The Real World Homecoming: New York is exactly the sort of nostalgia trip you'd expect
TV Reviews The Real World
It must be fairly weird to be one of the original cast members of The Real World. This strange documentary project they signed up for—without really knowing what it would entail—turned out to be the launchpad for modern reality television as we know it. Once it hit MTV’s airwaves back in 1992 (and then re-aired, and re-aired, and re-aired…), the series provided an intensely bright 15 minutes of fame for its somewhat bewildered stars, before largely returning them to the same life they had prior to the show (most of them, anyway), albeit with the new caveat that they’re now periodically recognized as “that person from that MTV show.” So maybe the following isn’t surprising: If there’s one thing that seems clear from the first episode of The Real World Homecoming: New York, it’s that the show, and its after-effects, had an unusually intense impact on them.
To get the obvious question out of the way first: No, I can’t imagine this being of much interest to people who didn’t watch the first season of The Real World, either in its original airing, during subsequent reruns, or on DVD. Outside of those curious about the history of reality television or media studies folks, this reunion of the original “seven strangers, picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped” is mostly a nostalgia-driven affair, a chance to do some then-and-now comparisons and watch old roommates rekindle their friendships. (And fights—but that doesn’t look to be happening until later in the season.) But for those of us who watched (and re-watched, and re-watched, and re-watched…) the first season of MTV’s groundbreaking series, this thing is pure catnip. Within the first five minutes, I was having flashbacks to scenes from the original show; though these were soon helped along by actual flashbacks, cut repeatedly into the episode, ad nauseam, to continually remind and prompt viewers to reflect on the fact that none of this means anything without knowledge of what came before. Halfway through, I was dying to know more about where everyone was in their life at this point. But the show isn’t stupid—it’s saving a lot of those nuggets for later, and counting on the fact that most of the seven aren’t very well known anymore, and thus a quick Wikipedia search won’t reveal the good stuff we’re after.
What immediately becomes clear is that producers know the focus has shifted, in terms of who and what they’re going to be spending time on during this series. What made the first season feel so unexpectedly authentic back when it debuted was that the people behind the cameras were making it up as they went along, with very little idea of how to craft narratives and manufacture the kind of bogus reality-TV drama the series later perfected and passed on into the DNA of a thousand other shows, like a particularly stupid virus. As a result, much of that first season was literally just watching people live their lives in New York City. Housemates Becky Blasband, Andre Comeau, Heather B. Gardner, Julie Gentry, Norman Korpi, Eric Nies and Kevin Powell all had jobs and/or individual careers they were pursuing, and the show mostly let the unfiltered messiness of that existence play out unimpeded.
Not for lack of trying, it should be acknowledged: As Norman told the Oprah Winfrey Network during a “Where are they now?” retrospective five years ago, all the producers’ clumsy initial efforts to fabricate stock narratives and generic hoary tropes—from pitting Southern girl Julie against his gay urbanite to trying to force a romantic connection between Eric and Julie—failed miserably. But those early fumblings meant the first season was edited with a strong focus on Eric and Julie, for example, leading to the occasional dearth of screen time for the others. This time around, not only are such mistakes laughingly acknowledged, but producers have gotten much, much better at this; they know that 2021 calls for a deeper exploration of the explosive discussions around race that helped give the original series such raw frisson. As such, the episode progresses in a manner that demonstrates a plan to craft a slick unpacking of racism and collective growth—but these people aren’t necessarily going to follow the dictates of producers. They already did this once, and on their own terms, which is what makes the promise of the season appealing for fans of the original.
Thanks to the cast, there’s still some charming grit in the cogs of what’s become a predictably smooth form of reality-TV blandness. Much in the same way that people often fall back into old habits when they come home for a visit, Heather, Becky, and the rest of the former roomies immediately proceed to commandeer their old loft (yes, they’re back in the original place) with an easy camaraderie and bonhomie rare in the era of people raised to know how to talk to a camera. (They express surprise and unleash some good-natured mockery at the “confessional” room added on, a now-staple of the genre that didn’t exist until the second season.) It’s actually pretty sweet: Julie, Becky, and Norman all start crying before they even set foot in the place, overcome by emotion at the prospect of all of them back together for the first time since a reunion special a year after the show originally aired. There are copious hugs, and Heather even brought along what seems like an entire bar’s worth of booze with her.
