I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.
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There haven't been any posts since the last recap because life and the real world have been all kinds of hellishly busy. Plus this one was written in a state of defiant fatigue, if that makes any sense. Anyway:
I mean, the guy used to just be conniving, but know it turns out he's got extensive weapons training. If I were on that island, I like to think I'd eventually side with Jack, but it would be interesting to hang out with Ben for a week or so and start some real trouble.
Logline: Follow two affable men in their 20s as they hang out with Ted Danson.
Plot: My friend and I just hang out with Ted Danson and his famous friends. The goal isn't to crash parties, but rather to just get some drinks and shoot the breeze. The episodes would be largely plotless, or at least, there wouldn't be any inherent drama greater than figuring out what I'm going to wear to any given social event, or whether we can use Ted's influence to get free stuff, like food or services. That's pretty much it.
Title: "Danson With the Stars"
Over at the Willamette Week, I talk about HBO's John Adams. I could sum it up for you, but that would rob you of the joy of reading it for yourself.
Over at Pajiba, I take a look at the second season of "The West Wing."
I watched a few episodes from that season again in preparation for writing the piece, and I'm not at all ashamed to say that I choked back tears several times during "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen." I always do.
This is the last recap for a while. When the show returns, I should be able to return to my practice of making episode-specific references in the headlines on this blog, since by then my friends who are catching up with the series on DVD should be up to speed. (And far be it from me to point out that reading blog posts about a series you're watching seems illogical and unavoidably spoilerish.)
Anyway: Click here for the recap.
My second and final trip to this year's Paleyfest was for the "Friday Night Lights" panel. The rush for the stage was stronger than it was after the Apatow panel, and there were even more collectors there, hordes of people with DVDs and Sharpies who had this weird habit of calling the stars by their first names to get their attention. Still, it was a fun night. And damn if Connie Britton isn't something else, you know?
Also: Seeing Tyra Collette play volleyball on the screen in the Cinerama Dome is an experience I can only describe as transcendental.
I attended the Paleyfest panel last night called "The Comedy World of Judd Apatow and Friends," which despite the vaguely dopey title was a fantastic, hilarious evening. Plus I got my picture taken with Paul Feig. When the panel ended, collectors made a controlled rush for the stage to get things autographed — you would not believe the way some of these bring a Buffalo Bill-level of fervor to collecting autographs — but I headed for the man in the brown suit, dapper and amiable and looking like the nicest math teacher you will ever have. It wasn't that I was overly starstruck, but I couldn't figure out how to thank him without running through every cliche in the book: I'm a big fan, I loved the show, etc. How do you tell someone that the story they made hit you in a place that's indescribably important? And that their work in a way made that place possible within you?
Anyway, I had a good time.
But damn, what a good episode. The first season of "Lost" is still its best, as well as being one of the more solid seasons of TV in general in recent years, but the fourth year, and the latter half of the third, are close.
I don't quite know what I can add to this video, other than to say I laughed to the point of tears at the proverbial money shot.
Just watch it.
And what the hell, here's another good one from last night:
Apparently even just mentioning characters names in the headlines of blog entries can send people over the edge when it comes to perceived spoilers, but you know I'd never spoil you, baby. I'm 'a take care of you.
Over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at "Quarterlife," which was bumped from NBC after one episode. Who knew that bland white people blogging about twentysomething angst would be a tough draw?
Short version: "The Constant" was just completely kickass. Obviously, in my recap, I go into necessarily great detail about the episode's plot and also (hopefully) fire off some decent analysis, but just in case you're in a hurry, know this: It's a great episode.
Well, that's probably a stretch. Let's just say he's doing well under the circumstances. It's not just that Kate keeps (not) screwing with him; it's that he has no other options. She's literally the last woman on Earth for him, and it's not happening.
Also, I was really hoping the kid was Kate's, and that she'd had it with Michael. That would have been insane, but you know you'd tune in every week waiting to see how that happened.
