Asp Burger
-
Posts
2.2k -
Joined
Content Type
Blogs
Gallery
Downloads
Discussion
Posts posted by Asp Burger
-
-
One of the recaps today (Salon's, I think) erroneously reported that Danny was part of the swamp-tour group in 2000. It was just Melissa, Julie, Jamie and his Chicago friends. I remember Danny and Kelley getting the tale from one of Jamie's bros when Team Swamp got back to Belfort.
I miss Kim of TWoP when I read the in-depth post-episode pieces. She knew Real World cold, even seasons she didn't officially cover. I see a lot of wrong information in most of what's out there now. Dave Holmes at Decider (who knows his MTV too, obviously) is the best covering Homecoming, I think.
-
2
-
-
1 minute ago, DearEvette said:
She assessed her own mood and decided she needed to give Julie a real apology because she was getting toxic herself. I personally didn't see it, but the fact that she felt it and set to rectify it by going to Julie impressed me.
I did see it, enough that I could understand (and was nodding) when she concluded her own tone had been "stank" and she felt she needed to apologize. At the point when she was saying (paraphrasing), "Well? You just said this is a a 'very important' issue for you. So, come on. The floor is yours," she had crossed over to hectoring. Tokyo seemed to step in then and try to get it back on a more constructive level. And if that scene went on a lot longer, there was probably more of the same.
It's hard in a situation like that to separate the issues at hand from your feelings about a particular person, and Melissa has a lot of reasons not to like Julie. I think she recognized that.
-
6
-
-
2 hours ago, snarts said:
It was the first season (and last? where there any others? I'm having a brain fart) that wasn't all Americans.
Dominic (Los Angeles) and Simon (Paris) were both Irish. Midseason replacement Jo in San Francisco was English. Charlie in San Diego was Serbian, but the few episodes of that season I saw were early ones, so I've never seen him. I gather he was nearly invisible.
-
When Kelley said, "I struggle to make one dish," she was being modest. She has some skills in the kitchen. Even in 2000, when she probably wasn't as good as she is now, she was the unanimous choice for best cook, and Jamie and Melissa weren't saying a lot of nice things about her when the book was being put together. (And Melissa would have had Mercy as a yardstick.)
1 hour ago, MrBuhBye said:It’s not like Scott Wolf is A-list. I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything.
I watched Party of Five, in which he was main cast, and Everwood, in which he was main cast in the latter two seasons (Kelley had a small role as his date in one episode). Also, Go is a favorite '90s movie of mine.
I haven't seen a lot of him more recently, but I see from his IMDb that he's never had a lean period since he became well known. So, not A-list, but not a "Where are they now?" case like some other '90s teen idols.
-
7
-
-
Here's the London house, @Black Knight. It was well located in Notting Hill.
http://www.realworldhouses.com/realworld4.html
London had the first really cool house. It's the first season in which you think, "Yeah, that's a Real World house." The New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco spaces were nice -- and you'd surely have to have had a lot of income in 1992-94 to afford them -- but they weren't all that eye-catching or telegenic. They didn't scream luxury.
The flip side is that they weren't as gaudily decorated and TV-set-looking.
London's cast was an odd one, in that it was a very harmonious group, but the seven didn't do a lot together, except for the obligatory field trip episode. Mike and Jay, the American boys, spent a lot of time lying around and taking about nothing. Jacinda and Sharon had their frenemy dynamic. There weren't a lot of sparks that season, in a good or a bad way. It was scattered. After San Francisco's dramatic house meetings, it was very different. I'm sure that had a lot to do with the group job project becoming part of the formula in the next season.
-
1
-
-
Was this the "midseason finale"? That would fit with an eight-episode season, which is what Los Angeles got. The very ominous preview reel at the end said, "This season..." rather than "On the next episode..."
I see the reasoning behind Mercy and Shorty not making the cut of the original season. The visits from Julie's parents, Danny's parents, and David's mother fit better into the stories they were telling. At least Mercy and Shorty got a lot of space in The Real World You Never Saw, and now they got a do-over.
Melissa and Kelley's friendship seems very genuine.
-
4
-
-
23 hours ago, choclatechip45 said:
I wasn't watching RW Boston while it aired so I have no idea how popular the show was when it aired.
Boston wasn't an especially popular season when it was airing or for a few years thereafter. Someone at B/M commented in one of the books that Boston's viewership was a drop from the previous season. The consensus in those days was "not 'London dull', but a big drop from Miami." Seattle and Hawaii, which followed, also overshadowed it. Those seasons got more mainstream media coverage while they were going on.