Of course, the elation is short-lived; after six of them arrive and wait for their tardy final roomie, the TV flickers to life, and Eric Nies appears, bearing some bad news: He tested positive for coronavirus, literally on the last day of interviews right before they were set to move into the loft. As a result, he’ll be participating in discussions via camera, much to the dismay of everyone else—especially Heather, who apparently has maintained her bond with Nies and had been texting with him at length prior to the beginning of filming. But he’s healthy, for now anyway, so the good vibes endure, leading to a nice reminiscence about how dumb and earnest everyone was back then, followed by some video chats with children and heartfelt recalling of old in-jokes. (Norman lets slip that Heather has kids now, and Heather chastises him: “Norman is a leaky faucet!”)
But while Becky and Andre trade off acoustic guitars, and Heather and Julie call Julie’s 17-year-old daughter, the show quietly shifts its focus to Kevin. The writer and activist is arguably the most visible public member of the original cast (though Sirius XM radio cohost Heather is a close second), having spent the past 30 years building a remarkable career as an educator, journalist, lecturer, and scholar, all while maintaining a commitment to his activism. (“I’ve been woke for a long time,” he says with a smile during one interview.) Showing clips of his often tempestuous fights with his housemates back in the day over thorny issues of race, nationalism, and more, the show paints two clear narratives. One is that Kevin was absolutely spot-on back then in his positions and assessments of race, even if they didn’t all realize it at the time. (Heather confesses: “I had to live to appreciate it.”) The second is that he knows he didn’t exactly convey those thoughts well at the time, a feeling reinforced by clips of a long-ago fight with Julie in which he continually gets right in her face and refuses to move away, even as she’s yelling at him to back off. Learning Julie’s daughter is now a tour ambassador at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute seems to spark something in him—a desire to address long-ago tensions. The episode ends with a promise of some uncomfortable but hopefully productive conversations; unfortunately, the teaser for the coming weeks suggests it may not go that well, at least for Kevin and Becky.
Stray observations
- The show is so gentle, and all the cast so good-natured and endearing (at least during this initial phase of the reunion), that poking fun seems churlish. That being said, Eric (who has apparently been sober for 18 years!) says, “I describe myself as a spiritual guide,” which, coming from the former host of The Grind, is the kind of thing I can’t just leave sitting there on the table.
- Kudos to Andre for still having long hair, albeit a little less curly and a lot more grey.
- Having always been fascinated by Becky, the cast member who got the least screen time during the original run (though, remember when she dated a producer and the show weirdly acknowledged it on-air?), I did a little research, which is how I learned she recorded an album in 2017 that she describes as being a “a collaboration with the spirit of John Lennon.” That’s not a metaphor; she honestly says she communicated with his spirit for a decade. It’s wild; you can see for yourself.
- Norman explains his emotions: “I’m going through man-o-pause, so I’m going to cry a lot.”
- Poor Julie’s dance career seems like it was derailed completely by her time on the show, as—in her own words—no one would cast “Julie from The Real World” as a background dancer, but right after telling her that, they would ask for an autograph.
- The opening minutes are weird, a rough mishmash of clips that feel disjointed and off-putting. I can only imagine it was the outcome of production really wanting an intro that felt like it wouldn’t alienate new viewers, but it just comes across as messy.
- Heather, summing up everyone’s cheerful attitudes about themselves back then: “I was dumb as shit. I didn’t know anything!”
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I watched it back in the day but I find I have 0 desire to watch anything having to do with it at this point.
I dropped off after the Denver season (18) when it became clear that there was no going back from the trend started in Las Vegas (12) of the show leaning into being nothing but drunken fights and trashy behavior, instead of attempting to have the housemates do anything productive with their time. Dropped off of The Challenge a year later when the steroid abuse and bad behavior continued to spiral out of control (The last good season was Gauntlet 1) all seemingly with the encouragement of production.I’ve got no desire to go back to either of them.
