Previously on The Real World: The roommates found out that their job would be writing a travel guide. Does anyone seriously want to take these people's advice on where to go in Paris? It's like page one, bars; page two, clubs; and page three, oh there might also be some cultural crap and shit, dawg. Are these really the experts we're looking for? Then Adam claimed that he breezed through school but that he has yet to conquer the world of women. Like if you have to set a goal for yourself in order to force yourself to hit on women, maybe you should rethink that whole sexuality thing. And while you're rethinking, why not mull over that hairstyle and those dance moves. Seriously.
Eiffel Tower Shot Quatorze. Adam chats up some ladies on the street. And as I say every damn season, I'm so sure these women would be talking to him if it weren't for the camera crews following him around. Adam introduces himself and then lays down his mack daddy moves thusly: "So like, so maybe are you guys free maybe this weekend, or week?" The women assure him that week's open, and Adam promises to call them. Adam interviews that he's twenty-three, single, and in Paris, so you have to expect him to have some interaction with ladies. Again, he sounds like he's just hitting on girls because he thinks that's what he's supposed to do, and not because he actually wants to. Montage of Adam talking to various chicks in the street. Some women ask Adam about Ace, who is standing nearby. Heh. Ace interviews that it seems like Adam didn't think he could get pretty girls in high school, so now he's trying to prove something. Adam interviews that he was very short in high school and hit puberty late. I really didn't want to think about Adam and puberty, like, ever. Adam claims, "I was attracted to women all through high school." Which seems like a weird thing to say, but then he adds, "That wouldn't give me the time of day." Adam meets some Mormon chicks and verifies that they aren't allowed to drink or smoke, and asks them to help him get into Heaven. Is this supposed to be charming? The girls giggle.
The roommates get ready to go somewhere, but I don't think it's a club this time. Chris interviews that they've been hired to write about Parisian attractions for readers between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Leah and Mallory stand by the gate and discuss the fact that they only have a week to do research for their writing, and that they've already wasted a lot of time. What in the hell else do they have to do? A week is a long time, especially when they don't really have anything else to do except hang out and drink. Adam joins the girls and asks what the odds are that they are going to be on time.
The roommates arrive at their office. Leah interviews that their first assignment is to write about places to shop, and that it's due Thursday at 6:00 PM. Brice the Boss, who looks totally different than he did the last time we saw him, tells the roommates that this will be their hardest assignment, and he promises to give them the time they need to succeed. Ace interviews that their job is to go into different neighborhoods, pick out different stores, and write them up. Man, why doesn't someone pay me to do that? Oh, that's right. I live in Syracuse. Not exactly the travel Mecca of the United States. What would I write about? Oh, we have a Gap. And an Old Navy. Oh, you have those too? Okay, then. Might as well stay home. Christina says that their biggest problem is their organizational skills. Brice tells them just to get started, and that they should have started already. Leah interviews that she is the point person for this assignment, so she will collect all of the writing and email it to Brice by the deadline. Brice tells them that they know the deadline, and that if some people don't finish their jobs, they should send what they have, and only the people who finish their write-ups will get paid. Wow, what a stern taskmaster. You mean he actually expects them to do work in order to get paid? And the people who slack off won't get paid? It's like it's a real writing job or something! I mean, Wing just sends me money whether I do my recaps or not. ["Hey, that's just how I do business, man." -- Wing Chun] I can't think too much about how much these wingnuts are probably getting paid to write sub-par travel reviews, on top of their free room and board, or it will drive me to drink. More.
Is the roommates' house called Bianca? Because there's a sign that says that on the gate. Anyway, back home, Christina gets out a map and a highlighter. Christina interviews that there are seven districts around Paris that are "notorious for shopping." I don't think she knows what "notorious" means. Christina is a Mrs. Malaprop.
The roommates go shopping as French pop plays on the soundtrack. Simon and Mallory work together. Simon tells Mallory to write that something is "culturally vibrant." Mallory voice-overs that she's worried that some people won't put enough effort into the job, as we see Adam hitting on chicks instead of shopping.