And seriously, I'm amazed at the people who don't watch the show but still for some reason feel the need to comment in the recap threads. A commenter named BWeaves writes, "OK, I haven't been following this, because it just seems like too much effort. What evern [sic] happened to the hobbit?" Well, Dominic Monaghan's character, Charlie, died at the end of the last season, dumbass. If you don't want to watch the show, fine, but what the hell is the point of not watching it and then popping up in the thread and trying to sound relaxed and cool about your ignorance?
Also, in other news, I did an Oscar post-mortem over at Pajiba, and for reasons I don't yet understand — probably because I refuse to do more than skim the comments very lightly — it seems to be stirring up trouble with some people. Among the probable offenders are my remarks about Marion Cotillard, in which I say, "She’s French, she made a really moving biopic that no one saw about a singer no one’s heard of, and she’s coincidentally beautiful." The point I'm making is about the type of film the Academy likes to honor, and I'm not really bashing La Vie en Rose, but I stand by my analysis. Edith Piaf isn't Johnny Cash or Ray Charles, or even Jackson Pollock. In the general sense, most American moviegoers don't know who she is, and after keeping track of the awards this season, I still don't. And I'm OK with that. I'm sure I'll see the movie eventually anyway.
I used the phrase "luscious man-locks" as often as possible. It seemed only fitting.
Also, I'm kind of amazed that no one has commented to ask what "DTR" means. I have to explain it to people at work, but I guess Pajiba readers (a) know what I mean or more likely (b) skimmed.
When Jeff Fahey showed up on "Lost," I just felt bad for the guy, you know? His character looks the way I imagine Fahey to actually look most of the time: Scruffy, slightly drunk, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Sorry, Jeff.
Anyway: Click here for the recap.
So, while watching what turned out to be the final episode of "Friday Night Lights" produced before the writers' strike, I had a weird moment of previously unachieved connection with the show. The opening scene had Tim Riggins and his brother, Billy, at church, where Tim has started going just so he can get Lyla's attention. (The moral and structural issues of this are for another day.) They're both sitting there, and you see them in this two-shot:
I paused the DVR, walked over to the TV, and crouched next to the screen. My roommate, pulled from his book by my actions, looked up at me to see what I was doing. I looked back at him, pointed at the TV, then pointed at myself.
"We're wearing the same shirt," I said. "Me and him. Look." I pointed back and forth to show that not only was (a) Billy wearing a shirt I happened to own, but (b) I was actually wearing it while watching the episode. This of course wasn't planned. I put the shirt on that morning and hadn't really thought about whether some unseen force in the universe might be calling out to me through primetime network programming. But apparently it was.
Here's a screengrab of the scene in question:
For the curious or disbelieving, I can be seen wearing the shirt in this photo, though I would ask you to keep in mind that I was moderately buzzed when the photo was taken, plus the other guy was a drunk stranger at the bar to promote a movie, and I like interacting with happy drunks. So, be warned.
Anyway: Yeah. I dress like Billy Riggins. If this means I will hook up with the hot neighbor who's raising a young boy and emotionally vulnerable to my scruffy Texas charms, all the better. But I think it just means I like pearl snaps.
Today sees my first "Lost" recap over at Pajiba. I'll be recapping this season's episodes every Monday, though don't ask me what's going to happen if the rumored peace talks fall through and the strike drags on. I'm still pissed at potentially not getting all 16 episodes for this season and having to settle for 8. But for now, "Lost" is back, and still pretty good.
And for those who need a refresher of the first three seasons, this is just fantastic:
The "Real World"/"Road Rules" Challenge is back, and I am once again shamelessly enthralled. I really think someone will die this time.
