Well, it had to happen. We know that the producers of The real world watched the big fights of season one, noticed how they turned into the show’s coldest moments, and went on to carefully select a cast from season two that was meant only to fight. With that precedent in mind, it is not surprising that the producers of Homecoming in the real world: New York they would take note of Rebecca’s unforgettable yet incredible moment of white frailty, and do what they could to replicate it. Therefore, it is inevitable, but no less frustrating, that they accept the cast of Homecoming from the real world: Los Angeles, tire them out, and then force them to participate in a question and answer game in the middle of the night that would maximize the chances that one of them will say the N-word.
Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the house in Venice … it is The Real World Homecoming 2: The Rebeccening.
We ended episode 5 with everyone in a pretty decent place. Glen had started to move from the pain of losing the love of his life, Tami had had a night at a hotel to reboot, even Beth S seemed kind of relaxed. The warm and healing spirit of Eric Nies had spread throughout the cast. And when we start this episode, things are quiet. Like the calm at the beginning of a horror movie. Beth A has migraines, Beth S suggests Botox to relax the muscles, and Beth A responds that she has had two heart attacks and doesn’t even think about Botox because it “lives around the heart when it ends with your face.” I don’t know if that statement is true, but if it is, it is less terrifying than “we have normalized the fight against wrinkles by injecting bacteria from cow botulism into the head to paralyze the muscles of the face.”
Today’s INCOMING MESSAGE is about sweet old fool Jon, who came straight from his old Kentucky home to the Real World home about 45 minutes after graduating from high school. Can you imagine getting in front of the camera and letting someone else edit, mix and then broadcast the results on national television when you were 18 years old? It was a nightmare when I was 18 years old. I don’t even want to remember that moment in my life too much, for fear that someone will hear what is going on in my head. (To my credit, I made sure I didn’t remember much from that year of my life, thanks to the drink I chose at the time: Southern Comfort and Hi-C’s Ghostbusters 2 limited-brand Ecto Cooler.) (I called him Ecto Collins.) (I wish I was kidding.)
Regardless, the producers have scoured footage from Jon’s time in the house, the air, and the never-before-seen, to try and find something terribly troublesome. And they mostly come empty. The boy was naive and protected, but not malicious. He handled himself so well back then, in fact, that his only incomplete moment turned out not to have happened at all: David admits that his accusation of “Jon asked if he could hang a Confederate flag in our bedroom” was not true. David was joking. Taking the reality of Jon’s southern character and exaggerating it for comic effect. Jon is relieved that he never said those words. Such is the power of television; It can make you doubt your own memory. He would probably be angrier than Jon at this point.
Tami rallies the gang to volunteer at Project Angel Food, a charity that delivers meals to people who are homebound due to illness, particularly HIV and AIDS. They drop off a meal at the home of a big real-world fan, who doesn’t really remember season two very well, but tells them the significance of Pedro Zamora, whose season aired just as this guy was dating. from the hospital after an HIV diagnosis. It’s hard to overstate a) how important Pedro was at that point in the story, and b) how completely Jan Brady season two Real world cast is. In fact, you can see them simultaneously thinking “Thank goodness this guy is alive and doing well” and “Pedro, Pedro, Pedro!”
Our next INCOMING MESSAGE has to do with the cast and their artistic aspirations in 1993. Tami was an aspiring girl group singer, Glen of course had Perch, Beth S something, some entertainment. It’s an element I wish this show had latched onto – the entire cast of season one were artists in one way or another, which made the concept make sense for MTV, but right away, the cast’s key question seemed to shift from. “What artistic impact do you like to make in the” a “world? Are you hot and will you annoy people? “
Nobody’s big Hollywood dreams were bigger than Jon’s. He was a big shot in a little pond in Kentucky, a local country music sensation with a vast collection of color-block button-down shirts to prove it. At the time, it was easy to believe – with his charisma, the screaming through his nose, the vocal styles that were popular in the genre at the time, and the huge edge. The real world gave him – he would be successful. But he says he finished the show, signed with Capitol Records, wrote a few songs, and bided his time. And about a year later, the label said they were turning their attention to another young artist and, perhaps worse, his manager “cursed him.” Capitol left him, came home, took a job at a friend’s church, took a moment to regroup, and… now it’s 2021. He admits he gave up his dream of playing the Grand Ole Opry. He wanted to play there so his father could see him, but he gave up and now his father passed away. It’s a hard moment to watch, a rare look at Jon being vulnerable and a reminder that you have to be tough as fucking nails to survive in the music industry, even in a segment of it as shit and at home and look at them as boots. country.
But it is also possible that 2022 will be a year of second chances. I mean, look no further than Sudden Impact, the boy band that made a three-second cameo in Boyz II Men’s “MotownPhilly” video and then spent decades being in the wrong place at the wrong time and never released one. . music. I did a ten episode podcast about this group: Waiting for Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project, All ten episodes are available now! – and… as to whether they’ll finally release some music, all I’ll say is you can never say never. The country fears artists over 40 a little less and is a little more receptive to a good boy with a sad story, so who knows? I’d like to see him do it. (I also wish that listen to my podcast.)
So okay, the whole gang goes to Borderlands Dancehall and Saloon, the place where Jon won that local music competition in 1993, to see Jon do a concert. He borrowed a backing band from his friend Shooter Jennings, and I still don’t know how to react when Jon Brennan is friends with SHOOTER JENNINGS, and I’m trying not to dwell on it. (But what are they talking about?) (Has Jon dated Drea de Matteo?) (What did they talk about?)
Anyway, the show is fine, and maybe Jon has a future in country music after all, and everyone is starting to get along and maybe even help each other through this frustrating, beautiful, and too short journey. called life, everyone better go home and make them talk about Black Lives Matter.
So this is how it works. They get home, it’s late, Jon would like to go to bed, but apparently everyone is contractually bound to play a game called “fishbowl” in which there is a fishbowl full of questions that will surely make everyone start screaming at each one. other. And sure enough, almost immediately, Jon picks one that he doesn’t even want to say out loud, because he knows how this is going to go, and it’s for Irene, and it’s about whether she supports Black Lives Matter. She gives a fairly unbiased answer, something like “I saw things when I was in the force that I can’t forgive, and I’ve marched for the lives of black people, but I also support the good police officers that I worked with. , because it’s hard work that bad cops are making harder. ” It is a play with a high degree of difficulty, but she hits the landing. Ugh, let’s go to bed, wait, no, Glen needs to get mad at how he “doesn’t see race.”
Tami disagrees with this and has the right to do so. “You better see the race,” she says, “because otherwise, how can you understand my journey as a black woman?” David dismisses this argument: “This is what the political system wants, to divide and conquer us.” They are both right.
And then Glen tells everyone about the time he was in a pizza place with a friend of his and someone called the friend the N word, and he says it, and he’s the type with the R at the end, and, like, Glen: no You do that. You just don’t! Irene agrees, comes face to face and says “You have no idea what it’s like to be a…” and then she says it! With the R! Oh my God!
Listen, I don’t know if Ecto Collinses was especially in Borderlands or what, but this is bad.
Tami is upset, David has gotten over it, Jon just wants to get some sleep and Puck is somewhere watching this and saying, “That’s disrespectful behavior.” We’ll pick it up again next week, and I’m looking forward to it in the same way that oral surgery is done. Eric Nies, send some positive energy.
Dave Holmes is general editor of Esquire.com, host of the Earwolf podcast Homophilia, and his memories A party of one it is already in stores. He also houses the Real World Podcast Truu Stowray, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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