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Like a nightmare that you can't wake up from and keep having, like, seventeen times, The Real World is back for another year of drunken sluttery. Meet the new kids. Same as the old kids. Svetlana has a boyfriend she'll cheat on and boobs she will display. Paula is bulimic. Tyler is gay. Janelle is of mixed race and hopes people will accept her. John is a jokey meathead. Zach is a Jewfroed nice guy. Jose is Latino and buys houses. Hurricane Katrina ruins the introductions...they're all marooned on the Keys before even getting to the house. Luckily, while New Orleans drowned, the kids all survived. Priorities! Svetlana and Tyler ride in a puddle-jumper. Svetie is scared. She airs out her vagina. I'm not kidding. The house. It's yellow and tacky and Florida-y and horrible and, of course, absolutely gorgeous. The kids move in, choose rooms, swim, and then go out drinking. Paula cries to Zach while everyone else has fun. She's a basketcase. Awesome! Svetlana talks to her jealous boyfriend on the phone; she and Zach are getting close. Svetlana and Paula bond over their warped body images. Nothing. Happens. And then happens again. There is no flow to the episode. Svetlana and John take some sort of nap together. My cable goes out for a minute. Good. The kids go out to the clubs again. My cable stops while Svetlana is getting jealous of John paying attention to Paula. But then Paula runs off while my cable is down and suddenly Paula and John are fighting in the van and Paula has a panic attack and everyone is concerned about her. Mostly, I'm just concerned because...OH MY GOD YAWN! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Ugh. We're back. Already. And only with a few months' break for Christmas and, I don't know, the Olympics or whatever. Just enough time to make drunken resolutions in those last few days of the year, when you know you fucked up, but the false and totally arbitrary demarcation of "A New Year" looming offers the upcoming hope of a new start. The purging of all of your sins. No more smoking or shame-eating or excessive masturbation or dumping toxic waste, or whatever your personal demon is. And also just enough time to ignominiously give up said resolutions, one eye on the distant 2007 as the year when everything changes for real this time, man! Unfortunately, my resolution to Never Watch The Real World again has come to a sad halt (along with my no heroin thing), with this, the start of the four-hundred-and-seventh season, "Key West." Until June's "Carson City, Nevada" season, this is what we're stuck with. Let the bleh be-blah!
Let's see. I should do something here instead of just launching in. I know! I'll start with a new feature. You know Entertainment Weekly's Ten Things They're Digging list, or whatever it's called? (I'm too lazy to get up and go into the bathroom to look, lest I accidentally flip to The Shaw Report and learn that "toast" is out and have to stab myself in the eye with the business end of a Mach 4.) Anyway, here is the Top Five Pop Culture Things Stee Likes Right Now. (Catchy title, huh?)
1. So. The Oscars were on Sunday!
2. Hey, what about that crazy Hasidic reggae dude, huh?...
Hm. Wow. I can't think of anything. That was a raging failure. Never mind. Let's get this party started! Yeah!!! Woohoo. POW! [Sound of shotgun falling to the ground, followed by the thud of Stee's body.]
We open with clips of the audition tapes. John is dressed as Scooby-Doo. They mute out his last name, but it looks as if his name is "John Fuckgoat." Fuckgoat runs and tries to catch a Frisbee in his mouth. Svetlana adjusts her enormous boobs. Tyler high-kicks our gaydar's On switch. Paula does something with a sheet. Two ruffians throw Jose into a fountain. Call the police. Janelle bitches at her friend. Svetlana says that her lips are real. Zach shows us a photo of his parents. Svetlana wants to get a nose job. Zach fails to execute a handstand. John hits his friend in the testicles and laughs hysterically. Svetlana fondles her breasts again. John swears.
Opening credits! Florida! Beach. Swimsuits. A plane. Waves. Boobs. The title is tanned onto a girl's back. Original. It's the seventeenth season. It's like those bad jokes about Rocky XI people used to make in the '80s. Only this is true. (Well, and probably the Rocky stuff will be eventually, too.)