Over at Pajiba, we posted our Second Annual (Sh)It List, wherein we take a moment to vent about cultural items or moments that drive us nuts. Some choice excerpts:
• There was no misogyny in Knocked Up or Superbad. Yet, in the Superbad comment section alone, "misogyny" or one of its derivations was used 26 times — for a movie about a couple of high school kids trying to get laid! … If I was guilty of misogyny every time I wanted to have sex at that age, I’d have been executed for war crimes by now. If you want to make the case that the female roles in movies of their ilk are underdeveloped or based on stereotypes, by all means, do so — I’d probably agree with you. For a readership that prides itself on its diction and grammar and understanding of sociological issues, many Pajiba readers fail to understand the significance of the term "misogyny," and it annoys the hell out of me. I don’t deny that misogyny exists in our world; in fact, I agree that it exists on a large scale. But we devalue the importance of the real issues when we misapply words like this. Is it too much to ask that we use words that suit the subject, instead of tossing out knee-jerk reactions? — TK
• (Motion capture) is also called Performance Capture. Or, to keep things brief, Puke. You may have seen it in The Polar Express and Beowulf. I didn’t. I ignored both those movies, so you may wonder why I feel qualified to write about this. It’s because the previews alone offered enough to know that this technology represents everything that’s wrong with movies, culture, nerds, and "progress." — John Williams
• Plus, I swear more in one paragraph than in anything else I've ever committed to the screen.
Over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at how Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are holding up without writers. (Short version: Could be better.)
Over at the Willamette Week, I offer up a list of the TV personalities/characters I'll miss most this year, unless of the course the strike ends quickly and amicably and we can all get back to watching TV in peace.
...So, yeah, these are the ones I'll miss.
Tigh with both eyes, Boomer in chains, Gaius with no dialogue, and Tyrol nowhere to be seen.
Everything's crazy, but also pretty damn good.
P.S. I should also tell you that I agree with Beckylooo about Jamie Bamber's hotness. Does it make me less straight to say that? It does not. Bamber is one good-looking man.
Over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at TV shows you should watch on DVD now that the strike has potentially laid waste to new programming for months.
And, because it's always worth it, Charlie's song about going America all over everybody's asses from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:"
UPDATE: Josh, you read my mind:
• I have no idea what people who aren't from Texas think or feel when they watch "Friday Night Lights." Do they understand how real it all is? And I don't just mean the small town whose existence seems to revolve around high school football every fall, because people from towns all across the country think they know what that's about. I mean the run-down middle-class feel of it all. I mean the prayer in school. I mean the Dairy Queens and old cars and yards that have never quite recovered from garage sales in years past. The show is shot in Austin, and watching it felt like being home.
• But the series amps up the football melodrama to a certain degree; it's not just Texas, but the kind of heightened state of being Texans wish upon themselves. And that also works in the show's favor. In mixing real-life drama with (only slightly) exaggerated storylines, the show mirrors the state's actual football-based insanity with the voluntary pigskin fever people invite because they think it's their duty as Texans to have.
• Let's get the obvious out of the way: The extremely shaky handheld shooting style often detracts from the emotional power of some scenes. It's a rookie mistake to confuse shaky camera work with reality and immediacy, but the fault can be traced back to Peter Berg, whose directorial style (cf. Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) places a premium on cinematography so jittery you'd think the d.p. had some kind of terrible palsy. There were so many times when I ached for a decent two shot instead of the extreme close-ups that drive the show; when Tami and Eric talk on the balcony of their hotel room after the State game, we see only fragments of their faces, sliding in and out of frame, and that's a moment I wanted to really see them, to get a sense of their bodies as they talked through Tami's news. (I'm going through all kinds of linguistic hell here to avoid too many spoilers; you're welcome.) Reducing the actors to close-ups too often does a disservice to those performers skilled enough to use their bodies to send the kind of messages dialogue will never adequately express. When two people are having a DTR, for instance, I want to be able to see (again, for instance) him move toward her and her flinch away, or her shoulders soften as she scoots just a little closer. And I feel like I missed some of those moments.
• Plus, there are almost no establishing shots. None. You get used to it after a while, in a kind of "Hey, I guess the action has shifted to the school again suddenly" kind of way.