Back home, Simon and Mallory lie in bed and discuss how sick they are. Mallory could barely make it up a flight of stairs. In a confessional, Simon and Mallory wear knit hats and scarves and sunglasses, and talk about how sick they are. They're clearly not so sick that they can't do goofy confessionals. Although given the timeline of the rest of the episode, I would buy that they are at the point of being sick enough not to feel that well, but you are so annoyed with just lying around the house all day that you get a little punch-drunk and loopy. Simon claims that they are on antibiotics, so they can't do their jobs. Then he cracks up. Mallory claims that they are dying, and Simon laughs some more. Back in the bed, Mallory blows her nose and then throws her dirty tissue on the floor, which is, like, my biggest pet peeve. My husband does that and it drives me batty. Simon tells Mallory that her body is too busy making phlegm to sustain energy. Mallory wants to sell her phlegm. And they claim that Chris is the gross one? Laughing causes Mallory to go into a coughing fit.
Leah asks Mallory how she's feeling. Mallory has a bag of frozen penne pasta to hold to her face. Simon prepares to e-mail Brice to get an extension of their writing deadline, since they are sick. Mallory dictates the email and Simon types. Mallory claims that they can provide a doctor's note, if needed.
Eiffel Tower Shot Quinze. Chris, Ace, Adam, and Christina go out. Ace interviews that Paris at night is unbelievable because the clubs are amazing and the girls are all models. Adam runs up and hugs his friend Cidney, whom he's known since high school. Adam interviews that he thinks Cidney is hot. They all go to a club and dance. Adam dances with Cidney's friend, whose face is blurred out, and her name is bleeped out whenever they talk about her, so I'm just going to call her Blurface. Adam interviews that Blurface is "a dime," and it took me a while to figure out that he was saying she's a perfect ten. Adam and Blurface rub up against each other on the dance floor.
Outside the club, Adam tries to convince Cidney and Blurface to come back to his house, promising that he will cook. Blurface complains that she has to be home in three hours because she has to give an oral presentation the morning. Adam tries to convince her to practice her oral on him. Come on, I had to go there. Cidney says that Blurface will just have to stay up all night, and I guess Blurface agrees because everyone starts cheering.
Adam and Blurface are suddenly alone, walking down the street and holding hands. Adam interviews that he wants to hook up, but that he's not a player. He voice-overs that he treats women with respect and dignity. As soon as the word "dignity" is out of his mouth, Adam slips and falls right on his ass. Hee! In his defense, he's drunk and the road looks to be a solid sheet of ice. But that shit was still hilarious.
Adam picks up Blurface and carries her into the house. They sneak up to Adam's bedroom and get in bed. Adam pulls up the blankets and pulls closed his door/curtain. The surveillance cam switches to Christina, in her bed. On the one hand, why aren't they showing Adam do it? On the other hand, thank God they're not showing Adam do it. Christina interviews that she was sleeping and she heard noises, so she thought Adam was "choking the chicken" but then she heard "a back noise" and realized "somebody's getting a piece of ass." A back noise? Like someone's back made a noise? Or someone made noise back? Christina is difficult to understand sometimes. Adam and Blurface sleep peacefully, their asses all pixeled out.
The morning, Adam wakes up and his pajama pants slide down and his ass crack is hanging out and now I am blind and I can no longer watch television. I plan to sue Adam and get all of his daddy's Commodore money. The royalties from "Brick House" alone should keep me in Pepsi One and Pizzeria Pretzel Combos for life. Adam wakes up Blurface, who doesn't think she's going to make it to her presentation. Adam offers to call her a cab, and she asks him to walk her to "[his] major area." I think she visited his major area last night. I'd like to dedicate that last joke to the late Buddy Hackett. Anyway, Adam puts on a jacket and they take off on their walk of shame. Adam asks how late Blurface is, and she says she's an hour and a half late. Then it gets even more awkward. Blurface is practically running, probably both because she's late and because she got a sober look at what she slept with last night. Adam keeps trying to make conversation and Blurface is not responding at all, and just trying to get the hell out of there. Imagine the most awkward of awkward pauses, then stretch it out like ten minutes, and that's how bad it is. In a confessional, Adam says that when he "has a good time with a girl," he ends up liking her. They reach the train station, and a train is just pulling in. Blurface runs for the train. As she goes through the turnstile as quickly as possible, Adam tries to ask for her number so he can call her again, and she doesn't even answer. Wow, I know it's the Walk of Shame and all, but Blurface is cold. Adam pitifully babbles that he guesses he'll just get her number from Cidney. Adam gives Blurface a quick kiss and she runs off to catch her train.