Svet kisses her boyfriend Martin at the airport in Pennsylvania. You know, that one. They've been together three years. She's never been away from home for more than a week. Oh, yeah. Martin is getting his ass cheated on! Just like how Jewel is cheating on Fame with Total Obscurity. See, the danger is illustrated in that case because Fame found out and totally left Jewel. Poor Jewel. Warm up the van because she's moving back in.
Paula tells us that she needs a fresh start because she recently became "kinda, a little bit bulimic." She should go to "Kinda, A Little Bit Bulimics Anonymous." I heard they do great work. She hugs her mom, who is proud of her for absolutely no reason.
Tyler loads (heh) up his car. He tells us that he doesn't know how his new roommates will take to his personality. People either love him or hate him, he tells us. A shitty rock song plays. I hate it immediately.
Janelle is from San Jose, and hugs her mom goodbye. She's half-black, half-white and she hopes that people are going to accept her for that. Really? Her roommates on MTV's The Real World? It's not like this is 1951's Texaco Fun Time Reality Hour. I think she'll be okay.
John does a "bit" with his blow-up doll.
Zach plays tennis. He then camera-talks, his giant hair pushed in at a weird angle, as if he'd been beaned in the noggin with a giant kickball from above. He tells us that he's always played it safe, and that this experience is going to broaden his horizons. Yes, it'll make you live a life full of disappointment and "Hey, aren't you that dude from The Real World with the giant Jewfro? Ew, you're old now."
Jose talks about how he's never been to the Keys, and that he knows they have lots of hurricanes.
And...cue hurricane. Wow, it's a famous one. It's Katrina! Hi, Katrina! We get shots of the hurricane hitting Key West (days before it would stall, gain strength, and then hit New Orleans). Paula is stuck in Miami. She camera-talks that Katrina has "foiled her plan" to meet her roommates. Aw. Katrina's littlest victim. We get various shots of the kids all waiting in their respective Florida outposts. Tyler is in a leaky shanty somewhere. He reads to us from his journal. John is in a hotel. He thinks that bad weather follows him. Zach slept on the floor of his room. Wind. Wind. Devastation. Janelle looks out the window, and it's finally sunny. Yay! What a relief. Svetlana talks about having seen a tornado, she thinks...but don't tell her if it really was because she'll die, for some reason, after the fact, if it really was. Hate. Zach is excited. The lens of whatever camera he has with him is crazy water-damaged. So is his hair. Minus the "water" part. And the "damaged."
Day! Beach. Tyler meets Svet. He speaks Russian to her, very excited that she's Russian because he can speak it a little. She acts fakely excited. Her dead face camera-talks to us that she came over from Russia when she was young and had an accent and everyone teased her. Tyler camera-snarks that Svetlana's Russian to a "T," and that he wanted to ask her where her "goddamn mink" was. You do not ask to see a girl's "fur" the first time you meet her. Trust me. They don't react well. In joking about some bracelets around his wrist, Tyler reveals that he's gay. (Clunky sentence, but you know what I mean.) Svet laughs nervously, and then tells us she's glad, because that's one guy fewer she's going to totally cheat on her serious boyfriend with. She doesn't quite say it like that, but I'm fluent in Real World-er subtext by now. (Although, as in Shakespeare plays, there rarely is any subtext whatsoever.)
Janelle -- who looks about forty from some angles -- tells us she knows there'll be some clashing, because she has a strong personality and can be "intimidating." Well, I would have said "annoying," but tomato, tomahto. John pulls up in a golf cart outside some hotel, and Janelle giggles like a moron. They hug. They talk and realize that they're both single. She hopes there are only three girls in the house, because things can get "catty."
Paula tells us that she's not looking to establish "relationships" because she has a hard time "trusting" people. Jose picks her up. She camera-talks that people think she's a bimbo, but that, deep down, she's a "dork." She's single, we learn. (No kidding!) Jose just got out of a five-year relationship. His super-manicured eyebrows tell us that this ex-girlfriend was a pushover and gave him everything he wanted until he didn't want it anymore. He wants a girl who's going to make him "work" and keep him on his toes. I think that, with any girl, he'd be the one on his toes. You know, because he's short! Hello? Hel-lo?
