CeeBeeGee

Lori was voted in by viewers. That said (taste in men notwithstanding), I liked her on her season. But that post about Mr. Rogers--girl, take a seat. I was the first generation to grow up under him and he was a goddamn saint. Just take a seat. And "look for the helpers."

Ah, okay, you guys make some good points--Chris could be a little dull. I guess I let him slide because trying to stay sober is so difficult, plus he had to "educate" the Theos and the Tonyas of the loft, be a Good Little Gay example and he certainly didn't repel me the way some RW participants have. (Adam in Paris, eg.)

I think you're right, it must've been Danny. I looked up that season and he has his own page and apparently he died a few years ago, likely of an overdose. So now I feel a little bad--that was way too young to die. Lori had some weird blog opinions. I remember when Mr. Rogers died in 2004 and she posted something about his working with children and how suspect that was. JFC, Lori. The man was a goddamn saint, to say nothing of the fact that the body is barely cold. Shut your piehole. I'm rewatching Chicago rn and am mulling over the reasons I liked this season so much. There are several--1, that loft is gorgeous. I am a design and architecture geek and I absolutely loved those interiors. 2, everyone in the cast is good-looking. Sorry, I'm shallow--I like to look at attractive people. 3, the city of Chicago just looks like so much fun--I genuinely want to visit it now. 4, all of the roommates are memorable and interesting. There isn't a "forgotten" roommate, like Melanie from Philadelphia, or Lacey from Austin.

As soon as I read this "he was very mature about it, which, even in 2002-2003, put him in the minority" I started giggling, remembering Rachel's kiss-off. Oh God, do you remember whichever brilliant poster coined the phrase "angry candy apple" about--oh Lord, some former Road Rules Challenge contestant who'd been criticized about something fairly trivial and was getting worked up about it? Maybe the name was Danny (the angry candy apple, not the poster)?

He went from not wanting to participate to actually having noisy sex on camera? Wow.

That's me! I'll have to see if I can find a YT video of the reunion and see if I can spot myself. I remember your posts too :)

More on Julie's restraining order: https://www.realitytvworld.com/realitytvdb/wiki/Julie_Stoffer http://realworldroadrules.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_archive.html

W.O.W. What the hell is wrong with Julie? She sounds mentally ill. I was so confused about that, seeing him in Julie's bedroom again. W.T.A.F.??????!! A bloody coffee maker? Seriously? I'm disgusted that production gave Julie such a pass--a hall pass, you might say--instead of revealing her shitty toxic behavior for the audience to see. Poor Kelley. She did the right thing. That was my favorite line as well. He's not bad!

After that first episode I utterly despised Adam. I detest cruelty. The egg thing was apparently a reference to/imitation of something from a movie--I can't remember which one (a rom-com of some kind, I believe. I remember someone calling it out on TWoP. And 100% believe Adam would do that to an incapacitated woman. His dad is one of the Commodores--I'm sure that helped his sense of entitlement. Ugh, he was so repellant. CT absolutely should've been sent home. What a nut case. What a shame--to be transported to Paris for free and yet be stuck in one of the bainlieux and not be able to get into the city easily. BMP should have enabled their commute. I was so envious of their job but yes, the season was kind of a dud, although I enjoyed Leah's Euromance with the Italian dude.

To be fair to both Ryan and J.D., they had issues. Ryan was pretty open about suffering PTSD from his time in Iraq and J.D. apparently came from a pretty abusive background. But my GOD, the way the two of them absolutely despised and bullied Sarah. Ryan was bellowing at her during the reunion--I remember her being a fairly sweet, hippie-ish type but Ryan and J.D. seemed to think she was putting on an act. She was never anything but kind to Ryan, as I recall, and I don't think did anything to provoke that kind of abuse. To whomever posted the link to the 2001 casting special--thanks! My God, Segun was a nutcase. BMP liked to cast controversial types--I am devoutly glad they passed on him. The vile, misogynistic diatribe, calling women hookups "garbage" and "hos" and "nothing--someone who hates women that much does not deserve a platform like TRW. Coral got on my nerves at times but she was always good for putting some male asshat in his place. I still remember how she utterly dismissed Slappy Stephen during one of the Challenges. Just raised a hand and drifted away from him. No drama, just dismissal. I really wished they'd cast Jason from MS--he was very sweet--instead of Boring Kevin. And I hate that Jisela was kicked off--BMP was taking a page out of Survivor (a huge hit having debuted the year before) but Jisela was great TV. She had such a cute, excitable energy to her. And I'd forgotten how hot Adam was! Rowr.

