Philadelphia Prepares for Seven Months of Embarrassment

Tonight – in just about five minutes – MTV will be previewing its upcoming melting pot of pettiness, libido, and shouting that is commonly known as The Real World or “The Depiction of Life That Is Utterly Unreal”. This time around, the unlucky host city is Philadelphia – a lovely locale known for its history, cheese steaks, and crack dens. Okay, maybe that’s not fair, but I guarantee that in about half a year from now when everyone is thoroughly embarrassed by this cast, the citizens will be embracing its notorious poverty zones instead of its Real World cache.Amazingly enough, the City of Brotherly Love made a well publicized bid to keep the Real World crew in town after a union conflict almost sent the good people of Bunim/Murray elsewhere. I understand that the show could provide hours of free publicity for the city, but wouldn’t you want intellectually curious tourists who are interested in the foundation of this country, not drunken idiots taking pictures of a random apartment? Oh well. I suppose this is a moot point now.

Real World Philly has a daunting task ahead of itself. It must battle the curse of the Cold Weather Season. Has anyone else noticed that recent seasons that have been filmed in frigid locations have generally sucked? Paris? Back to New York? There’s really not enough empirical data to back this up, but I would wager to say that cold weather forces the roommates indoors which results either in cabin fever bickering or drunken spats. We also get annoying episodes of people moping around with colds (I’m looking at you, Malorie).

With all that being said, let’s take a look at the houseguests. MTV has been touting this season for having two gay men on the cast. Expecting lots of homoerotic activity? Not so fast. Only one of them is out. The other is in the process of coming out. Who will it be? MTV won’t tell us. Tricky tricky. This is what happens when Bunim/Murray gets inspired by Playing It Straight. Also notable this season is how many people are entering the house with pre-existing relationships – aka soon-to-be-destroyed relationships. If my enthusiasm is less than palpable, that’s because I cannot stand all those stupid episodes revolving around sitting on the phone, listening to an angry “soul mate”, and rubbing temples in frustration. It’s clear that we’ll be having many of those scenes, so this season, I’ll be starting up a tally. Presently, we’re at 0.

Now, for the roommates (I’ll post odds for who’s the closeted gay guy after I actually watch the preview special).

Karamo: Apparently the producers sat down and watched Jacquese on last season’s Real World and realized they had been presenting this craaazy notion that black people could be normal and funny and chill without being militant and angry and thugs. Luckily, they rectified this problem by casting Karamo whose main struggle in life is dealing with all his “strong anti-white prejudices”. Fantastic. I’m sure MTV will portray what is actually a very serious issue with all the proper thoughtfulness that it deserves.

Landon: MTV calls Landon a sports fanatic because of his involvement in tennis, wakeboarding, and waterskiing. Classic jock sports. I like ping pong. Does that make me a sports fanatic too? Okay, tennis is legit and Landon also was a wrestling star. I won’t bash him too much about these sports because apparently he is “sensitive about being labeled a ‘dumb jock’”. With any luck though I’ll be able to label him a “dumb person” if he plays his cards right on the show. The good news is that Landon just broke up with his girlfriend of seven years (low probability for Hometown Honey scenes!). The bad news is that he craves female attention and wants a new relationship, which probably means he’ll hook up with a girl (or boy perhaps??) in the house and there will be the usual tedious drama. Thanks, Landon.

Melanie: Hailing from UC Santa Cruz, Melanie will either supply the house with hemp and patchouli or stories about Fraternity Life 2. Her longtime “companionship” with her friend Andy has evolved into a relationship, which fascinates me about as much as the piece of lint I just discovered in my belly button. I don’t like that this “Andy” character is already popping up in the MTV bios. I think we already know that he’ll be visiting at least once and surely popping up every other episode on the phone with one of those annoying Bunim/Murray arrows. Further concerning me is Melanie’s admitted penchant for partying and following her heart. She should have just written “getting drunk and hooking up with a random guy at the club.” Unfortunately, this might mean teary apologies that Bunim/Murray thinks we actually care about. We don’t.

MJ: No, not Michael Jackson (and not that girl from North Shore either). MJ is a recent alum from Vanderbildt University whose life ambitions were to play for the NFL. Those dreams came to a screetching halt when the NFL decided its dream was to draft Eli Manning – and a few hundred other guys – instead. Nursing his wounds, MJ enters the Real World house with a burdgeoning two-month relationship (with a man??). This means that we’ll be getting a lot of “Are we together or aren’t we?” and “What are we?” and “But we’re not serious. I’m allowed to kiss other women [or men??]“. Again, lots of phone call scenes and urgently sad music.