• But those legitimate technical quibbles still can't dilute the series' awesome first season, which is about life and love and growing up, as cliched as that all sounds. And over the course of the first season, the show makes clear that the only way to grow up is to give up on your parents. It's no accident that, aside from the coach and his wife, every other set of parents is deeply flawed in some way, guilty of the neartsightedness or inflexibility that are the hallmarks of being a teen. This is an ingenious way to amplify the kids' struggles: They are faced with the choice of committing the sins of their fathers (or mothers) or choosing to move on. Tyra's mother is codependent and weak-willed; Lyla's father is unfaithful; Jason's parents attempt to control him; Tim's absentee father is an abusive drunk; etc., etc. For the young men and women of Dillon, Texas, growing up means letting go of your parents' failures and rescuing them from self-destruction, and then picking yourself up and moving on down the road.
• This is why the coach's decision to transfer to TMU has such resonance when it's unveiled before the State game. Throughout the entire season, the coach has acted as a loving parent to Julie and a willing mentor to his players, but the season finale and biggest game of the year is the chance for the team to finally realize that no adult, no grown-up, will ever stay with them all the way. In a rare moment of clarity, Smash says to his teammates, "It's up to us now." This is the boys' ultimate test: To go it alone.
• Additionally, the series has helped me understand just why exactly I don't care about college or pro sports at all, and the reason is so simple I'm amazed I haven't been able to articulate it until now. It's not that I categorically hate anything to do with sports; I like a good sports movie (Hoosiers, Bull Durham, Rudy) as much as the next guy. But "Friday Night Lights" works for me because it's not just about the game, but about the people playing it. I'm not just marveling at the grace of a fourth-quarter Hail Mary pass to win the game; I'm rooting for sophomore Matt Saracen to step it up and become a leader. I can't just watch a game for the athletic skill of it. I have to, on some level, be involved emotionally with the characters, which is why I get chills every time Jimmy Chitwood says, "I'll make it," but can't remember NFL standings week to week beyond what I overhear at the office. And the reason so many people do care about sports is that they believe themselves to be a part of that story; they've bought into the package being spoonfed to them on SportsCenter and are convinced that they know the players and are witnesses to a great human drama. This is all completely untrue, since no one really knows what's happening in these men's lives beyond what makes it to the police blotter, but it also helps you understand why hardcore fans speak of their teams victories in the first-person plural, e.g., "We totally came back there at the end for the win, and we deserved it."
• The point is that I don't care about sports; I care about the story, and whether it's a good one. And "Friday Night Lights" is a great one. It's warm, and challenging, and realistic, and knows that there is no reason to watch a game unless you've given your heart to the players on the field. It's stirring and inspiring in the truest sense in that it engages the viewer on a visceral, emotional level and also pushes them to do or be something better. It's in the way Coach Taylor looked at a bed-ridden, paralyzed Jason Street and says, "You're a good man. You're what makes guys like me want to coach." It's in the way Matt drops everything to help out his aging grandmother. And it's in the electric moment when Smash and the coach stare each other down in the pourding rain in the "Wind Sprints" episode. Coach has already broken the team's ego, but it's up to Smash to swallow his pride and begin to forge the scattered parts into a powerful whole. He grits his teeth and shouts, "Clear eyes, full hearts ... clear eyes, FULL HEARTS," as his teammates echo his cheer and they turn, suddenly energized, to attack the hill once more. It's impossible not to run with them.
This week's edition of Remotely Controlled in the Willamette Week is all about "The Office." Eat it up. Also, it was written as a bullet-point column, like my take on "Pushing Daisies," but for some reasons the bullets aren't showing up online. That's why the flow between the paragraphs is a little choppy; it's meant to be, only without the bullets, it's impossible to know this. Anyway, that's the story.