I loved the first one! And yes, the casting was fantastic. But I was tremendously disappointed when the second one was their version of WoK--I remember thinking "Khan, again? Seriously, they couldn't be more creative than that?" Star Trek II had to bring back a character because they needed a surefire hit, after audiences were so disappointed with ST: TMP. (Although it still made a lot of money.) Star Trek 2009 was a huge hit and way over-performed. They weren't forced to reuse a character. And casting Cumberbatch as a character with the last name of Singh, whose background in the original episode was supposed to be South Asian is inexcusable in 2013. I did like the third one, especially the Jaylah character. But Chris Pine seems a little young to be in line for a promotion of Vice Admiral.

I know this is a year later but yes, Coral telling Jisela to "get off the ho train 'cause you're the only one riding it" comment came later. Jisela (and maybe a few others) showed up at the house and hooked up with Malik. After which, they all went on a trip somewhere, maybe to the Hamptons. I remember there was a pool. Jisela was icing Malik for some reason and the other roommates were taking his side, understandably. Brooklyn. Oh my God, Brooklyn. The show that killed The Real World for me. Almost every guy on the show was a lunatic with rage issues and a hardcore misogynist. Well, two of them were (Ryan and J.D.), and Chet was firmly Team Ryan. (Scott was okay.)

Aneesa got on my nerves hardcore. I can't stand people who go through life trying to be edgy and shocking and don't respect boundaries, and not wanting to see your naughty bits is a perfectly understandable boundary. And yes, the bathroom thing is hella disgusting. Cara said in the book that Aneesa would always ask to borrow her makeup (BAD IDEA, no one should share eye or lip cosmetics, too easy to spread an infection that way). And she said she would always get her eyeshadow back with holes dug into it. I was at the reunion--I was in the audience and posted a recap of it to TWoP. I actually broke the story that Tonya and her BF had broken up. And yes, Tonya was kind of shell-shocked at the taping--I was wondering if she was going to burst into tears a couple of times. And she spoke a lot. She actually came off the best though--she secured my goodwill when she was walking past my row, saw I was shivering (the studio was freezing), put her hand on my arm and said something solicitous about how cold I must be. Keri was hilariously over it, I remember (after Kyle had said something toolish about their situation) her muttering "I really don't give a fuck anymore."

I would agree with this but I would swap the last two. ST: TMP is bloated for sure but there's a solid one hour TOS episode there (or as the wags had it, ST:TMP Where Nomad Had Gone Before). And the score is fantastic! TFF is just crap. That cheesy grinning Vulcan--who happens to be Spock's half-brother? Kirk's crew mutinying? It's like bad fanfic. There's maybe one-two good scenes in it but the rest is garbage.

Think about her journey over the past several seasons. S1, she breaks out of the lab and forges the first natural, sincere human connections of her life (excepting her mother). She has purpose, she's admired. S2, she's isolated and probably scared but she at least has someone looking out for her--someone who genuinely cares for her, for her own sake--and she's able to escape in TV a bit. S3, she has a girlfriend who shows her the ropes--teaches her how to dress, the lingo ("I dump your ass!"), how to have fun at the mall. And she has a boyfriend. For the first time in her life she probably feels normal. Then that's all taken away. I can't remember why Joyce decided to move the family but I thought it was a mistake even back then. Moving is terribly hard on kids. So it stands to reason she's regressed a bit. If she were still living in Hawkins, she would be surrounded by "the gang" and I doubt she would care if someone like Angela came after her, even if she didn't have her powers. But in California, there is only Will to side with her.

The movie is verrrry sympathetic to the killer, to the point I would be profoundly offended if I were the family of the victim. But it's a great movie--Tori Spelling plays the victim and Kellie Martin plays the killer and they're both fantastic. You should be able to catch it on YouTube. (DON'T watch the remake, it's not very good.)