Zach's hair waits on a pier somewhere. John and Janelle walk up. "'Sup, man," says John, and then he says "bro." (When are we going to be done with "bro"? It's bad enough that other people say it, but I've found myself using it occasionally lately. It's got to stop. No, I'm serious.) Janelle camera-talks that Zach is scraggly and doesn't "care." Neither do I. They talk about the hurricane, and Zach tells the hyper John to "stop talking." Hee. He camera-fros that if everyone is as high-energy as John and Janelle, it's going to be a crazy house. John's back is sweaty. They head off to find grub.
Bar. John, Janelle, and Zach toast to "the bitch Katrina," going on to call perhaps the most destructive national disaster to hit America perhaps ever a "slut."
Tyler and Svet discover that they're about to take a tiny airplane to the house. Svet bitches about how tiny the plane is, and freaks out when Tyler mentions the possibility of a plane crash. She brats that she doesn't want to get on the airplane; she asks the pilot if there is a bathroom on it in case her bowels lose control. While she's asking, she's holding a roll of toilet paper, which leads me to believe it's not a joke, but a serious poo query. Speaking of poo: commercials!
Ooh, in between the usual TheTruth.com and Noxema ads, MTV trots out the cast to do a somber "Give Money To Katrina Victims" spot. Way to make a preemptive strike, just in case God doesn't take too kindly to reality shows using tragedy to lure eyeballs. I can't wait for someone to make a compilation DVD of Reality Shows Dealing With National Tragedies. "They cry for us...plus, titties!"
We're back. Tiny plane. Svet is scared. Tyler is calm and red-faced. Tyler jokes about crashing again, and Svet hits him. The plane shakes. Svet camera-talks that she's praying and telling God that she'll be a "good Jewish girl." Then stop killing his son. (Kidding!) She then spreads her legs and flops her hands in front of her vagina to air it out. She looks like a Thalidomide baby trying to masturbate. (Obscure and in amazingly poor taste, in one shot! Take that, Dennis Miller.)
Meanwhile, Zach, John, and Janelle get on a boat and discover that they're all single. "It's the only way to go, dude," says John. Get used to it, buddy.
Meanwhile, Jose tells Paula and us (lucky us!) about his rough upbringing in the "ghetto" -- which is clearly where he learned to wax his eyebrows and wear his yellow Polo shirts with the collar up. Also, apparently, the ghetto is where he got the "Mutual Funds" he cashed out and bought his first house with -- as he tells us. Shit, I guess I shouldn't talk. A relative bought me a fifty-dollar savings bond when I was born. Shit, when I cashed it seven years ago when I was broke: four hundo, baby! I should have bought a house. That was dumb. Paula is proud of Jose. So am I.
Back on the plane. They land on the water on pontoons. Sexy men pick them up in a boat. They boat to their house, which is right on the water. The house is yellow and huge and has a pool and a deck and...whatever. Have you seen any of the sixteen seasons? Well, then you know exactly what it looks like.
Tyler and Svet ooh and ahh for a while. We get the Meet The House Montage replete with generic rock song and lots of fast pans with wide-angle lens. Janelle, John, and Zach arrive, noting the cabana outside and the butterfly atrium. Oh, poor butterflies. Someone call the ASPCA because those fuckers are not going to survive the night. The roommates meet. Tyler camera-talks that he expected John to chug a beer and smash the can on his head. He then says that Janelle was a little bitchy. Zach thinks Svet is hot. Svet thinks the same. They realize that Svet is nineteen and call her "the baby" and then she camera-bitches about it, saying that bad boyfriend Martin "babies" her a lot. Well, until last year he was also "committing statutory rape." John says that Svet's having a boyfriend is going to "get interesting."
Svet and John cook food and flirt; he makes up a nickname for her: "Funbags." She will call him "Sackface." Rapier wits, here. More flirting.
Jose and Paula drive a Ford! SUV. Ford commercial. Ford commercial.
House. Svet bitches that she knows that one of the roommates who are about to walk through the door, will be a blonde; she thinks blondes always get all the attention: "Not that I'm an attention whore." Noooooo. Not at all. Paula and Jose arrive. Janelle has a giant mouthful of food and plays the "see food!" game without meaning to, running over and hugging Jose. She camera-talks that she's really happy to see another person of color. Svet calls Paula a "skinny blonde bitch" to us. She thinks it's the story of her life.