Adam gets home and asks his still-sleeping roommates if any of them want to come with him. No one does. Adam interviews that he knows he hasn't done any work for their writing assignment, but that he's going to get it done, and that he wants Brice to respect his work. Adam sadly wanders to the train and rides into Paris alone. He goes to some different stores and takes notes on the merchandise.
It's Deadline Day, at 3:35 PM. Remember, the deadline is 6:00 PM. Leah, Adam, and Chris sit in the office, typing on their laptops. Leah's first mistake was in not giving the roommates an earlier deadline, like that they all had to get their pieces to her by 4:00 PM. Although I guess they all knew the real deadline, since they were at that meeting, so that probably wouldn't work. I'd still try it. Adam interviews that he knows he's going down to the wire, but that's how he works best. Leah tells Adam how to format his pieces, and then asks him to let Christina and Ace know what to do. Leah interviews that everyone is supposed to email her their assignments so that she can send them all to Brice by 6:00 PM. Leah leaves the office.
At 4:30 PM, Ace and Christina arrive at the offices. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute. Not that I haven't been known to procrastinate, but I don't think I ever missed a deadline in college. All-nighters? Yes. But I never missed a deadline. Christina asks who's closest to being finished, and Adam says that he is. Christina interviews that she's notorious for procrastinating (hey, she got "notorious" right this time!) so she's feeling pressure to get her work done. Christina is taping pictures into a notebook, and I'm not sure how that's going to help her finish her assignment on time, but who am I to criticize someone's work methods?
Adam finishes his pieces and leaves the office at 5:23 PM. Christina, Ace, and Chris continue typing away. Adam gets home at about 5:50 PM and asks Leah how it's going. She says that the only piece she's gotten is Adam's. In a confessional, Leah bitches that she's "a little blown away at how difficult it is to follow simple directions, to read, and then write, and then click 'send.'" At 5:55 PM, Christina calls Leah and asks if she's stressing out. Leah says that they only have five minutes. Christina asks Chris and Ace if they are going to be done in five minutes. Now, I don't know exactly how much they had to write, but Chris has been there for two and a half hours. What in the hell is he doing? The boys say they won't be done. Christina asks Leah if she's sent hers yet. This is where Leah should have said, "I'm clicking send at 5:59 PM, with whatever we have at that moment," but instead she says she's going to wait and send all the pieces together. Christina agrees to tell the boys to send their work. Leah hangs up and runs back to the computer.
Ace is having trouble with his laptop. Apparently, it's running off battery power and he thought it was plugged in. Leah squints at her computer screen and complains to Adam that the others didn't even use the right format. She tells Adam his is fine, but that no one else did it right. Adam advises Leah to send the pieces that are formatted properly. Leah says that only hers and Adam's are. Leah interviews that the instructions were to send them all together, and that she can't abandon the rest of the group. Adam urges Leah to send what she has formatted right now. Leah clicks 'send.' The drama of sending the email! Will it bounce? Will Brice's spam filters send the email into his junk mail folder, since Leah didn't put anything in the subject line? Can you believe that this is the suspenseful plot line this week? Although I guess it's better than Chris eating the peanut butter.