I watched the second season and I think the third. By the end of the third season I thought the idea had worn thin and gotten boring. Pretty sure the only reality TV I’ve watched since then was the first season of Survivor but that was friggen inescapable when it was on.
Still watch Survivor, mostly out of inertia. I tend to watch things way to long, hoping they will right the ship (I’m looking at you, Heroes). I tend to be a completist, for better or worse, often for worse.
I’ll still go to bat for the original run of Heroes not being as bad as people say it is. I also haven’t rewatched it since it originally aired. I still say ‘Oh my god it’s the Rogue!’ to myself whenever I see a Nissan Rogue…and nobody else is around.
The new one was hot steaming garbage though.
I think season 1 was brilliant until the last episode, and it continued to show flashes of brilliance for a few more seasons, but the last season or 2 was hot fiery garbage. I still want to punch Robert Knepper in the face for his part in crashing Heroes into the ground at supersonic speed.Two things really screwed that show. The writer’s strike, and the show falling in love with Sylar and refusing to kill him.
It seems like Paramount+ is really leaning into the nostalgia to get subscribers. I figure that they’ll announce a new season of Real World for it shortly. The last season of it didn’t air on MTV, but the now defunct Facebook Watch.
Im really tempted to sub to this new service just to watch. I lived for season 1 of the real world.
If you were ever mad about MTV for showing fewer and fewer music videos, you could start with this show. This isn’t their first non-music show but the first one they started to “marathon” and spend almost an entire day(or even all weekend) showing repeats of. I’m sure some people loved this show and I am not judging it on its own(no opinion one way or the other) but I know it made me watch MTV much less because that show was not what I tuned in for.
I remember it differently. As noted in the article from a few weeks ago on Remote Control, they were already dedicating whole weekends marathoning programs like The Monkees. Hell, I remember multiple marathons of The Young Ones and that show only had a dozen half-hour episodes! They just repeated the same six hours over and over again.
Totally agree. The Monkees really were the start of that trend. I remember it well.
Teenage me was all like “wtf are monkees lol”
I was a teenager who had watched Monkees reruns after school in the early elementary years, so I knew who they were & enjoyed them.
At first I thought it was the corniest looking old shit I’d ever seen. But after I watched a few eps I was like “Oh ok this is cool”
. . . and young Davy Jones was pretty dreamy.
But IIRC The Monkees marathon was a heavily-promoted one-off event. MTV would run marathons occasionally but they were promoted events; it wasn’t like post-Real World where you would turn on MTV on a random Wednesday afternoon and there would be an 8-hour Beavis and Butthead marathon on.FWIW MTV started emphasizing videos less as they moved more of their schedule to block programming; by I’d guess 1991 there are only a couple hours a day of just general video programming. Otherwise it was either genre-driven video shows like Yo MTV Raps or Club MTV, or MTV Sports or whatever non-music show they were doing. My guess would be that the success of their Spring Break coverage–for which they would do a ton of non-video programming–was what really moved them to start limiting videos.
Maybe you’re right and I do remember Remote Control and they did marathon it, but it wasn’t all the time. I just remember Real World be taken to an even bigger extreme in their marathon runs of it. It seemed like almost every weekend they’d replay the entire season.
That’s what “Friday Night Videos” was for (for those of us without cable).
I retired the complaint about them showing music videos. It’s pretty moot at this point and Youtube has all the music videos you could want. I just wish they had better programming and anything even adjacent to music. How did “Music Television” settle on 12 hours of Ridiculousness followed by 12 hours of Jersey Shore as the best programming they can produce?
Yes, I know YT makes it all moot but I’m just noting where a change in MTV’s move away from music started. I just remember TRW being where the network really started gravitating away from music videos. Yes, there were other non-music shows already around like Remote Control but even that had some connection to music(contestants had to quickly figure out the name of videos in rapid clips), but the 12 hour marathons started with TRW.