Sarah: This is going to be interesting. Sarah’s the sort of hot girl who thinks she’s a lot hotter than she probably is. She’ll probably hook up a few times and boast about using her sex appeal, but ultimately she’ll be frustrated when guys aren’t as attracted to her as she’d like. Of course this will channel itself into jealousy towards the other girls and petty hatred towards the guy who will reject her after she sloppily hits on him when drunk. Please refer to Brynn from Real World Las Vegas.

Shavonda: Positioning herself for hottest girl in the house is Shavonda, a former Homecoming Queen and jock lover. Beauty comes at a price for us though since Shavonda brings a full set of baggage to the house, including a boyfriend from home (STOP doing this people!), and a turbulent childhood. Jury’s still out, by the way, as to who will be the one-upper of the cast. Nevertheless, Shavonda likes jocks. I would introduce her to Landon, but he HATES being called a jock (and he might like men??). Unfortunately, our fine lass also enjoys being pursued, which has me fearing some sort of multi-episode arc of mind games and endless flirtation, à la Cameran and Brad or Irulan and Alton. Sounds like it’s time for blue balls – and bored viewers.

Willie: Snap! That’s the sound I imagine Willie will be making many times this season as the resident openly gay roommate. Normally I wouldn’t assign such a stereotypical attribute to the dude, but it’s been a while since MTV has had a flamingly gay roommate, and now that Amish in the City has Reese, I think Bunim/Murray might be a little jealous. Still don’t believe me? Willie’s bio says he loves musical theater and he’s not afraid (READ: loves) being confrontational, and he’s often stubborn. Apparently it’s “his way or the highway”. Literally – he said that. Apparently the interviewer cut him off before he could say “Talk to the hand!” In other news, Willie used to be a regular on “Ghostwriter”. I’m sure PBS is quietly double pumping Masterpiece Theater to erase the stink of an MTV connection as we speak.

Now, there’s a strong chance – nay, an almost definite chance that I’m completely wrong on all these people. I base my opinions on no facts. But if any or all of my predictions come true, I will have to gloat for a little bit. So be prepared…

Update

Well, a half hour has passed, and I’ve now watched the preview special. Here’s what I’ve learned in no particular order.

• Steven fell asleep in a tanning bed somewhere in Los Angeles. He was tantastic.
• Mike has joined some new version of Heaven’s Gate. How else to explain the change from his uneven lesbian haircut to his uneven cult haircut?
• Eric Nies is way too old to be showing up on these things.
• Trishelle doesn’t like looking at ugly people on TV. Clearly, she prefers to merely have sex with them instead (let’s not forget her lame attempt to bed Vanilla Ice on the Surreal Life).
• New cast member Sarah looks better than her photos, but while she tries to look like Mariah Carey, she’s still just Sarah, the slutty girl on MTV whose lack of paternal approval has clearly sent her in a self-esteem nose dive.
• MJ’s hair is one part Johnny Fairplay, one part Brandon from Amazing Race, and one part old Greek bust.
• Landon might be Matthew Lillard’s short, stumpy twin.
• Shavanda – not nearly as hot as her MTV photos (so please disregard my comment about her being the hottest in the house). She seems to be the lovechild of Coral and Irulan. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
• Cameran continues to hone her gift for race relations when she describes Karamo as the “chocolate in my milk!” This is good because as we know from last season, she lived with a black person and she thinks they’re cool as hell. Somebody get her an Image Award!
• Willie surprisingly quotes Jim Carrey when hitting on other guys: “I like you. I like you a lot”. It’s funnier if you hear him. Oh never mind…

Speaking of Willie, it seems a bit difficult to judge who’s the closeted guy. Karamo seems ready to jump Shavanda, so his odds are around 20-1. MJ has his debutante back home, and while she might be a beard, it doesn’t seem likely. On the other hand, he did admit to having an uncanny gaydar, but as Dan pointed out, sniffing out Willie’s homosexuality isn’t exactly the hardest thing in the world. MJ’s odds are 5-1. I guess that leaves Landon, the wacky meat head. His voice is a little effeminate, I guess, and he sounds like he’s working through some issues in his drunken stupor. What the hell. Let’s give him 3-1 odds. Perhaps one of our gay readers would like to weigh in on this subject.

What do you think about the cast?