the loud bassoon guide to television: the real world san diego

The Real World San Diego (MTV)
2004

The Real World launched when I was in college, offering people my age the opportunity to see that the idiots of the world were not limited to the drunken fucks on your dorm floor. MTV gathered idiots of every stripe and threw them in a house together, in keeping with the early 90's fascination with diversity. As with Arrested Development, it was an optimistic experiment that ultimately didn't amount to much.

Which is not to say the show fizzled out … quite the opposite, it is now in its 14th season (!) of throwing diverse idiots in a house together. It probably has as much relevance to college kids of today as the first couple of seasons did to my collegiate colleagues. But if you've moved on from that stage of life, you're bound to find the thing pretty fucking rancid.

I will say this for my generation; for all the terrible rock music we made and listened to, and for all the unfortunate influence we had on marketing (you can blame us for any and all things "X-Treme"), the steps toward tolerance and understanding were sincere. The Real World did break some walls down, showing many people my age their first Open Lesbian, Cute Virgin, HIV-Positive Tragic Gay Hero, Angry White Guy, or Militant Black Man. Granted, the folks were always stereotypes, but you have to start somewhere, right?

The trouble, as I see it, with The Real World now is that the generation after mine is already more mixed. The social taboos don't need to be broken down as much, since kids are less rigidly segmented socially and more cool with themselves and one another. What is left, basically, is simply the mystery of hooking up with each other.

The Real World San Diego finds yet another group of stereotypes, each of whom has a clear ancestor from an earlier season, thrown into yet another beach house, bla bla bla. There's the black dude (this time given the "nerd" spin), the party girl, the "alternative" girl, the Asian girl … bla bla bla. It was totally uninteresting. The focus seems to be entirely on drinking and hooking up. Groundbreaking!

If the show ever did have something to say, it was more than a decade ago, and the message has long been blurred by each successive season of increasingly more shallow people and choices. If it's a statement on that age group, it's not a flattering one. Then again, every Real World cast has always reminded me of a dorm-floor in-crowd, and those are never the people who truly represent their generation.

Which begs the question: Why bother? If I want homemade porn, I'll go get some. If I want just good reality TV, there's plenty else to choose from. The Real World never was real, nor was it ever my world, but it's even less so now.

Too bad this show was not left behind at the 90s border, with Soul Asylum and everyone's $20 halogen lamps. It may be a pioneering show in reality TV, but nowadays, they've added entertainment into the mix … watching a bunch of anti-interesting fuckwits get drunk is not how I want to spend my time. I get enough of that spending time with my kids.