The boys get bags from the car. One of the bags starts buzzing. But their giggling turns out to be for naught as it's just an electric shaver. Boo.
Zach and John decide to room together, while Tyler and Jose do as well. Tyler tells Jose that he and his friends are all very weird and eccentric. Jose doesn't look too happy about the situation.
The girls look at Svet's boyfriend's photo. "Oh, he's cute," says Janelle, but she says it like, "Oh, he's not that ugly." Nice.
Zach says something about breaking up with his first "relational partner" recently. John just got out of a long relationship, too.
Yawn. More bonding. Paula is attracted to someone in the house but won't say whom.
John says he doesn't really have a type. Just whoever is the easiest to date rape.
Paula says she's too old for anyone in the house, and that she doesn't have a type. She goes on to say that she thinks all the boys in the house are beautiful.
John does a bit where he says he saw no raft in the pool so he brought his own...and it's his blow-up doll. Pool montage! The camera invasively lingers over the kids as they get into their bathing suits. Wow, if there was ever any question as to whether or not Janelle's tits were fake...no more. Paula camera-thins that John is too cocky: "Typical dude." They decide to go drinking that night. Really?!
Duval Street. Bars. Motorcycles. The kids walk. Stores. Bar. The girls dance on the bar. John camera-talks that Paula is beautiful but a little thin. Then, in the bar, he asks Jose, in front of Paula, if he'd mind seeing Paula with "ten or fifteen" pounds on her. Jose says not at all. Svet yells at them to stop it. But meanwhile, Paula camera-bones that she's hurt. She adds that she has eating issues, and obviously her roommates picked up on it. Uh, yeah. Because they have eyes. Eat a sandwich, Mary-Kate. Jeez. Well, now she goes outside the bar and bitches to Zach while the others stay in the bar. It's all slo-mo and weird while Paula hangs around glumly and continues to voice-over that she was pumped to meet new people but now she's realizing maybe she just doesn't like people. Oh, wah!
Outside. Paula stands on the street with Zach, and boy, she's not wasting a day in revealing her nutty side. She breathlessly babbles that she doesn't thinks she's pretty enough or big-boobed enough or smart enough, and she doesn't want anyone to look at her. Intercut over scenes of the others having fun at the bar, Paula says that she hates "it" and that she's just "so sad." Zach wonders what he can do for her, and she says, "Nothing." Zach camera-fros that he's really concerned for Paula. He hugs her. She breaks in two. Aw.
Day. Sky. A parasailer. House. Fish. The phone rings. My cat looks up, thinking it's the phone. Hee. Tyler's friend "Fitch" calls, wanting to hear about the roommates. Well, Fitch, have you seen any other season? Well, then you know them already, girlfriend. Tyler describes the kids over shots of them. Janelle is biracial and going to law school and he likes her. Svet is "straight-up Russian mafia" and has "boobs that go on forever." Ew. Where are they going? I like Fitch because when he's done hearing about one he commandingly says, "." Jose has a heart of gold and he's very sweet. John is a meathead who walked in with a blow-up doll. Zach is a "Jew from Seattle" with scruffy hair and a playful attitude. "And we have an anorexic girl," he says, with a glint. He adds that she needs a Powerbar. Hee. He gets off the phone and strides out of the phone room past Paula, looking a little mischievous. Funny.
Kitchen. Tyler tells Paula, "All right, give me the dish." While Paula starts snacking on various things, Tyler says he thought she was just drunk and upset last night. Paula -- her skin all fucked up from lack of nutrition -- lies that she was really drunk, and that now she worries that the roommates are going to think she's always like that when she drinks. She camera-ghosts that she feels like she has to prove herself because they've all probably never seen a girl act like "this." What, they've never seen a girl get too drunk and make a scene at a bar? Then they've never been, like, out with a girl. Or in a bar. Or drunk anywhere ever with anyone who has a vagina. Tyler camera-talks, "The girl got drunk. End of story." Well, not quite, but okay.