The UD being stuck 2.5 years in the past is awesome. I don't know why it's stuck there but I love it. I'm genuinely terrified for Nancy. I feel like Steve has plot armor but Nancy, not so much. And yes, great callback to Nightmare. Oh my God, the poor rabbit. That was horrifying. I threw my hand up in front of the screen so I didn't have to see that. And yes, Baby El looked fantastic and truly convincing. Ditto. I knew something was up, there's no way she killed all those kids. What did I miss--why did One lose his favored status and get busted down to fake orderly? The scene with the rope was great and as someone pointed out, a great callback to Poltergeist. That movie absolutely still stands up. Also Kylo Ren telling Rey "join me" during the climactic battle of The Last Jedi. There's a classic Lifetime movie called Death of a Cheerleader, based on a true story, about a Mean Girl cheerleader who's stabbed to death by a girl on the outer edges of their shared social circle. I know this movie well--my ex-roommate will randomly text each other lines from it sometimes. The killer desperately wants to be friends with the victim and tricks her into sharing a car ride with her and then begs her to be friends. (They're rising juniors, BTW.) The victim is disgusted and contemptuous and leaves the car--the killer follows her in her car, devastated and imagining how the Mean Girl will "tell everybody" when school starts again, and when the Mean Girl arrives home, she runs out of her car and stabs her. And back when imdb had comments, you would see people defending the killer in the comment section, saying the victim was bullying her and deserved it. No, she wasn't. There's another character, a Goth girl, whom the Mean Girl bullies, but not the killer. She just doesn't want to have anything to do with the killer, didn't want to be her friend. That's not bullying. Nobody owes friendship to anyone. That's not really what I see happening with El and Angela though--El wants to put on a show for Mike and weave a tale of how wonderful her life is. But she's not following her around or anything.

Kind of a shipper but I had a different take on it. My take was that they should've banged at least once--and then never talked about it ever again. Because one of the takeaways from TXF is that when you don't talk about something, you give it a lot of power. (This is also a WASP credo--Carter representation of WASP culture through Mulder's family is unevenly rendered (you can tell he wasn't one, WASPs don't actually live on the Vineyard unless they're retired) but he got that right. We simply Do Not Discuss certain things.) But I could never understand the hardcore noromos. How could you not ship them, at least a little bit? They were so clearly each other's bae? Mulder saying "you're my one in 5 billion" in Folie a Deux?

Deja News. The heir to Usenet boards, I believe. (And Google groups took up the mantle, I believe.) I posted religiously on alt.tv.x-files. I love hearing about the early internet (there was a fantastic mini-series a few years ago about the late '90s tech boom called Valley of the Boom) and early computer adoption. Utterly fascinating series. My dad had a computer in the early-mid '80s and I remember playing the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game and constantly getting stuck on one page. And my older brother and I taught ourselves to code--it must have been Basic. I SO thought that was Ally Sheedy at first! I was thinking "what a get, I wonder why I haven't seen publicity that they were able to cast Sheedy" and then I remembered how old she must be. Around the age of white-haired Matthew Modine, actually! I'm calling it now, One killed all the people in the lab massacre.

Don't let it ruin the original show for you. The show is what it is/was. If you enjoyed it (I still love it), then don't let this shitshow ruin it for you.

I just can't. Some of y'all are just going to have to watch the next season, because I love myself too much to voluntarily sit through another episode of that fucking frantically-trying-way-too-hard-to-be-edgy-and-funny character and witness what they've done to a once-great, once-proud, once-intelligent and strong character that we loved for six seasons. Self care, y'all. The only reason I would've tuned in was if Miranda were going to come to her senses but with MPK and his fucking flouncing and blaming of the viewing audience not embracing Che with open arms, doesn't sound like that's going to happen. No one owes you ratings, MPK. You sound like one of those bitter comic hacks, who get pissy when the audience doesn't laugh at their jokes.

I don't think they do--but parts of Alaska are very close to the beginning of the Russian mainland. A puddle jumper like that would just have to do a quick jaunt over the Bering Strait and they'd be on Soviet territory. (Although the stupidity of kidnapping two American citizens...why would the KGB bother?)

Ah. Interesting... EW! How disgusting! JFC, Julie!

I noticed that as well! She's telemarketing but she can afford that house?

I can empathize quite a bit with Kelley. That time when you're with that thirsty crazy person, who is desperate for attention, for validation, for engagement. And you keep trying to draw boundaries, and they keep stepping over them. And then to hear that it's for TV? Because they think this is what the producers want? You're sacrificing the dignity of not just your entire family (JFC Julie, have some pride) but possibly those of your castmates? That phone call was the death knell. Bye, b****. That last van ride, where every little thing Julie said irritated Kelley--I can empathize. Baby was ridiculous in context. The song itself is ridic, plus the fact that he clearly "lifted" (to use an innocuous word) some of the lyrics from Frank Loesser. But I have complicated feelings about the Chappelle appearance. First off, I can't stand Chappelle. He's an asshole. OTOH, David/Tokyo shouldn't have expected to be mocked by a guy who invited him on the show. I mean, dude, the guy was 20-something. Don't be an asshole. Yes, thug is problematic but the Black dude who wrote--excuse me, "wrote" (Frank Loesser)--those lyrics is inviting you to sing them! I thought it was stipulated that Matt had converted to Roman Catholicism? Because he sure doesn't seem like one.