We open on a montage containing evening shots of what appears to be a riveting section of Boston's heralded financial district, tall and impersonal structures so encased in an age's worth of ice that to take a blowtorch to the downtown area would induce said ostensibly sound edifices to not so much burn as melt right on down to the ground. Inside of Djb's nominee for ground zero for such an unfortunate and "accidental" blaze, Sean and Montana party hearty inside of a building ripped right from the "Templates" section of Generic Frat House Magazine. Inside, we are treated to (oh, I'm sorry, did I say "treated to" when I meant "blinded by" again? Looks like somebody needs an MBTV writer's retreat to get his mechanics back on track. STAT!) a shot of Montana's back. Her unruly red mane is recklessly held in check by a black scrunchie in a disheartening reminder that even when we're not face to face with the chronically problematic bangs, there is no shortage of things to make fun of concerning Montana's hair. Facing the camera and doubtlessly regretting his current position of soaking up the view from the observation deck at Bangs National Park, a kind of tall, kind of unattractive, kind of flannel-clad character named "Matt" (cover model for the aforementioned Generic Frat House and Mr. February in their "Men of Generic Frat House" yearly wall calendar. Then again, every month is February in Boston) gestures manically and talks a lot. Montana is holding what appears to be his driver's license and actually deigns to comment, "Your hair's a little short on the side. I like it longer all around." I'm sorry, was that just the sound of Montana commenting negatively on SOMEONE ELSE'S HAIR? Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet guy who's only at this party in the first place so he can be on television. Montana VOs that Matt is a guy she met "at a law party." We cut back and forth between Montana telling us in a confessional that Matt is "very funny" to Matt being inaudibly hilarious, and that Matt is "very vocal" to Matt deep into what sounds like his fiftieth failed Ethel Merman imitation of the night, much to the continuing hilarity of those around him who have been product-placing Bud out of a can for the better part of the evening and who laugh because it's easier than throwing up or switching to water.
Sean's confessional comes busting in with the convenience and necessity of several uninvited cousins who have recently learned that you own a spacious apartment in New York, telling any and all interested parties (oh, and also the rest of the planet) that "Montana needs attention from men. Even if it destroys her life, she needs to be the focus of attention." Back at the party, Sean solidifies the necessity for a "Figure 1-1" diagram of himself appearing to "inebriated hick" in the dictionary (what do you mean? Of course that's in my dictionary) in stumbling all over Montana and apparently riding her (ew, not like that) for her flirtatious ways with Matt. Because Sean's smooth-as-silk flirting methods are nothing if not couched in Casanova-like subtlety. Montana charges him with being "jealous," an accusation of which I am in full support, as I now believe Sean to have been jonesin' for some Montana love since that first fateful moment under the Amtrak sign too many weeks ago. An elegantly edited moment later, Matt appears behind the two and tells them that he's taking off. Phone numbers are exchanged, strangely, at Sean's request. At which point Matt, much like all of my friends who were attending Boston area schools in 1997, hightails it out of the party to call everyone he knows and tell them he was at a party with the Real World cast. The words "and I think I'm falling in love with one them. She may or may not have a forehead" are never, ever uttered.
morning (like one can actually make an observation about linear time on this show without a jaded snicker), Jason and Genesis are walking to a T stop. Jason asks how long Genesis has been dating Tammy, and she is quick to volunteer that they have been together and exclusive for three years, but that they stopped having sex two years ago. I don't want to be reductive about the nature of relationships and how they are perceived by each couple on a case-by-case basis, but, um, exclusively what? Exclusively single? No nookie = no relationship. It's simple math, really. She tells Jason that she really does love Tammy with all of her heart, but also that they "just stay together because [they] don't want to be alone." Jason asks whose idea it was to stop having sex, and Genesis volunteers that their relationship got "too close" and sisterly. Jason groans incredulously. They step on to a train bound for "Alewife." I have no idea where that is. Probably somewhere cold.