A rerun of "Entourage" the other night featured Eric fretting over a Variety cover story about Vince's deal for Aquaman, which was still in the works. The scene in question had Eric calling Ari to bitch about the story and the angle it took, to which Ari responded that Variety is like a high school newspaper, saying that "they pay their reporters $28,000 a year to write stories about the cool kids." Aside from lowballing the salary a little, the thing that bugged me most was the headline, which read:
Chase swims to "Aquaman"
It should have read:
Chase swims to 'Aquaman'
It's style at Variety and THR (and the Los Angeles Times, and many other papers) to use single quotes in headlines, not double quotes. It's a space and cleanliness issue, and it just looks better to have the single quotes in headline-size type.
I'm just saying, these things are easy to check, and it never hurt anyone to pay attention to the details. If HBO wanted me, I would work for them in this department, ensuring that the journalism-related props reflect their real-world counterparts. I would do this for free.
You know where to reach me.
• I live in L.A., and L.A. does not look like this. "The Hills" is so beautifully photographed that its vapid characters seem to be floating through a fantasyland (which in many ways they are) of clubs, palm trees, and inexplicably smog-free skies. I've been to the beach. It's sunny, yes, but also hot, and hazy, and clogged with people and kids and birds and the general detritus people leave behind when they sit in front of the sea for hours. But the beach party on "The Hills" was impressively staged and lit, seeming to unfold in an eternal magic hour. Everything looked somehow cleaner than it does in real life, and there's no doubt that this is to make the show's central characters look even better.
• Heidi should totally dump Spencer. That guy's a douche.
This Willamette Week column deals with "Pushing Daisies," which is sweet and tragic and quirky and easily the best new show of the fall season.
UPDATE: I'd like to send my love out to commenter Beckylooo, who's the kind of standard functioning adult able to see that my love for "Pushing Daisies" in no way means I guarantee the show's survival, and in fact, knows that reading my column would reinforce the notion that I find this show to be just the kind of wonderful treat that usually gets cancelled prematurely. Beckylooo, for giving the polite smackdown to commenter Ron, who seems trollish and douche-like, you have my respect and gratitude.
Today in the Willamette Week, I attempt to handicap the survival odds for a few new fall series. But really, aside from "The Office" and a few other lighthearted joys, my heart won't beat again until "Lost" and "Battlestar Galactica" come back in January. That's why I used the above photo from "Bionic Woman." Until the spring, this is all the Katee Sackhoff I'm gonna get.
Upon Seeing A Terrible Artist Named Peaches Perform On "The Henry Rollins Show"
Roommate: "If you just described this to me, without me seeing it, I would say you were lying."
Upon Seeing A Terrible Music Video For "Act Naturally" With Ringo Starr On Some High-Number Video Channel
Me: "This is horrible. This used to be a good song, but this video is kidnapping that song and taking it out in the woods and tying it to a tree and just raping the hell out of it and crapping on it."
Roommate: [Agreeing]"It's kinda bad."
Me: "And then you take the corpse and hollow out the chest cavity with spoons and just fill that with the crap."
Roommate: "Wow."
This week in the Willamette Week, I take a look at TBS' "My Boys," which is low-key, predictable, and completely watchable. It's not groundbreaking, but it is oddly comforting.
P.S. If I were a superhero, I would be Captain Douchebag.
P.P.S. This is somewhat unrelated, but always appropriate:
Coworker: Jennifer Hudson is gonna be in the "Sex and the City" movie.
Me: That's gonna be a terrible movie. You know why? Because the TV show wasn't that good.
Coworker: Yeah, but it's got a buttload of fans.
Me: So does NASCAR. Doesn't make it right.
"The Pickup Artist" is completely nuts, and my roommate and I set our DVR to record every episode. Good grief. I mean, Mystery's weird fuzzy hat alone could be the subject of an entire book. Who dresses like that? You're just gonna hook up with very drunk chicks who hate themselves enough to sleep with men in funny hats, and man, that's nothing to wake up to.
P.S. The headline of the review, for those unaware, is a nod to Magnolia.
So, is the character of Billy Walsh on "Entourage" based on David O. Russell, P.T. Anderson, a third party, or some amalgamation of the above?