John then puts dishwashing soap in the dishwasher and goes to read. While Tyler tries to open a can of tuna by whacking at it with a spoon, soap starts pouring out of the bottom of the dishwasher. The boys laugh, and Tyler and Jose clean it up with towels. "I'm acting as a levee," Tyler says. "I've learned a thing or two from Katrina." Too soon!
Night. Pool area. Jose and Zach decide to fish. Svet wants attention, but they don't want to give her any. John joins them, and they go out to the pier. While the boys try to fish and make drinks and relax, Svet stands around doing prop comedy and asking them to play with her. She camera-talks that she hasn't had any friends of her own in three years and wants to make friends. She's like a puppy here. It's kind of cute. And sad. But mostly cute. Ha: she wants to play charades, and actually suggests it. The boys are just annoyed by her now. Zach says that Svet is exhausting, but (basically) that she can get away with it because she's hot. Svet finally leaves.
The roommates shoot pool. Svet drapes her legs over Zach. Tyler calls her "Slut-lana." Svet is not amused, and thinks he goes too far sometimes and that they're going to clash. See, I know fun gay men like Tyler can get away with a lot, but occasionally one goes too far too quick, thinking that every girl is his girlfriend right away. Like Isaac Mizrahi grabbing Scarlett Johansson's boob when he'd never met her before. That should have a name, like a Sniglet, when a gay guy goes too far too soon with a woman. Call it a Mizrahi.
Svet gets a message from Martin. They talk. Svet tells Martin that she thinks Zach likes her, and that he's obsessed with feet. Martin gets pissed and threatens to kick her and Zach's asses. Nice. They have that kind of abrasive relationship. Svet is afraid that she and Martin are not going to last. No shit. She tells him that now she's going to go do the same thing she did last night: go look at his stupid picture. They hang up. She stands up and pulls the underwear out of her anus.
Svet and Zach eat food while Tyler and Janelle gossip about them: Tyler thinks Zach like Svet. No kidding. More eating. More gossiping. Crap song. Commercials.
Back. Flag. Water. Lifesaver. Cabana. House. Railing. Kitchen. John heats something up. Paula forages and eats some "Moose Crunch." Am I supposed to know what that is? John camera-frats that Paula never eats real food: "That body must be wanting something in it." Heeee. He suggests that she have a slice of pizza and she freaks out, camera-talking that she doesn't know how the roommates can just eat like that, and that she wants to do it too. Yikes. "I'm jealous," she tells John. She says that eating a slice would make her depressed, and then she rants to us about the shame cycle, and...sigh. I know I should be more sympathetic, but she really just sounds insane. Also, the crap she eats has just as many calories as a slice of pizza. They're just empty calories. Put down the moose poo and have a slice, you fruitbasket. The worst you're going to get is a case of Burning Mouth Syndrome. She takes her Sierra Mist or whatever the fuck and goes to the couch. Svet babbles about pizza in a baby voice. Of course she does.
While it's starting to storm outside, Svet and Paula babble about body image. Paula's ex used to love her extra pounds, but she hated them. Svet jokes that she thinks Paula has a skewed body image. Oh, wait. She's not joking. Ha. She's actually giving advice about that. Wow. They both babble and a foghorn sounds over and over and the cameramen close in on the girls' totally flat stomachs as they blab about being overweight. Very nicely done, boys and girls.
The kids sit on the deck as lightning strikes over the water. They ask what Zach's parents do; they own a jewelry business. They joke that no wonder Svet is all over him. Zach says that in any other scenario he'd walk away from her, because she's so obnoxious...but he's attracted to her and wants to see her naked. Zach says that with Svetlana 's boyfriend, he's not going to get involved. Good idea, or else you'd end up poured under some concrete in Little Odessa. More lightning. The kids are laughing.