It was perceived as a misstep (never repeated) to shoot in a cold-weather city in the winter. And as mentioned above, 1997 was a tough winter in Boston.
But Real World Boston aged well. People remember things now like Kameelah and Genesis talking about gay issues to the little girl at the children's center. All the members of this cast also stayed pretty visible in reunions and Challenges, which probably helped people give it a first look or another look in the marathons.
-
2
-
-
I haven't heard a word about London.
I think they may have bypassed San Francisco and London in Homecoming considerations, for different reasons. London has always been the black sheep of "classic period" Real World. Some people do like it, but the overwhelming verdict since 1995 has been "dull." From a producer/network point of view, the conclusion might be "They were the dullest cast ever when they were supposedly young and wild. Why get them back together when they've probably calmed down even more?"
-
1
-
-
9 minutes ago, Tatum said:
I don't remember any comment he made about Kat or Jay
He liked Jay at first and thought he was cute, and then the sheer laziness -- and the "Why wasn't all of London's West End eager to present my student play?" attitude -- wore him down.
But Mike was definitely his favorite target. He got a lot of mileage out of the hair alone.
He did a good job finding humor in a season that even its fans will admit is...mellow.
-
10 hours ago, Tatum said:
I also remember reading the TWoP recaps and the recapper had their suspicions on how successful of a model Jacinda really was (I think Kmart and Sears got thrown around a lot as potential bookings).
Gustave was the recapper of that season, I think. They did seasons 1-7 as a summer special with various recappers pitching in during the slow season. They had begun in real time with season 8, Hawaii, because there wasn't any Mighty Big TV/TWoP before that.
I also remember "Bolivian Cosmo" as one of his guesses about where Jacinda's photos ended up.
He hated Sharon so much, which was funny. She was such a fan favorite. Melissa of New Orleans recently gave an interview and said Sharon was the only reason to watch London.
-
1
-
-
I remember Kameelah and Syrus getting along so well during the Extreme Challenge. They would cheer each other on, although it was funny that when she cheered him on, she was yelling "Go, Syrus!" and when he cheered her on, he was yelling, "Ten grand, baby! Ten grand!" or whatever the dollar amount of the prize was. On-brand. Ha ha.
Kameelah seems very open to seeing who people are now, rather than fixating on who they were in prior encounters. She had that friction with New Orleans Jamie during the casting special (when she said he came off as a privileged white boy, and he called her "Shaka Zulu" on camera but behind her back). They said they talked that out off camera on the first day of the Extreme Challenge, and that was the end of it.
-
1
-
-
7 hours ago, Black Knight said:
And I think they could actually get quite a bit of drama from Matt - but the thing is that there are at least a couple of people in the 6 who are willing to do it who would be good for some drama.
I had heard that the only ones from Hawaii willing to do a reunion are Amaya, Justin, Ruthie, and Teck, Matt, Colin, and Kaia are all holdouts. If that's true, I see why it's a no-go. Four out of seven just wouldn't do it.
Matt was one of my most disliked housemates of all time during his season, but I'd be willing to give him a clean slate if he came back for a Homecoming. I'd actually be interested to see what that cast is like today. I thought all of them probably were at least a little better than they looked on the show. Whereas with the Boston cast, I think we got a pretty accurate picture of the 1997 models of them.
-
1
-
-
One of the rave reviews for Justin's debut novel, Lone Stars, which was published in 2021. "A life-affirming story about how people of all orientations can inspire one another to live their best life. It’s the kind of story we need right now."
-
I'm watching some of Hawaii in the smeary, buzzy, but better-than-nothing YT uploads that will have to suffice until Paramount+ de-songifies its missing seasons.
Man, some of these people are hard to listen to. Amaya, Matt, and Kaia are a lot of grating tones in one place.
Colin (at least, at his 1999 age) looks more like San Francisco Rachel's brother than San Francisco Rachel's actual brother looked when he appeared. They both even do that thing in interviews where they widen their eyes when trying to emphasize that something is deeply felt.
-
9 hours ago, MrBuhBye said:
Not sure how Tokyo putting her in a bear hug would scratch her back.
That part is plausible. In the club scene, Tokyo is wearing a vest with a lot of buttons and studs on it, and Julie is constantly wriggling and resisting while he's holding her from behind. The friction of her bare skin against that could have given her scratches. Or it could have been the tree.
But if all she had the next day after a night like that was superficial scratches, she should count herself lucky. It's ridiculous that she's even talking about it. While I think she was "method acting" a wild night out (intentionally getting drunk to the point of vomiting, but always with some self-awareness), she still fell on the damn concrete.