I say it's David O. Russell, but I'd like to know what other people think.
This Willamette Week column deals with the frightening sadness that is HBO's "Cathouse." Because some guys are willing to drive to Nevada and pay steep fees to sleep with rough-looking women.
6. Carey Lowell
Which one is the man? I don't know. Lowell was a decent actress but a decade ahead of the "Law & Order" habit of assigning slightly more manly women to the D.A.'s office.
5. Jill Hennessy
A victim of unfortunate period-style hair. Yeesh.
4. Annie Parisse
I have no idea who this is, or why she looks constipated, but she's cute.
3. Alana De La Garza
Again, I have no idea who this is. I believe she's McCoy's newest recruit. Her orange shirt seems to be gesturing angrily at McCoy, who I'm starting to believe doesn't even read resumes of these people, just hires the ones he finds attractive. Smart man. Maybe I'll buy some of his robot insurance after all.
2. Elizabeth Rohm
Of the multitude of interchangeable blondes that have walked the "Law & Order" halls, Rohm was the best.
1. Angie Harmon
Harmon wins for a variety of reasons, not least of which is her accent, still Dallasy and twangy and all kinds of awesome. Southern accents are kryptonite to men from Texas. Sure, her appearance in Lawn Dogs didn't go unnoticed by some of us when we were in high school, but she's even hotter in a power suit, squeezing some punk at Riker's for info. (But I couldn't find a good shot of her in character, so you'll have to make do with the one above.) Angie, if you're ever in the Valley, give me a call, or just make that chung-chung noise, and I'll be there.
This week's Willamette Week column is about "Mad Men," AMC's lite version of "The Sopranos."
Those of you with Facebook accounts can see more photos here.
In short: It was a huge, crazy event, and the crowds were often terrifying. And I want to go again next year.
UPDATE: There's a geek fight going on in the comment thread over at Pajiba. If this thing keeps escalating someone's gonna throw their TI-82, and then the gloves will be off.
So, today marks my first column for the Willamette Week. I'll be writing about TV, which makes me happy, since some of the best conversations I've ever had have been about season-long character arcs for people who don't exist. Anyway:
P.S. When I was a freshman in college, I stubbed my toe on the bookshelf (or something) in my dorm room, and uttered a barking "Dammit!" Immediately, my roommate said, "Janet," and then we turned to each other and sang "I love you" in a rough harmony. I don't even like that movie that much, but you have to admit, that's a pretty awesome moment.
P.P.S. My apologies to any residents of Willamette or the greater Portland area who don't like the fact that I don't actually live in Oregon. But I've been assured by my editors that the TV shows broadcast in Los Angeles are almost exactly the same as the ones shown in the Pacific Northwest, so I think everything will work out.
Title: "Heart Transplant" (or, possibly, "Boning for Marrow")
Cast: A handsome man of stunning athleticism and below-average intellect, age 29ish; a dozen or so physically attractive but culturally unaware women aged 25-31
Logline: One lucky bachelor searches for true love in a flock of beautiful women, but there's more to these ladies than meets the eye.
Synopsis: The show would follow a pretty typical format for arena-dating programs: group dates, one-on-one time, quizzes about a woman's favorite puppy, etc. But the twist is that each of these women has a terminal illness, a fact that isn't revealed to the bachelor in question until he makes his final choice, eliminating all but the tanned and vapid creature with whom he plans to carve out a short-term relationship based on sex and shared interest in wine. The woman who wins will receive money for medical care and treatment of her disease, while the rest of the women will have to make do on insurance or whatever. At the end of the series, the 11 losers will be arranged before the bachelor, who will then have to apologize to each one for unwillingly condemning them to possibly dying sooner than they'd have liked. The host, an affable Ralph Garman type, will intro the women with something like, "You all remember Jenny, who as it turns out as cystic fibrosis." The bachelor's complicity in the dark fate of the women would eventually lead to his own depression, making for a sad follow-up/reunion show in which it is revealed that he and the winning bachelorette wed five months after the show but divorced a year later.
