The Electric Slide

Bunim/Murray tried to make a reality movie once upon a time. Some people enjoyedThe Real Cancun, and I admit, I enjoyed the DVD. The ability to pause, slow-mo, and rewind to the good parts(the boobs) combined with the ability to fast forward over the bad parts(anything else) really made it tolerable. I think I am happy that they made The Real Cancun into a movie because I would have *really* gouged my eyes out if it was a television series. Such is the dilemma I am faced with during Real World/Road Rules: Battle of the Sexes 2. I know that MTV counts on Bunim/Murray producing all of these shows to fill their pathetic lineup, but wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we perhaps received fewer seasons and more quality? One can still hope, can’t he?I am going to skip the formalities and go right to what’s important. That is, of course, the issues the girls have simply coexisting in the same domicile. True happiness begins in the home. When you achieve peace in the home, you can then achieve peace in life, or at least have a better chance at winning free shit on a reality show. The men have a nice, boring, existence, where the pecking order is well known. Performance is what keeps you in the game. Well, your performance, and whether or not you choose to spend the episodes with a jump rope tied around your head. As Sophia describe the women “it’s not what you do, but how many people are on your side”.

Actually, it’s not so much how many people you have on your side as how many people named Coral you have on your side. If you are in Coral’s clique, you have a pretty good shot at sticking around, if not, the odds are against you. How do you get in Coral’s clique? Well, I have no information to back it up, but I am guessing that you must live in LA and prove your loyalty in various rituals such as blood letting and virgin sacrifice. Currently, Coral’s main crew consists of Tonya and Veronica, with Rachel ceremoniously shown the door in an earlier episode. Apparently, Sophia is trying to stay on Coral’s good side, because Coral spends the first few minutes of the show explaining how Sophia likes to kiss her ass. Later, she went on to talk about how Ruthie likes to talk when she is drunk, and how she gets all spiritual and tells Coral how much power she has. Conveniently (thanks camera man!), Ruthie is awake and walks in on Coral telling the story to Veronica and Tonya. She then tries to save herself by saying that when she was talking behind Ruthie’s back, she was making a compliment. Oh, that’s right.

We finally get our first shot of Santa Fe(other than the one club everybody goes to at night), and frankly, it kind of sucks. But then again, any time your population seems fifty percent washed up reality stars, things are going to look bad. That’s why I don’t go to the Saddle Ranch on Sunset. Some of our contestants were interrupted from their day on the town to learn that they had to be prepared for their next mission – they were going to need socks for insulation. No, they weren’t going to be subjecting themselves to extreme temperatures, they were preparing to be shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

Although perhaps the easiest word they could have had to make up a funny title, the name of the challenge was simply Electroshock. It required each team balance an aluminum pole through a up and down zig zag pattern on a huge board. The poles were heavy, and the teams had to be a minimum distance from board. The space to slide the pole was only a couple of inches wider than the pole itself, meaning it would take great precision to make it through. To make things interesting, if the side of the pole touched an edge of the pattern, the team would be subjected to a shock of 1000 VOLTS!!! OK, they tried to make it seem really scary, but 1000 volts is not a lot folks. Typical stun guns come in at about 150,000 volts, and they aren’t lethal. Although I was laughed at mercilessly by madeyoulaugh and B-side for bringing it up, I am proud to say I remember my AP Physics. The amperage is what’s dangerous, not the volts. It’s the current stupid!

After hanging my head in embarrassment and shame by my peers, I got on to watching the show. Coral, after doing such a good job at building up the trust of her teammates by mocking them behind their back, decided it would be great if she was then a team leader. Aneesa and Robin joined her on the suicide mission as girl’s team leaders. Randy, Dan, and Steven decided to take their chances as guy’s team leaders. Even though 1000 volts is not lethal, it is enough to send a nice little jolt up your arm, and plenty of power to make you drop whatever was giving you the jolt. And since this game required you to start over if any team member let go of the pole, there was plenty of incentive to be careful as they progressed through the challenge. All in all, this was a challenge that was interesting, required some strategy from the leaders, and was equally fair for the men and the women.

I could probably write a couple of paragraphs about both teams and their strategies(I won’t bore you through another physics lesson involving my strategy), why should I go through all of that trouble when we know that the girls are going to lose? In yet another beat down that wasn’t even close, the guys finished first, and with it took home a prize package involving some mp3 player that isn’t an iPod. Once again, another set of winnings that is going straight to ebay. There would have been absolutely nothing exciting about this challenge except that some of the girls heard Steven gloating about how superior the guys team was compared to the girls. Although he was doing nothing more than speaking the truth, the girls team really got upset when they heard him. Sophia started crying that the guys never gave the girls the respect that they deserve. Uhhh, I was going to say that they give the girls more respect than they deserve. Simply showing up to face the women is practically enough to beat their team. Win a couple of challenges in a row, and then maybe you can complain about respect.

After the whole debacle with Steven, Coral decided to give her little team a pep talk. Just the thing you need right before you go into a big challenge! What was that? The girls had already lost the challenge when Coral had her little pep talk? Oh, never mind then. In that case, she must be giving that little pep talk so when the girls go to vote, they forget that she really hates them most of them and won’t vote her out.

At the beginning of the show, I thought that Robin was surely a goner, because they spent so much time with her and Mark in conversation. Apparently, there is a budding romance with Mark and Robin, with Mark trying to convince Robin that he has more interest in her than her massive boobs. For her part, Robin was trying to pretend that she was actually interested in anything that Mark had to say. Why they don’t just have sex in the pool is beyond me. This misdirection turned out to be for nothing, because the girls didn’t have their sites set on Robin, and the guys were nowhere near voting out Mark. It turned out that another clip at the beginning of the show, highlighting Nick and Shane getting down in a club was a more accurate barometer of things to come. Shane and Nick were some of the few guys left who had messed up in a challenge, so it was a big tossup as to who was going to be the last gay guy left standing at the ranch.

The girls team, which is never worth watching for the big fight they put in to each challenge, at least was good for some post-challenge loss drama. Alas, they were not even good enough for any of that. Perhaps the producers were getting sick of cutting for this episode, but all we got was a bunch of whining about who to vote for and then a cut to elimination hill.

Jonny Mosely, who finds it harder and harder to finish sentences each week, asked for the teams to name their losers, and Aneesa and Nick were sent home. Both pretty much knew their fate. Nick lasted fairly long almost had the honor of being the last Road Rules: Xtreme cast member kicked out. That honor will eventually go to Ibis, and there is more than enough of her these days to take on that challenge. Aneesa probably should have been kicked out earlier, because she hasn’t done much of anything to warrant lasting even this long. That leaves only Sophia and Ruthie to carry on the honored tradition that defines lesbians on Bunim/Murray programming.