-
6
-
-
5 hours ago, racked said:
I would prefer to see the quiet conversations others are having learning about each other. The people watching this homecoming are around the same age as the cast, and I don’t think we have any interest in this show being what Julie is trying to make it.
Same. Those low-key moments have been some of my favorites. Melissa and Kelley looking at pictures of each other's kids and having different policies on scrolling. Tokyo being master chef (and those songs from his YouTube channel, which are really cute and catchy). Just the initial reactions to seeing each other for the first time in years.
Regarding Julie, the best things I can say are that she participated, so they didn't skip the season, and Melissa and Danny got to lay out their cases against her face to face. But now she can leave anytime, and I never need to see her on television again.
-
5
-
-
11 minutes ago, Hiyo said:
Julie is either acting like a 20 year old or she seems to think this type of drama makes for good TV so she is more than happy to play that role. Or both. Either way, it's not a good look for her at all.
It's the latter, I think. My suspicion is that the Julie we're seeing on Homecoming has little to do with Julie, wife of a prominent Wisconsin ophthalmologist and mother of three. She might be authentically awful in other ways, but this is just so...manufactured and strained. She's pursuing very hoary notions of what she thinks the people watching want (like, Inferno era), and it's painfully out of sync with everyone else in the group.
-
9
-
-
There's a narrow audience for this reference, but there's this Randy Newman song called "The Great Debate," which is a long satirical piece about evolution denialism. It's about a big public gathering with scientific experts on one side and evangelicals on the other, debating creation and evolution. It starts out with the singer talking like an emcee or a TV announcer about all the different people who will be participating. One line of his spiel is "We've got a lumberjack and a life coach!"
I'll never be able to hear that line now without picturing Sean from Boston and Kelley from New Orleans.
-
2 hours ago, MicheleinPhilly said:
He just randomly pops up during situations, says "Kumbaya" and then fades into the background again.
Matt was pretty marginal in the original season too. He didn't like to do a lot of things the others did, He claims in the book to have gone to church five times a week (except when they were in South Africa), and Bunim-Murray wasn't going to make an episode out of that. We never saw any visiting member of his family, and he didn't seem to have any drama back home. He wasn't into Julie as more than a friend, to her disappointment. I suspect this also surprised the producers, who may have thought it was an obvious showmance when they put them both there.
So, aside from a couple non-sexual get-togethers with young women from outside the house, he was mostly shown reacting to/commenting on the others.
So far, the "power rankings" of Homecoming are very close to what the original season was. A lot of Julie and Danny, with Tokyo and Melissa next most featured. Kelley's role is mostly being Danny's friend. Matt abstains and offers commentary. Jamie...fills out the group. (I try to think of what he's done in the first three episodes, and I just remember him yelling "Wow!" and "Yass queen!" and bringing the game Melissa played.)
-
5
-
-
Paul's still a handsome, fit guy; I just don't like the styling. Maybe he could get away with the loud clothes, the wavy hair, or the very long and heavy 'stache, but all three together are too much.
But, like Tokyo in his Sgt. Woo Woo get-ups, he's doin' him.
-
1
-
6
-
-
Tokyo was wise to get himself out of that room. He must have been thinking about that "Take a shower with me" offer, and what Stoffer Productions might have been storyboarding in the event he had said yes.
I know there are cameras all over the house, but we all know the score on that. Things have always had a way of falling into the gaps on these shows, and there were still incidents that came down to one person's word against another's.
-
9
-
-
Danny's 44; Paul's early fifties. Per Paul's Facebook, he currently lives in Seattle (he's a native of Washington state). So, there was a lot of producer intervention to make him part of the season. Even when I was watching the scene, I wasn't buying those onscreen texts, with Paul's response something like "Sure! I can be there tomorrow," as if he were across town. He might have been across town...in whatever hotel they were putting him up in.
I thought their conversation was okay. Paul was clearly still less comfortable talking about personal things on camera than Danny was, and there were a lot of edits. Overall, they just seemed like long-ago exes who can be around each other.
Even though I like Danny, I don't want to make one of them the good guy and the other the villain in a long relationship about which I'm mostly getting one perspective. Danny wasn't a model significant other in New Orleans, hooking up with the guy in the confessional and then going into his penitence routine when the alcohol haze started to lift and he remembered the cameras. Temptation to cheat (and ultimately doing it, to an extent) was such a big part of his story.