Montana, Sean, and Kameelah grouse around the firehouse as Montana, lying on the floor and swathed in blankets, frets, "I think I'm feeling guilty." Montana feels bad talking to other guys while poor Vaj sits alone in New York, letting tiny astronauts plant an American flag on his face and observe that they've taken one small step for man. 'Cause he's cratery, remember. Sean callously tells her not to bother feeling bad, because she will doubtlessly hurt Vaj's feelings if anything were to happen between her and another guy. Well, duh. So Montana gets all teary, wondering, "What happens if, I don't know, if I meet someone in Boston who I really like? I'm worried that he says he's cool with me seeing other people, but once he actually sees it happening, he's not gonna be cool with it." At which point a giant, obvious shadow -- a FOREshadow, if you will -- passes over the room so conspicuously that the entire city goes dark.
A wacky at-home-for-a-smooth-change-of-pace montage that actually includes all seven denizens of the firehouse (hey look, it's Syrus. How's the "not on camera" life been treating you for the past six weeks or so, Sy?) ends with Genesis running down one of many flights of stairs yelling, "Okay, here's the deal. It's a drag show." Kameelah asks disbelievingly if Genesis is actually going to make her "do this." The "this" to which she is referring is spending a night at a gay bar (save my virgin soul!), and as Genesis celebrates in a confessional that she's starting to "fill [her] niche," we learn that Sean, Kameelah, and Genesis will be attending. Shots of the club, where -- please put the children to bed, explicit content ahead -- there are MEN DRESSED AS WOMEN! While I spend the rest of this episode typing with one hand and clutching my pearls with the other (tm owen), I note with typical disapproval that drag queens in cheesy gay clubs all around the planet all cut the same corners and make the same costume jewelry fashion mistakes and end up looking like some sick hybrid of Freddie Mercury and the wacky comic foil chick on The Drew Carey Show, to the ultimate satisfaction of no one. Kameelah and Sean are bothered by it all, too. But less because of the synthetic wigs and dollar-store pasties, and more because of the eternal damnation that awaits them at death for ever having entered this devil's paradise to begin with. Kameelah VOs that she "was not ready for this club." Sean levels with us even further: "I felt really uncomfortable there. Just because people were so sexually expressive in their gayness." Aw, poor you, Sean. Remember when the rest of us were subjected to watching you mount Montana in the kitchen while making Ramen noodles and babies for the better part of an entire segment a few weeks back? For my money, I'd say that a far more dangerous depiction of human sexuality than people who are "so sexually expressive in their gayness" is the far more nausea-inducing, societally dismantling people who are "so sexually expressive in their Sean-ness." Sound like anyone you know? What about you, Sean?
Genesis, appropriately, is having the time of her life. She's dancing, she's meeting people, she's drinking a beer that actually comes in a bottle rather than a can (like she's NOT so much better than everyone else on this show. I mean, c'mon). We see her meeting a drag queen named "Eve," whose boy name is "Adam." Cue the actual drag show. Genesis climbs on stage and places a dollar in Eve's mouth using the conduit of her, well, mouth. An okay show, in general. It could have used a little more camp (what of the celebrity impersonators and Village People soundtrack?) and a little less TJ Maxx (I think that one's pretty self-explanatory), but it offered Genesis the breakout plot thread she'd been needing, and it even succeeded in shutting up Sean for up for, like, a second. I'll give it a 6.5.
Back in a confessional, Genesis beams, "Finally. Finally, finally, finally I got to go to my first gay bar. And I was so happy, because Kameelah and Sean went with me." Back in the firehouse, Kameelah and Sean hold off on their mutual tirades until Genesis is three steps out of earshot before Sean notes, "The worst thing about it was when they had that strip show." For the last time, lumberjack, it was NOT a strip show. One false move with those drag outfits and it's sock-filled bras and extra-strength duct tape all over that stage. The show is about the clothes. The clothes stay on. Shut up. Good thing Genesis is so happy with her great, great friends and their liberated reactions to this night. Genesis returns to the room and mounts Sean as the latter-day INXS classic "Elegantly Wasted" rings through the night. He didn't have to die, man.