The first few seasons of this show were great. The casts were intelligent and earnest and flawed, but willing to examine and argue about those flaws. I still remember many of those conversations, arguments, and adventures and was kinda amazed that a stupid attempt to make a real soap opera was filled with real stories about real people just trying to live their lives.
Sure, everybody was trying to be an actor or a model or a singer, but that is kinda what you do in your 20’s. You shoot your shot and you learn to live your life and, along the way, you come out (like Norman in Season 1), have an abortion (like Tammy in Season 2) or struggle with a disease that will kill you (like Pedro). Decades later, we have infinite amounts more of reality television but none of that honesty.
Seattle was where it started to go down hill. They were casting prettier people with shorter tempers but it was still worth watching until Las Vegas where the entire cast were pretty, vapid, and irredeemable.
Agree. The earnestness and somewhat more “real” bent of the early reality TV era was very appealing for me. I stopped after Miami (and tried out for Hawaii) and never really watched any of the others (except randomly Hollywood, which i guess is season 20 (out of 33!!))I lived in Chicago when they filmed that season and everyone HATED them and treated them like sell out losers. I felt bad for them at the time.
I know why they did it, but it wasn’t quite the same when they added the jobs component in S5: Miami. I was still generally okay with it and Road Rules (some seasons were better than others- I liked Boston and New Orleans) until the Las Vegas season, as you said.
I’m just glad it didn’t turn out Nies was out of the house for harassment or something, that would have been depressing.
I recall how Season 4 in London was an interesting tipping point for the show. Coming after the high-stakes drama with Puck and Pedro in Season 3, the London cast was probably the most harmonious group ever. At the time, I loved that, but their season was probably also the most forgettable. Then came Season 5 in Miami, which to me marked the beginning of the dumb years.
The actual pig heart valentine was forgettable?!?
The guy was in an industrial band and nearly had his tongue bitten off during a performance and was unable to talk cuz he had stitches in his tongue. London had it’s moments.
I followed the same trajectory as OP, although I did tap back in for Philly because I’m from there (it took me several episodes of the new Queer Eye to FINALLY accept Karamo as a nice guy!), but when I was younger London was easily one of my favorites BECAUSE they all got along so well, actually. I remember legit crying when they left the house that season.
I think the London season gets lost in the bunch too because they all seemed to genuinely get along. I think Las Vegas was the dividing line where instead of people with interesting aspirations MTV gave them a job for the duration of the season. If I remember correctly they were all given jobs in the hotel/casino. That’s where it pivots from let’s follow these people and document how they adjust to life under these circumstances to: let’s confine these really attractive people together, give them all the alcohol they can handle and film the ensuing chaos.
Funny how the first season was pretty much the last season where people did the show but not to try to catapult themselves into a full 15 minutes of stardom. That’s what was so real about it. Too bad.
Despite a few fights, the New York cast really did seem to genuinely like each other. Can you imagine trying to reunite the L.A. or San Francisco casts? Half the L.A. cast has disowned the show, and Puck would ruin anything.
I remember the first reunion special which I think aired after season 5 or 6, David (from S2) and Puck (from S3) both tried their best to ruin it. Seeing Rachel and Puck in the same room in 2021 would be absurd, though.
I think Puck and Rachel are a lot more alike than given credit for; they’re both giant assholes.
I think Puck and Rachel are a lot more alike than given credit for; they’re both giant assholes.
Both of the SF and Boston casts had MAGA chode Republicans on them (Rachel and Sean) so it might be fun just to watch the rest of the cast yell at them for the entire reunion
I get so sad whenever i see Rachel (SF season) and freaking Kennedy (VJ) on random Twitter Fox news snippets.
The LA cast sucked.
Yeah, I was thinking about how hard it would be to get any of the other early seasons to reunite in mass like this. I think they might be able to pull off SF if Puck wasn’t invited- everyone else there seemed to like each other and bonded over their friendship with Pedro.
I don’t know, that “could you get the phone!?” still sounds a mite testy
They did have a mini SF cast reunion during a longer set of cast reunions (I think it was during a marathon weekend back in the early 00s). Predictably, Puck made it all about him and went off to go sit somewhere else during the taping.