So, NBC, I'm ready when you are.
[Note: This has been cross-posted at Pajiba.]
I'm at a loss for words to describe how happy I am that the phenomenally stupid people who made up the cast of "The Real World: Las Vegas" have been put back on the air and unleashed on an unsuspecting but assuredly grateful nation by the soulless corporate overlords at MTV. The Las Vegas season, airing in 2002, was probably the greatest (read:sh*thouse insane awesome) season of "The Real World" since 1999's Hawaii installment, which was glorious. The cast members were drunk way more often than any of their previous counterparts, which seemed an impossible feat, but they rose to the challenge. They were all also recruited to have sex with each other. This wasn't particularly new to "The Real World," which by the end of the '90s had come a long way from deigning to put fairly average-looking people on TV as it did in its auspicious first run; sorry, but those original New Yorkers weren't exactly photogenic. But most seasons included at least one cast member who was on the show simply because they were an entertaining person, not because they were expected to get laid with any kind of regularity. Examples include Seattle's Irene, who was infamously bitch-slapped by Stephen the day she left the house, and Hawaii's Matt, who was affable and goofy and didn't do much all season except watch Colin and Amaya implode and put up with the deeply weird sexual advances of Kaia, who even as a teenager freaked me out.1 But the Vegas kids: Now, there was a group of people whose sole purpose was to screw on camera. The first episode involved all kinds of hot tub shenanigans and three-way kisses and crazy amounts of sexual tensions, as if the dumbest and hottest kids at your high school had been dropped into a giant terrarium with a sixer of PBR and five hits of X and told to just have a good time. It promised nothing but glorious drama — by which I mean the kind manufactured by reality TV producers and emotionally stunted women and men, not genuine interpersonal conflict that leads to growth — and it delivered. It even launched the "career" of Trishelle, who would go on to appear on a few of the Challenges as well as pose for Playboy pictorial. (Not that that itself is terribly original; "Road Rules: South Pacific" cast member Cara also stripped for Hugh Hefner and was even a Playmate of the Month. Even in softcore porn, Trishelle is a loser2.)
Anyway, perhaps realizing that the show has been tanking in recent years — I kept hoping one of the roommates on the Key West season would die since it was filmed when Hurricane Rita hit — executive producer Jonathan Murray and Satan got together and decided to whip up "Reunited: The Real World — Las Vegas," which picks up 5 years later by rounding up all the roommates and putting them back in that suite at the Palms, where precedent points to the inevitable drama, drinking, and sexually ambiguous practices for which "The Real World" so desperately aims. And man, right away the show is fantastic, by which I mean everyone is just as dumb as you remember them being. Maybe even more so. I love you, MTV.
My memories of the terms on which the roommates parted is pretty fuzzy, but so far it's been great to see Frank and Steven palling around like some kind of Rat Pack reinterpreted by guys who think K-Fed was onto something. I remember some tension between them toward the beginning of the original Vegas season because Frank, who sported a high-wall haircut kinda like Dignan, privately confessed his desire to get all up inside Trishelle to Steven, who subsequently encouraged Frank to go after her while Steven himself played it cool and hung back, essentially setting up Frank for the fall because Frank was willing to go after her, and that kind of directness was bound to backfire. I guess, thinking about it, that this is actually pretty devious of Steven, but I still don't think it means his ability to pull off a hormone-driven scheme means he's any kind of scholar, just that he probably watched a lot of TV and had the kind of high school experience that most people don't (i.e., he got laid way more often). But anyway, now they seem to be copacetic, meaning the story editors are going to have to work to come up with some sufficiently dramatic storylines; so far Steven got hammered and maybe assaulted a girl by the pool, earning him an episode-long ban from the patio that Frank valiantly and successfully fought to have overturned, which is pretty weak plotting. Then again, the fact we're only a couple episodes in and they're already getting so drunk they're attacking strangers can be nothing but a good sign.