I dig with even more alacrity through my personal CD archive on an active search-and-recovery mission for Now That's What I Call Music, Volume I as Fiona's "Sleep to Dream" reminds me of how much I miss college and 1997 and my parent's money. When I surface for air several hours later with nothing more to show for my quest than a mix tape containing no fewer than six Alanis Morissette songs and a gag-gift copy of the Titanic soundtrack, I discover Montana on the phone with Vaj, asking, "How's your girlfriend?" With a certain amount of hemming and a bit more hawing, we're off to a confessional, where we learn from Montana that "Vaj has been on a couple of dates with another girl." Montana discovers her name is "Sarah," and breathily repeats the name, because her competing levels of jealous and psychotic have finally both reached fever pitch. Fiona sings, "I said tell me the truth but you don't dare" and Bunim-Murray go tumbling to the floor from the sheer force that comes from patting oneself that hard on the back, what with the cleverness of it all. Montana puts it into rationalized synopsis form: "I have mixed feelings about that. On one side, it alleviates any guilt that I felt about seeing Matt. On the other hand, I'm not gonna lie and say that it doesn't sting a little bit to think of Vaj out on a date with another girl." Back on the phone, Montana expresses surprise that Vaj would go out with someone "so soon." Hear, hear. I've lived in this city my entire life and it is impossible to date here. No one does it successfully. No one. Oh, except for Vaj, of course. Montana tells Vaj that she's not enjoying the long-distance aspect of their relationship, and that, as she haikus, "Our relationship right now, to me, brings me no pleasure, because it brings me pain." Yikes. Syntax police, arrest that firehouse dweller! Who wrote this scene, anyway, The Real World's new script consultant, Yoda? Oh, wait, I forgot that The Real World isn't written, scripted, or manipulated in any way. Oh, wait, I forgot that it totally is.
Genesis is on the phone with Adam, who expresses enthusiasm that she decided to call him. They're going to go out for some party fun times, and she tells him to come over the house before they get their night started. Kameelah, not dealing well with Genesis finding her voice in the house at all, asks, "Is he going to come over as a man or a woman?" Which would be a little like if Genesis had befriended a member of the traveling national tour of Les Miserables and fretted repeatedly, "Yeah, but he's not going to come over decked out in full Jean Valjean regalia, is he?" It's an act, Kameelah. A stage persona. But she can't hear my didactic life lesson, because she's too busy dashing to find Sean in the house to conspiratorially report, "That guy is coming over tonight. Eve. But he's Adam tonight. That's gonna be some mess." Gee willikers, Kameelah, do you think you could try being a little more callous and belittling of anyone else's lifestyle that isn't, y'know, yours? Oh, wait, you can: "That's what I'd like to see. I'd like to meet Adam." Because it's all about you, Kameelah. ["I wonder if 'boys who dress up as girls' is an item on her voluminous list." -- Sars]
Cut to Sean on the phone with his no-longer-his-girlfriend girlfriend, "Becky," kvetching about the impending arrival of Genesis's alternafriend. Shouldn't he be busy cranking up the Gloria Estefan hits and making sure all the small boys in town are safely stowed away? Preparations need to be made and precautions must be taken: a gay is coming over! From behind him (careful, Sean, he's behind you! Self-preservation is your only priority! Use force if you feel you must!), a decidedly male Adam walks up the steps into the firehouse's living room with Genesis leading the way. Sean shakes Adam's hand and hopes it's not contagious, even though to not catch it would prove Daddy's whole worldview wrong in one fell swoop, which is a highly unlikely state of affairs. Sean tells Adam, "You look a little different," and Adam volleys in an attempt at a low speaking voice, "I'm manly." Down in the kitchen, Elka laughs at everything Adam says because she's absolutely paralyzed with terror. And then Genesis and Adam leave. Sean, Elka, and Kameelah laugh at him some more. Kameelah comments, "The hair threw me off. I though that was his real hair, last night." Sean observes, "This is wild, isn't it?" Oh, yes, Sean. Mind-bogglingly so.