However, the bits we've heard from Danny do put Paul's forgiving nature back then in a different light. Maybe he was dealing with similar temptations, successfully or otherwise, wherever he was.
2 hours ago, DearEvette said:It is a shame because she could have been a New York Julie. But she decided to be a New York Becky. Actually she has out-Beckied Becky.
Yeah, Julie is breaking new ground on Homecoming. I never felt Becky was being something other than who she really was (travel boasting and all). I think she really did come to New York expecting to have some other kind of experience; she wasn't screwing with the rest of her cast to make a certain kind of show and pull focus. And when she was crying, I thought she was really upset. Julie has been fake from the moment she walked in.
-
1
-
5
-
-
1 hour ago, snarts said:
I am so glad Julie was stupid enough to have that phone conversation with her husband caught on camera and that production included it. Seeing it showed just how machiavellian and disingenuous she actually is. Also glad that Melissa & Kelly heard it firsthand and could warn the others. I feel bad for anyone who has to deal with Julie in real life and I only hope that the Challenge producers take a hard pass on someone who so blatantly tries to manipulate the storyline.
Yes. I wonder how that went over behind the scenes. I don't know if it's still the case, but Bunim-Murray (not just the founders but the team generally) used not to like it when cast members had a "production mentality." It was an easy way to get burned in the final edit.
Matt in the Hawaii season is a famous example. After that season was over, someone on the team revealed that Matt was always trying to buddy up to production, saying things like "I think I can get some good stuff out of Amaya on this topic today." Matt aspired at that time in his life to go into television production, so maybe that part of it was most interesting to him, but he was one of the show's subjects. He was supposed to be living whatever passed for his life, not appointing himself a production mole.
That producer then said (with what I interpreted as a bit of satisfaction) that he was sure Matt was quite taken aback by the sides of his personality they had captured in the season.
-
2
-
2
-
-
2 hours ago, Legalbeagle421 said:
Tokyo was trying to help. As a Black woman, I probably wouldn’t have grabbed her. But it’s very clear that he had no ill intent. She was a danger to herself and the club wanted her out too. Julie needs to check herself. I hope after seeing these episodes, she reflects and gives him a sincere apology.
I don't think she's capable of a sincere apology. Even the insincere ones only come when the cameras and lights are on her and she's found her best angle.
If Jamie had been the one to physically get her out of the club, that probably would have been her next-day story arc. It still would have been wrong and destructive; the racial angle with Tokyo just adds one more layer of ugliness. But that hot-tub phone conversation made undeniable what was already clear to me. Now I understand that bit in the season trailer with Kelley saying that what she signed up for is not what Julie signed up for.
With the other six, maybe there was minor variation in their reasoning, but they all fundamentally came back to get the old gang together, revisit old times, show each other and the audience the people they are today (besides the cash incentive). Julie came there to create drama starring herself. She set out to be this toxic version of "good TV" she mastered on The Challenge. Bunim-Murray is partly responsible for the monsters it creates, but as we see, it's not everyone who's on a Bunim-Murray show.
My quote from before I had seen this episode:
QuoteComing to it as a Julie non-fan to begin with, her behavior looks especially self-conscious and attention-seeking. Even knowing that the location was all prepped for the castmates to have a night out, she still got so bad that this bar that had an agreement with Bunim-Murray was telling them to get her out of there? That's more than just being an inexperienced drinker, in my opinion. That's thinking ahead about a whole dramatic display.
I didn't write that expecting her to essentially plead guilty on camera in the very next episode!
Another thought: Tokyo's scene with Julie, in which he said, "I'm either with you 100% or I'm not with you at all," was very reminiscent of the one he had with Melissa in the original season after she went out and got drunk and stripped. Both even ended with the woman angrily storming out. But in 2000, the hardheadedness and the forceful line he drew seemed extreme and immature, and this time he was entirely in the right. He's figured things out.
Lastly, I see Bunim-Murray is still showing us flashbacks to things we saw ten minutes ago. Ha ha. I think hearing someone say to Julie "You fell on your face" would have been enough of a memory jog. We were there.
-
1
-
5
-
RW Homecoming: New Orleans (2022)
in The Real World
Danny's contribution to that discussion put one of his earlier comments in a new light for me. During the club scene, there was an interview insert in which he said something like "I wouldn't have thought it was still necessary to babysit people when they're in their forties, but I guess it is." The way that was edited in, I thought he was talking about Julie becoming such a mess that everyone had to watch over her. But now I think he was expressing resentment at production/the other housemates for herding him and Julie out, and the expectation that everyone had to go at the same time.