." Yeah, maybe. She takes the matter to them, and they tell her they think her behavior tonight was inappropriate. Fight fight blee. Back in confessional, Trashelle gets all teary that she "loves everybody in the house so much," and that she wants to make "six new best friends." A nighttime shot of Trashelle lying awake alone makes us feel very, very sad. I guess Steven decided to stay with Alton tonight.
The four ladies congregate on the chairs outside the suite, Brynn telling Trashelle she felt "disappointment" and "jealousy" (which doesn't seem to be a central theme to her at all) that she wanted to have fun at the party but that she was too busy working. Trashelle apologizes eleven times, as Brynn voices over that she doesn't want "a best friendship, but a good friendship" with Trashelle. Trashelle is so relieved they don't hate her that she completely caves, and says it's no problem that the other three girls were total, total bitches to her last night. She requests, "I just want us to all talk like this whenever we have problems, because I feel so much better." Brynn assures her, "You can talk to us." Trashelle leans her head against the chair and Arissa lovingly strokes her hair to the accompaniment of a harp. Awww. Arissa loves Trashelle. Or maybe she's just trying to figure out the length of her brain span.
week: who cares. Kim?