I think you’re referring to the ‘95 reunion special, which gathered the first four casts with an audience Q&A. Puck and Judd got into a very heated exchange and then Puck and Mohammed almost came to blows before Puck moved somewhere else on stage. I would love to rewatch that (it was fun to see the different casts intermingling), but it’s not on Paramount + or any other streaming.
That’s the one. I’m realizing my sense of time before 2000 is all kinds of warped.
I can’t believe they did this during the pandemic.
Whenever I think of the Real World, my brain immediately thinks of the San Francisco cast as being the “first” and then I see this cast and I’m like “oh yeah”. Like, I watched it when it was on originally but it didn’t grab me like when it was in San Francisco.I really enjoyed it for the social experiment aspect but once it became what it eventually became, I was out.
I wonder if they’ll get into Kevin Powell attempting to smear a woman as racist, losing a $210,000 judgment for defamation because of it, and still refusing to admit his fuckup. https://www.bet.com/news/national/2019/01/31/bet-exclusive—kevin-powell-talks-losing-defamation-suit—his-pl.html
Norm was my fave.
I met Norman and Cory (from the SF season) in a hot tub at a Laguna Nigel hotel back in the late-90s. The two became good friends after Cory’s season had aired (not sure if they still are). They hung out with us for a couple of hours, drinking and laughing and they didn’t seem to mind being questioned about the show (although we got that out of the way quickly). They were both genuinely nice, friendly people, without a hint of the swollen heads that current reality-TV “stars” seem to acquire as soon as their shows are broadcast.
This Gen X’er looks at this reunion and the obvious middle age appearance and middle aged lives of the cast and would like to politely decline this bit of generational nostalgia
I watched, but damn that was depressing.
There are times when I’m quite happy when culture as a whole forgets Gen X exists and this is one of them
I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS!!I was about 12-13 when this came out and was honestly obsessed, especially Norman and Becky. Norman for me was def an early and “real” gay/bi dude that i could see and that was important. Becky was just weird and kind of rude and sang a great song and i loved her. I did have a bit of thirst for Eric at the time… which is embarrassing. And Heather was so cool. I felt like Julie, Andre and Kevin got the shortest end of the stick in terms of representation and / or screen time. The intercuts of the old season better have the old music! I heard in the DVD release they had to change the music which is a travesty. Gosh I am gushing, I used to have them all taped on VHS from when they aired. :)PS my therapist around 2015-ish knew Norm-y and would talk about him and I always secretly wished she would set us up.
I don’t think Julie got the short end of anything, she and Eric definitely got the most screen time in the first season, there was a whole battle about that with the rest of the cast.Wasn’t there some big tell-all a while back that talked about how many Becky scenes they had to cut because she was always with a bottle of booze? Now I’m wondering if that was some fever dream.Andre, though. I think I’ve heard him talk more now in the first episode of the reunion than I ever did in their whole season!
Oh yes, for sure. I do remember that Julie / Eric had the most screen time but I just seem to remember maybe she didn’t come across very well? That is what i was referencing But i honestly don’t remember super clearly. Excited to hear more from Andre!
Oh right, true, they definitely tried to sell her hard as the “naive Southern girl” archetype.
Please tell me that they’re going to paint a mural of Jerry Brown’s 1-900 number on the wall of the loft again.
I vaguely remember this, though I was too young and not allowed to watch MTV when it originally aired. So my most emotional reaction to the updated cast photo is because clearly doggo is no longer with us.
We subscribed to P+ just for this. I watched the original when it aired. The early Real Worlds, before all the hooking up started (Vegas, maybe) were really good. New York 1 and Seattle stand out to me as faves. New Orleans and London were downers for me.We haven’t watched this yet but I already know I’m so in. And would watch reunions with other seasons too. LA would be interesting to see Dominic and Aaron together again. I remember reading long ago neither had any interest in being involved in RW after their season aired.
Kinja’d.
What a sad way to remind me i’m middle aged.
Kudos to all, but this isn’t worth buying Paramount Plus.