Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Good riddance

"Real World Austin" ended tonight, not with a bang, but with a whimper, and with various roommates hating each other just as much as we hate them.

Damn, Austin is one of my favorite cities, and "Real World" used to be a good show about, oh, 10+ seasons ago. But for all they utilize the cities on that show these days, they may as well have shot it in a closet somewhere.

I stick even more firmly to my theory, the show needs to face its own decline and change things around, or it will continue to become even more useless. There's no first-season Julies and Heather B.'s anymore, that's for sure. Bunim-Murray would set the show in Omaha before they'd cast someone as large (and witty, and smart, and wonderful) as Heather B.

Speaking of old-time "Real World," it looks like Los Angeles scapegoat and all-around annoying one Beth S. can't get enough reality TV crack -- she's back for "The Gauntlet."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What?! No Coral? No Mike? No Veronica?

Looks like a Challenge I might enjoy!

Meredith said...

I watched the first five or so seasons of Real World, then I got tired of the repetitive nature of the show and bailed. How much different would it be if it followed a diverse cast of people striving to fulfill their goals, as you suggest? There could still be some requisite eye candy for the dirty old men at the network, but the viewers could learn a little something about the ups and downs of starting a new career as opposed to how to get falling down drunk at every opportunity and make sloppy, sloppy love in a hot tub.

Jason said...

"RW: Austin was a blah season, culminating with a car wreck finale. The only halfway redeemable person there is Lacey. I know...most of her time was spent on the phone with her boyfriend, talking smack. But she was more of a miscast than anything...the girl whose parents were hippies-turned-neocons, I think BMP was hoping for an unholy merge between Julie(NOLA) and Rachel (SF). But Lacey had most of her marbles. Your milage may vary.

As for the Challenge? I groaned listening to Beth. Most of my ire is spent on Beth, Mark (good guy-turned-old playa), Adam L. (still haven't forgiven him for trying to waste Sarah in the first Gauntlet) and Julie (too much venom to spew on her here). But here's the funny thing...last season, the producers put more thought into the missions and endgames. True, there were some gag-inducing moments ("Mean Girls" bullying Tonya, Jodi losing to Veronica in the Inferno, Brad getting thrown into a loss against beastly Abram), but we ended with the "Good Guys" not only winning more missions despite being undermanned through most of the season, but they overcame a three-person disadvantage to win the final mission. I'm hoping we can get a repeat of the excellence this season...because next time? We got Austin cast members in something called The Fresh Meat Challenge. That doesn't sound good at all.

Anonymous said...

Just could they PLEASE cast someone who is interested in doing something other than drinking and having sex. I mean, seriously.

Jason said...

The only folks that I think wouldn't drink to excess on this Challenge are Jamie and Randy...and that's because they would be on a different kind of trip, if you know what I mean. I do miss normal people...while couldn't Jacquese come back? Or maybe Roni would be unemployed for this Challenge, the way she was for The Gauntlet.

I hope I'm not stepping on any toes, but I'm going to recap the Challenge on my Blogspot page. You can also check out my past recaps...been doing it since Battle of the Sexes.