The doorbell rings again. It's Matt for Montana, and the two take off on a date of their own. Matt has unwisely slicked his hair back this evening, and his too-tall lanky frame and Dep-induced fashion hair-don't insures that a David Byrne video is sure to break out in this general vicinity very, very soon. I'm more than marginally disappointed when the cameras decide to follow Matt and Montana this evening, as I'm guessing whatever and wherever Adam and Genesis have gone simply has to be more entertaining from any number of camp perspectives than this imminent yawnfest. Over at dinner at the darkest, noisiest restaurant in the history of the food service industry, Montana wastes no time before mussing up Matt's greased locks altogether when his whole head is suddenly poised to explode under the weighty emotional baggage Montana forgot to give to the coat check guy on the way in. She exhibits her stilted, faux-Elizabethan control over the English language once more by telling Matt, "My boyfriend is seeing other people. I know it to be true." Forsooth, she does. Matt retorts for the camera's benefit with a rather lengthy speech that is almost completely drowned out by the noise of the place, and I fear that Matt's fifteen minutes might slip inaudibly by. I can only hear mentions of a "New York City," and Montana tells him that she lives there and goes to school there. Thanks for that. He laughingly asks, "What I'm saying is, should I practice for the New York bar, or should I..." but then stops abruptly, perhaps when he realizes that the TV cameras don't make the return trip southward. This is going well.
Outside the firehouse, Genesis wears bunny slippers in by far the most interesting development to take place in the entire scene, visually or otherwise. She and Jason are smoking the night away, and Genesis reports sadly, "Tammy just called me, crying. I tried to call her back but she won't pick up the phone." Genesis wishes there was something she could do about it, but she can't go home. A VO tells us that she has come to love the freedom that Boston has afforded her so far, and that she doesn't even want to think about going back to the South. Because it's all about Jason, he looks up into the neighbors' windows and muses in a too-spoken-word kind of way that he wants his life to become "easier" when he gets old and settles down. "You gotta keep growin', you gotta keep learnin', you gotta keep life worth livin', 'cause so many old people are miserable, man." For fear that he's on the verge of a full-scale karaoke rendition of "Fame," I dive for the remote and slam my entire fist into the fast-forward button before I'm cursed with the pernicious fate of hearing him utter another soulful syllable.
Inside the house, Montana assumes the position of lying in bed and wha-wha-wha-ing the series away to whichever kind, poor sap will take five seconds out of her non-busy day to listen to her. Oh, hello, Elka. Welcome to your brief, peripheral goody-goody guest spot of the week. How well you fill the role. Elka dispenses some cryptic, Yoda-like advice of her own, at least until Sean begins yelling inaudible blah-di-blah through the walls and crashes the conversation dressed in only a blanket and hopefully at least some form of undergarment below said blanket, shaking his sexually expressive Sean-ness right there in front of you and me and God and everyone. He lies down on Elka's bed and preaches that he's tired of hearing Montana "piss and moan" about her excess of men, and that Montana couldn't even bring herself to care about the status of her relationship with Vaj until she heard he was dating another girl. Dang. How I hate it to the core of my soul when Sean is right about anything. But rather than this sermon creating some actual domestic tension as would be the case during any other season, Montana merely jumps on top of him and makes playful with his naked, naked self. On Elka's bed. Elka takes refuge from the carnal badness on Montana's bed. When Montana finally calms down and allows Sean to crawl back onto his broken-down soapbox, Sean tells Montana that Vaj has risen in her esteem "in one phone call conversation." Not sure all those words were necessary, but it does prove a point. He calls her a hypocrite, and she dives on him again. He runs out of the room. She grabs a broom and, defying explanation, pries off the blanket to reveal the white boxer briefs lurking underneath. You know what would go really, really well with that scene? A full frontal lobotomy to wash away the image of Sean parading around the house in some repellent form of skivvies. Again.
