February 12, 2021

"The original cast of 'The Real World: New York' recently wrapped filming in their original loft at 565 Broadway..."

"... a source close to production confirmed to Page Six on Thursday after much speculation" (NY Post). 

Great. I love "The Real World" — at least as it was in the first 3 or 4 seasons. I dropped out after that. The new season will have the cast from the first season, now almost 30 years older. I think when I dropped out of the viewership it was because the people were too young. I started out maybe 10 years older, but that thing went on for 33 seasons. When the people are 20 — or 30 or 40 (!) — years younger than you, their problems and antics get really tiresome. You're talking about a whole season of episodes and getting to know many characters. I seem to remember that after the really excellent 3rd season, things went into decline. I don't think it's merely that I got older and more age-separated from the cast. The show's manipulators seemed bent on getting pretty people to do sexual things to each other. They were always getting into a hot tub and drinking. That's even boring to do, but it's horrible to watch.

32 comments:

MayBee said...

I loved it too! I didn't watch RWNY. I lived just a few blocks away from the home they'd used for Real World: London and it was like walking past a celebrity for me. (Oh, to walk by at the time and see Jacinda in those great skirts she used to wear!)

rehajm said...

Yah, I used to walk past the Boston house on flat of the hill every day. Kind of a cool spot.

rehajm said...

How real could Real World be in this day and age? Seems like just another opportunity for leftie narratives.

Boring...

Ann Althouse said...

"I loved it too! I didn't watch RWNY."

Yeah, I only glanced at the first season. It was the second season, L.A., that I really watched and thought was great, and then came the third, San Francisco — that was much better, fantastic characters.

wendybar said...

Your ex Congressman and his wife, Sean Duffy, were on Real World Boston in 1998. He is a lumberjack in real life now. They have 8 kids. He made too much sense to make it in Regressive Wisconsin.

wendybar said...

Oppps....1997. My Bad.

Sebastian said...

"That's even boring to do"

LOL.

mockturtle said...
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mockturtle said...

BTW, the 'real world' doesn't live in NY, LA or SF. Just sayin'.

Wince said...

Here's what to look forward to on the RWNY 30 years later.

D.D. Driver said...

I love "The Real World" — at least as it was in the first 3 or 4 seasons.

The first 3 or 4 seasons were about 20-something adults from different backgrounds trying to pursue different careers. It went way downhill when the producers started casting only college students and making them run an ice cream shop together or whatever the common enterprise of the season is.

D.D. Driver said...

Your ex Congressman and his wife, Sean Duffy, were on Real World Boston in 1998.

Fake news. Rachel was on Real World SF. She made out with Puck. That was SF, right? The season with Pedro.

(I think Sean and Rachel met at a reunion show, but they were on different seasons.)

wendybar said...

Sorry Driver. You must have watched. I didn't. I heard Sean talk about it in an interview and must have misheard him.

Oso Negro said...

They were always getting into a hot tub and drinking. That's even boring to do, but it's horrible to watch.

I dunno. I had a pretty nice time doing that with my ex-wife and her girlfriend over the holidays. But I'm not really a jog-around-the-frozen-lake-at-the-crack-of-dawn kind of guy. And we weren't making a video of it for public consumption.

mikee said...

If you want boring to do and horrible to watch, try any of the Real Housewives shows.
Drunken women going out in public and having arguments is no way to go through life.
I hope they tip their waitstaff extremely well, because if I had to serve their table, I'd suddenly develop a case of spilling plates on them until they left.

Birches said...

Am I the only one that finds it slightly pathetic that the original cast has nothing better to do?

I'd hope that I wouldn't have three months to give MTV in my 50's. My family would be more important. But eh, I guess different strokes for different folks.

Kay said...

I have to say that I agree with your reasoning for when and how the series started its decline. I did get to see seasons 1-3 mostly through reruns, so I probably have more nostalgia attached to the bad era of the show.

Kay said...

I might have been about 10 or 11 the first time I watched Real World, so I definitely looked up to the characters and saw the show as part of what to expect (and aspire to) as a young adult.

I believe the earlier seasons may have skewed a bit older in age. I think the first seasons may have had people in their 30’s?

D.D. Driver said...
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D.D. Driver said...

Sorry Driver. You must have watched. I didn't.

I did. Rachel was one of my favorites because she was unapologetically conservative at a time when it was unusual to show conservative young people (that were not Alex P. Keaton clones). I was in HS at the time, so I could relate to watch her get berated by her know it all roommates. And I admired the way she held her own, one against everybody.

All I'm saying is that I know she has young children right now, but I'd vote for her if she ran against Evers in a couple years.

#DraftRachel

BJK said...

I stopped watching around Hawaii or New Orleans; I could not bring myself to keep watching a show that seemed to be deliberate in casting self-destructive people for dramatic purposes.

Ann Althouse said...

" It went way downhill when the producers started casting only college students and making them run an ice cream shop together or whatever the common enterprise of the season is."

It turned into something like "The Apprentice."

Rob said...

Puck!

J. Farmer said...

I was 10 years old when the first season aired in the summer of 1992. Both of my sisters were huge fans of the show, and I used to watch it with them. My favorite installment was the fifth season filmed in Miami. It was the first season to introduce the gimmick of having the cast participate in a season-long work assignment. It failed spectacularly as they were never able to cooperate effectively to get the business off the ground.

Real World had become MTV's top-rated show at that point and began its steady decline. Producers were no longer content with relationships and storylines emerging organically from the casts' interactions and instead began casting characters and ginning up conflict. The gay one. The Christian conservative. The angry black woman.

By the time it got to the Las Vegas season, the producers were just having the cast get black-out drunk every night and seeing who ended up in bed together. Frat orgies became the template and eventually gave birth to Real World's bastard stepchild, The Jersey Shore.

tim d said...

i thought boring was good, no?

James K said...

i thought boring was good, no?

Only in Republicans, I guess. Jeb, Kasich good, DJT, MTG bad.

I'll confess I'd never even heard of this show, much less watched it. Never paid attention to MTV.

Kay said...

Season 4 in the UK might be the first Real World I watched in real time. I enjoyed it, but nothing happened! At that point it was probably the most boring season in the series. I think after that is when they began to include the Apprentice-like devices and shortly after things started to get raunchy.

Kay said...

I guess the most exciting thing from the UK season is when they guy got his tongue bitten off.

Skippy Tisdale said...

I think when I dropped out of the viewership it was because the people were too young.

I stopped watching a couple of seasons in when the season's episode one had some guy running around naked. Talk about staged.

Darcy said...

Huh. I've never found cocktailing in the hot tub boring! It's one of our favorite things to do during the Colorado winters, especially after a round of winter season golf.

I would probably find watching a show about people cocktailing in the hot tub boring, though.

J. Farmer said...

@mikee:

If you want boring to do and horrible to watch, try any of the Real Housewives shows.
Drunken women going out in public and having arguments is no way to go through life.


The franchise is terribly inconsistent, but each city has produced several seasons of extremely entertaining television. They're a weird mix of Knots Landing, All About Eve, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Survivor. What looks like a reality show about fake friends fake fighting is really a show about the cast backbiting and angling for position.

Kay said...

Real Housewives is easily superior to Real World. Somehow the fakeness of RHW rings more true than the attempted realness of the RW franchise.