Lantern7

Recently, Vulture.com did a "Rumble" which pitted the greatest reality seasons against each other, and RW3 was the representative for The Real World. It's hard to argue with that. The balance was amazing . . . you had a guy with a compromised immune system and an asshole with diseases oozing out of his scabs, a conservative student and a liberal cartoonist, a naive girl and an overacheiving med student, and then there was Mohammed, perhaps the most neutral of roommates. It's hard to argue with the show's legacy. Although two roommates have been seen on the Challenge (three if you count Rachel on Road Rules: All-Stars), they're a pretty visible bunch. Rachel got hitched to Sean Duffy, and she keeps squeezing out kid after kid. Judd was a mainstay at DC Comics for a while, and he created two memorable characters in Barry Ween and Juniper Lee (who had a series on Cartoon Network), and he married his crush Pam to boot. And Pedro is still a go-to figure in relation to understand AIDS. BTW, I never got the hate about him being a "martyr." To me, he spent his final few years on Earth trying to get people not to make the mistakes he did. If you come across a copy of Pedro & Me, please read it. I know there's a lot of Judd-hate out there, but he crafted a great story on his roommate, and I don't feel it was exploitive at all.

"Minor Ruckus" works for me, even though I can't stand the character. Have you ever wanted to beat up a tuba player just for his entrance music? I'm not there, but I'm close. Quick heads up . . . last night, while watching the Toonami block, I saw a commercial with clips from the fourth season. I'm pumped, mostly because of the music, fistfights, and heavy-handed storytelling. Also, Stinkmeaner seems to be back from the dead, and his stories are always funny. Remember the Hateocracy from the third season, with Bushido Brown getting beheaded? And the Freemans doing a collective "OH, SHIT!"? Good times . . . unless you're Bushido, of course.

Sadly, this show is my jam. I recapped four seasons on another site, and I did two more on my blog. It's a trainwreck from start to finish, and I know that I should quit it, but I just can't. Occasionally, you have a happy ending, like CT winning Rivals II last season with that ginger jackass Wes. But more often than not, it's a huge pain in the ass. If anybody has a twelve-step program on swearing off Bunim-Murray programming, I'd like to hear it.

I've been rooting for these two from the start. I feel that the editors have been leaning on them too much in regards to Dave's injury in TAR22, and I can see how that would wear on some viewers. And yeah, we haven't learn much about Conner in his two tours of duty. But I feel that they're good drama-free Racers, and I'm hoping they pull off the win in the end.