Genesis is on the phone with Adam, and Sean is lingering around the place in his the-way-nature-intended-us-to-see-him outfit of "dressed." Genesis is telling Adam that Jason is coming to the bar tonight. Uh. Huh. And, "oddly enough," Sean wants to go again. Sigh. Sadly, it's not that odd. I'm not sure how to phrase the question, specifically, but if your response at any point included the suspicion, "so he could see two girls gettin' it on," I'm gonna have to go out of my way to agree that that is probably the case.
Over at the club, Sean and Jason stand in separate corners looking on inquisitively, because apparently the social illness that is homosexuality doesn't work on television without a skittish-straight-people-onlooker dynamic for the folks at home to identify with. Genesis dances a naughty, naughty dance with a girl wearing a pink spandex suit. Hey, look. Girl/girl action with two guys looking on from the side of the dance floor. I don't think this episode has fetishized lesbianism quite enough yet so far. How about outfitting them both in skintight cheerleader outfits and locking the two girls in a cage just to see how much more deviant this can become. Genesis reports in VO, "The girl I was dancing with, she was absolutely gorgeous, and she ended up grabbing me and laying a kiss on me. And the first thing that rang through my head after that was, 'Oh, my God. Tammy is going to kick my ass.'" Pink spandex? I might join Tammy just on general principle.
Back in the firehouse, Jason and Genesis lie inexplicably on the floor, and Jason non-segues into a censor-unfriendly, "So how'd you like humping that chick tonight?" Jason congratulates Genesis on landing such an attractive little filly, but tacks on, "She had braces, I think." Genesis reports that she "felt them," and Jason tells her that he didn't see them kiss. Genesis pointlessly asks if maybe he wasn't paying attention, and Jason wipes away a thin trail of drool before clarifying, "I was watching. The whole time." Well congratulations, oh ye intrepid voyeur. Genesis feels sad and guilty because she has never kissed anyone but Tammy. Let's call Tammy herself, just to see if that's all good with her, shall we?
Confessional. Genesis tells us that she "didn't want [Tammy] to find out about the kiss in any other way besides [her] calling." Like, say, on television. Cut to Genesis retreading the story to Tammy, and then right back to confessional, where we discover that Tammy expressed total apathy about the kiss and changed the subject straightaway. All of which inspires Genesis, an apparent graduate of The Montana School of Emotional Hypocrisy, to report that she is "pissed" and, she adds, "I hope that nothing has happened between her and somebody else since I've been up here to make her that cool about it." Sigh.
Speaking of such various and sundry forms of heinous hypocrisy, Montana and Matt are getting along smashingly, thank you very much. An upbeat montage of them drinking coffee, holding hands, and generally cooing and gah-gahing gives way to the inside of Matt's apartment, where the two sit on his couch and smoke and talk and love love love. She tells him she has to secure her money for "rent," and Matt smartly waits a moment before receiving the director's thumbs-up to inquire, "What rent?" She tells him that she is paying a quarter of her Manhattan rent while she's away, and then slyly reveals that she and Vaj live together, which I'm not sure I knew either. Matt expresses surprise and calls Vaj Montana's "live-in lover," and it is only now that I can tell for the first time that Matt has some kind of New England accent going on right there.
Firehouse. Sad Genesis. Shirtless Sean. End. END!!! Apparently, Tammy has called Genesis back and told her, as reported by Genesis, "I just want you to know that I'm always here for you and I always want us to be friends and I hope you're not mad at me." Then Tammy tells Genesis she just wants to be friends. Genesis looks downcast and pets the adorable kitten who mysteriously materializes as the perfect prop when someone is feeling really, really emotionally vulnerable.
And so ends this episode, much in the same way as all the others: with Montana, alone in a room, on the phone with a guy, crying. Matt tells Montana that he's trying to be "real" with her, admitting that it scares him to put himself on the line for her because she has nothing to lose and he has nothing to fall back on. (Read: Buh-bye, sista.) She tells him that she has a lot on the line too, ending this spectacular hour (oh, you say it's only a half-hour? But it seemed like so very much longer) with the assertion, "For lack of a better word or phrase, you're...rocking my world!" Lack of a better phrase? Than "rocking my world"? Is there one?
week: Montana cries! On the phone! Again! Y'know, probably.