Raining. The kids play pool with their awesome clear balls. Svet shoots a bitchface at no one. John jokes that it's a bummer that Svet has a boyfriend, and says they don't want to meet him. Jose babbles some crap to her about how she talks about Martin too much and that he's back home and that this is her time to explore life. Nice try. Paula laughs. Svet says that, during the day, she doesn't miss Martin. She then says that if John had a girlfriend back home, Svetlana would be trying to chip away at him, too. John says that he should have made up a fake girlfriend. Paula -- eating nuts so that she can get enough blood to her brain for once -- comes up with a fast joke, saying that John does have a fake girlfriend, and that she's floating in the pool right now, deflated. Cut to a shot of his blow-up doll in the pool. Heh, sorta.
More hanging around. John and Svet go to take a nap on the couch together. Meanwhile, Paula and Jose wonder about John and Svet. Jose thinks, "He's in there." Paula thinks he's going to try but get shot down. Meanwhile, Svet and John talk and laugh on the couch. My cable goes out until we fade to commercials. I check the other TiVo and the same thing happened on both. Sweet.
Back. Night. Moon. Taxi. Out on the town. Duval Street again. Babbling. Ricks Bar. The kids go to a lame dance club like they do every other year. Bad dancing. Bad dancing on sparse dance floor. Svet's shirt strap breaks and John fixes it. Svet camera-talks that she has "respect" for John's body. Heh. They bite each other as she continues to talk to us, camera-slutting that John's really funny and that they have a really good time together. The kids do Jell-o shots. Paula camera-thins that she doesn't really like John, but meanwhile John licks Jell-o off her fingers. Svet watches and gets mad. More dancing. My cable goes out again. Sweet silence. Sadly, it's only about fifteen seconds. When we return, they're still at the bar and Paula is upset and leaving and John is voice-overing that maybe Paula is acting "this way" because she likes him and he's not showing her the attention she wants. Outside, Paula is upset and decides she hates it there and she's on the verge of tears. She camera-waifs that she doesn't even know why she's upset. I do. Because you haven't consumed anything nutritious in weeks.
In a taxi, Paula starts freaking out and mumbling. Meanwhile, John is complimenting Svet's beauty and Paula can't stand it and says, "I'm pained to listen to you run your mouth." They start going at it back and forth with lame comebacks and she insults his penis size and he claims it's really big and I can't believe I have to write this stuff down. Then John insults Paula's breast size and Tyler camera-snaps that "you don't talk about an anorexic girl's breast size." And true enough, Paula starts losing it, rubbing her face and turning red and gasping for breath and hyperventilating. They lead her out of the car and she leans over in the street. Jose and Zach wonder what's going on, having noticed that she didn't drink very much -- that it's about "control" and about something that happened to her that they don't know about yet. "She scared," says Zach. The girls try to calm Paula down, wondering if John reminds her of someone in her past. I love their gentle attempts at psychological insight. Very nice. Janelle camera-boobs that Paula is like a wet puppy and that you just want to "do something" with it. Yeah, kick it off the show and put it on Intervention. Svet picks Paula up and puts her back in the cab. John voice-overs that he's confused and upset because he thinks he caused this and doesn't know if the roommates are mad at him. He actually looks like he's about to cry. Aw.
The kids get back to the house and Tyler camera-talks, saying something very profound: "When you give a girl that hungry, beer...it's going to end in tears." True dat. On the deck, Janelle talks with Paula, who says she doesn't like boys. She says that men irritate her...but clearly something else is going on. Janelle camera-silicones that she hopes whatever is going on comes out soon, because otherwise she thinks Paula is going to go home. See, I don't understand what all the Janelle hate is about; she seems quite nice and caring. Especially considering I would have left Paula crying in the street.
John apologizes to Zach? Uh, for making Paula cry? They hope it won't happen again, that she won't ever freak out like that, but they doubt it. "Sign of things yet to come," John laughs. Some crap song plays while Paula sleeps on the couch. Credits.
This season on. Bars. Dancing. They ride on Jet Skis. Tyler drinks to "the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend," Martin. Someone jumps in the water. Tyler gets down with someone in the hot tub. Paula says that with six other people always in the house, you can't hide from anyone. The kids will be working at a tanning place. Svet is mad that she's not picked as the manager. Jose and Janelle fight. Tyler and Paula fight. Paula cries. She needs help. The hurricane hits. My TiVo runs out. Yes! Well, that's it. See you week when there's, like, thankfully, half as much of it.