And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was a movie called Who is Julia? on the Lifetime Movie Network. Mare Winningham played a poor woman who was just trying to take her really ugly son to see Santa Claus. And then there was Julia, this blonde woman who was like a model and married to one of the Hardy Boys, but what she really wanted was to have a baby. So Julia's at a stoplight and she sees Mare and Mare's ugly kid standing on the street corner and she's all googly over the kid, which was ridiculous because the kid was like Mini-Jack Osbourne. And then the kid starts to run out into the street because he's not only ugly but also dumb, and there's a cement truck coming and Julia hops out of her car to save the ugly kid and she gets flattened by the cement truck. And at the exact same moment Mare Winningham has, like, a brain attack and collapses. So both women are taken into the hospital and of course, the surgeons decide they're going to transplant Julia's brain into Mare Winningham's body. And Mare's poor dumb husband agrees to it because Mare is brain-dead and the surgeons are pressuring him. So then Mare/Julia is in a coma for like a year or something and finally she wakes up and she's freaked out because, you know, she has a whole new body and she looks like white-trash Mare Winningham. But with her doctor's help, she starts to get better, and then there's this really creepy subplot where she's kind of in love with her doctor and he's really inappropriately touchy with her and the Hardy Boy Husband complains and the doctor says it's all Mare/Julia's fault when he was all touching her face and shit. So then Mare/Julia and Hardy Boy Husband aren't getting along so well, so Mare/Julia runs away and ends up getting kidnapped by Mare's poor dumb husband and taken to see the ugly kid and then the poor dumb husband tries to rape her, and then Mare/Julia is all understanding about it. So then Mare/Julia goes back to her Hardy Boy Husband and then the movie just kind of ends. So the ending wasn't that awesome, but all of the medical scenes were awesome because the hospital set was about as big as my living room and Joe Don Baker was one of the doctors and the "science" behind the brain transplant made no sense at all. But after seeing a movie like that you kind of understand why Mare Winningham has fallen off the face of the earth.
It's now 6:06 PM, and when did this show become The Amazing Race with all of the timestamps? Chris is showing Ace how to send in his work, and then comments that it was a close one. Yeah, close in that they missed the deadline. Chris and Ace joke that Leah will yell at them. Leah interviews that she "didn't think" to tell the roommates that she sent some pieces in on time and some late. Whatever. They sent theirs in late.
Back at the house, Adam reads Ace's write-up. He groans that Ace wrote about a store called FNAC, which is apparently a music store, and that Adam was supposed to do the music stores. Simon points out that there's also a FNAC in everyone's section of Paris. Adam says that he ripped on FNAC and Ace gave it a good review. Simon says it shows "a lack of communication" and Adam snarks, "Yeah, you think?" In a confessional, Leah says she's nervous to meet Brice because she thinks they let him down with their first assignment.
The roommates head to their meeting with Brice. Leah interviews that she feels like she's done something wrong by not waiting for the other's work, and that she feels like she ditched the group. I don't know why she doesn't just tell them what she did, so at least they won't find out during the meeting, and then it'll look like she was trying to sneak it past them. They all gather in their office to have a phone conference with Brice. He asks whether Mallory and Simon are still home sick. Ace interviews that Simon and Mallory got an extension because they were sick. Brice says that he got their assignments, and that most of them were late. The roommates look chagrined. Brice says he was surprised that he got it "at the eleventh hour, right at 6:00." Has he watched this show before? He's lucky he got it at all. Brice says that's all he'll say at this point. He announces that since Leah and Adam's assignments were on time, they get a $250 bonus. Damn. I have got to send out some query letters. Chris interviews that he doesn't get a bonus. Brice says that everyone gets their salary, and they plan to meet Friday. Leah hangs up the phone and looks around, expecting her roommates to yell at her. Leah interviews that she thinks it's her fault that she got a bonus and the others didn't. Well, if she had waited for their stuff, no one would have gotten the bonus, right? Leah tries to explain that she feels bad. Chris tells her not to feel bad, because they just didn't get their work done. Ace blabbers something about how he thought all of the work was sent at the same time. Leah says she doesn't want her roommates to be mad at her. No one says anything, but Chris comes over and gives Leah a hug and a kiss. I guess he doesn't repulse her anymore. Did she ever explain what she did? I don't know. Chris interviews that he's just glad someone got the bonus.
week: Chris tells Leah off. Leah gets, like, four dozen roses, and they are apparently from Chris. He doesn't remember ordering any flowers, which causes Leah to call him a pathological liar. Or a drunk.