Real World 22 Cancun – MTV Has Finally Managed To Completely Lose Me In Only One Episode

If you've been following along with me, you probably know that I have a strange love/hate relationship with reality television.  It's a story that started with the first Real World (how could it not?), and I can't help but wish that someone would make that show again.

In the beginning, the idea was that we would take a bunch of twenty year-olds (give or take a few years) who come from a wide range of life circumstances, and put them together in a house to see what happens.  People who are just getting their bearings in life thrown together with people who are very different from themselves, and people they might not spend a lot of time with otherwise.  By-and-large normal people, just a variety of kinds of normal people.

It was good television.  People and personalities clashed, but everyone more or less found ways to get along, and found out that the very different people weren't really all that different.  More importantly, the theory is good television.  That's the show I'd like someone to make again.

But, as we all know, the show we actually get has devloved over the seasons into the bringing together of people who are less and less real, from the same segment of "culture," and basically interchangeable.  Of course, there are one or two people thrown in each season who somehow serve a diversity function, but at this point they are ultimately being insulted by being asked on the show.

The qualifications for entry now have nothing to do with possessing interesting qualities and life experiences (or being able to form a sentence), but pretty much come down to being fairly attractive and unstable.  Rather than gaining anything in the realm of worthwhile life experiences, the thing plays out as though the producers are offering up cash bonuses to the first person to pass out drunk.

Despite the annoying uselessness of the road the show has decided to travel, there usually ends up being one or two people that at least make it bearable to check in once in a while.  Instead of a group of interesting, normal people learning about life from each other, it's more like one fairly normal person struggling to survive the asylum, but you can tolerate small doses.

The latest venture to Cancun, however, has so cemented its position, that the show may as well play with the corner overlay "You're so stupid, you'll actually watch this."

Oddly, given that statement, the episode itself wasn't all that horrible, though I clearly understand the people involved so little that there would be no real point watching the show beyond mocking them... except, I don't know that I understand them enough to mock them.

Enter CJ.  CJ, 24, has a girlfriend at home.  When events lead to CJ being semi-forced out of his bed, he climbs into bed with roommate Emilee.  Nothing really happens, apart from some spooning of a variety that would result in marriage in some cultures, and the next morning we go about our business.

When CJ talks to his girlfriend, he tells her about the sharing of the bed scenario.  Girlfriend is not pleased, and she follows up that conversation with an email that says, basically, maybe the two should put things in a holding pattern while he's away.  CJ's reply is, "Well, nice knowing you. Bye."

???

There are so many pieces that don't register there that it's hard to differentiate the chain from a set of random events.  Even more bizarre is roommate Jonna, 20, who has a boyfriend back home and swears she'll remain true.  That she swears she'll remain true is slightly odd from the get go, but the way in which she does so furrows the brow.  As she says during the show, "I really think I can make it through this."

This?  What this?  Spending time in close proximity to other humans without having sex with them?  Is this the running of the gauntlet for the new generation?  Has our society come to a point now where this is something people wonder if they can "make it through?"  And, she doesn't even have the mental fortitude to present the idea as though she's sure.  How would you like to be that boyfriend?  Well, I mean, I'm going to be near other men for a certain amount of time... you want me to be sure I won't have sex with them?

Of course, given the downward spiral that is this show, this is par for the course.  It's a show that now lives off its ability to call people stupid who will take it as a compliment, and has the admirable goal of teaching its participants that other people really are just like they always thought they were.

The killer was at the end of the show when we got the clip reel of what's to come this season.  Flash-flash-flash, and all the show has to say for itself is that there will be many times that people are too drunk to stand, several fights, a lot of screaming, and generally a lot of twenty-somethings acting like they are ten (sorry ten year-olds).

On the other hand, there are a lot of advertisers who would really like to target drunk, useless people who are around twenty (or wish they were), so fair play to you MTV.

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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