The girls promise to bring infinitely more drama, mainly because (a) women can do this like falling off a log, and (b) "The Real World" usually exclusively casts the kind of dumb alpha-girls who make other girls look really horrible by association. Granted, the producers do this with the men, too. But the men usually — usually — are just extreme versions of guys you know; they drink and fart and play basketball, just all to a greater extent and with a lot more riding on it. However, the women are often terrifying creatures, the kind of weird girls who got really into being manipulative ice queens in high school and have made the tragic mistake of thinking people in the real world3 can and do and should still act like that. Part of this is the fact that this particular cast includes four women and three men; had the balance fallen the other way, the season would have been more slanted toward mysogyny and fistfights. It's also an apparent oversight that the casting of the original season had a pretty huge overlap with Irulan and Arissa, both light-skinned black women prone to tears. Usually, MTV and Bunim-Murray Productions try to spread around the stereotypes. For instance, the Denver season had two Christian guys, which normally would've been overkill, except that one of them was black and conservative and one was pretty and blonde and gay. See? Spread it around. But for the sake of the show, Irulan and Arissa are pretty much the same person. The downside of this is that it's harder to care about either of them; the upside is that having two equally crazy people who are crazy in such similar ways in one apartment is a lot more dynamic, and guaranteed to start some pretty messed-up stuff.
It's also hilarious and sad to see Brynn, who's still cute and relatively spunky, carting her infant around Las Vegas. It's not surprising that she got married and spawned in the years since her brief stint as a reality TV star ended, but I really hope that kid doesn't have any kind of congenital defects or alcohol-related problems that have yet to make themselves known, because mama was and is a partier. But the fact that she has a kid, damaged though that kid might become, also makes her the most human, instead of the dramatic placeholders and caricatures that the rest of the roommates became.
Ultimately, "Reunited: The Real World — Las Vegas" is one of the greatest ideas MTV has ever had, and also the surest sign yet that the network's eventual downfall is inevitable. MTV cultivates a mindset that of both infinitely reusability and instant forgettability; this is how videos can dominate "TRL" for weeks at a time4, only to be promptly forgotten when something better newer comes along. It's also how MTV can keep churning out the exact same reality show for 15 years but slap on a facade of freshness by relocating to a new and as-yet-unsullied (by the roommates anyway) city. But the reunited Vegas cast is being recycled from something that already aired, and not just the specific concept, but the actual people. These people aren't supposed to be here; we finished with them a long time ago. By turning back on itself and offering up a part of its past as something ostensibly new, MTV is effectively eating itself. It won't be long before the kids are being reunited to talk about what it was like to be reunited, and what used to be seven fresh-faced and weak-willed individuals wil have transformed into a bland entity whose sole purpose is to sell the worth of its own existence. So drink up, kids; you're only young twice.
1. The Hawaii season actually highlights the inherent problem of casting more intellectually gifted roommates, namely, the fact that gay elitist Justin hated everyone else because he (probably rightly) thought they were kinda slow. He said that fellow cast member Teck's antics were "so tired it's comatose." Justin quit the show to go back to school; Teck went on to costar in National Lampoon's Van Wilder with Ryan Reynolds and a set of fake bulldog testicles. Draw your own conclusions.
2. Google her. She had obviously not yet appeared in Playboy in the spring of 2003, when my roommates and I would catch reruns of the show and one of my roommates, who shall remain nameless, would pontificate about Trishelle's hotness. He, or perhaps one of his friends, also remarked upon seeing Britney Spears one day on "TRL": "Man, look how low that skirt is. I bet her hoof starts right below that." That guy worried me. Anyway, the point was that had Trishelle's nudie photos been available at that time, I doubt I would have seen that particular roommate more than 4 hours total per day, and I also would have had to start using the other bathroom.
3. Hehe.
4. I assume. I haven't seen the show in years, and can only guess at what's actually going on there. But I'm probably right.
