DC's View: Real World Ex-Plosion

By DC Cueva

@DC408dxtr

Okay, so amidst all of this excitement surrounding my 30th birthday today and getting a lot of love from the social media world (and again, thanks to everyone who've sent me birthday wishes throughout this day), there's also been a lot of talking on twitter today surrounding the show I've been watching & following the most for almost half of that time, and that would be The Real World.

  The mere luck of the draw has seen three big developments in the past day or so in RW/Challenge world. First, last night I got my copy of The Challenge: Rivals II DVD in the mail, and I'll be looking forward to watching it a lot coming up (that long promised season wrap should be posted very soon, promise). Second, there's been a lot of hot stove talk over the last month about the cast & format for the upcoming Challenge, currently taking place in South America. And third & perhaps the biggest one of all is season 29 of The Real World. Yesterday, cast members teased on twitter to expect big news coming from them on this Wednesday, and today we got that big news.

For 28 seasons starting in SoHo and then most recently in Portland, The Real World has followed in that same tried & true formula of, as its mantra likes to say at the beginning, telling the true story of seven (& sometimes more) strangers picked to live in a house & work together, to find out what happens when people stop being polite & stop getting real. Now, the show has taken a bold step by, for the first time in the show's long history, of tweaking that formula, and adding some spice to this upcoming season, taking place up the way from where I'm situated here in Silicon Valley, in the good old City by the Bay.

   Just like any other season, the season 29 class of the chosen seven strangers of Arielle, Ashley, Cory, Jamie, Jay, Jenny and Tom will all move into their loft in San Francisco, doing what every other cast of recent times do: living it up, partying it up and hooking up in their loft in the Polk Gulch neighborhood, which for locals like me is right near City Hall & the Civic Center. But the dramatic twist that will radiate all throughout this season is that at one point during their stay when these people go on one of their usual trips around the Bay Area, the ex-girlfriends & ex-boyfriends of the original seven strangers will actually fly into SFO, move right into the house and no doubt surprise the SFO Seven when they come back from their excursion. Yes, the occupancy rate in the house will reach more than the usual seven and we could almost have a mere house party every day there.

   As usual when those new relationships blossom inside the house at the start of all this, it will definitely become a very awkward situation for the roommates to live with their exes when they move on, with loyalty and romance being tested to its limit and, of course, more tempers flaring than in your usual Real World. Obviously, the SFO seven are gonna learn that it can be a curse and/or a blessing for them to live w/ their former significant other, and we may even see more love triangles than in the past with this new twist. Some are gonna find newfound romance while others will find realization to all this. And had this been used in St. Thomas involving my favorite roommate from Baltimore, imagine what it would be like if you're Trey and you're living with Laura and with Chelsea. That would've been gold.

Almost immediately, the reaction to this was broad, and much of it has been negative. Those tradition-minded people, including even a member of a season that won Favorite Season at the Awards Bash, complain that it deviates more from the old school from the pioneering ways of the old school seasons where social issues were much prevalent, and that this season could lead to its downfall into cultural obscurity behind the much more popular Challenge and other reality shows. And I also took the necessary steps of sending that kiss of death of blocking a couple people who've shown some discontent over this issue. These people are those who aren't open to change, but they must learn that saying that if you get the same things in life, you'll always get the same results in the end. And for me, I'm not going to start any drama by venting things publicly in the social media world, that's something I don't value myself in. No drama kind of guy, always someone who prefers to be in the background and let everyone else grab the mic.

For me, I've always been a huge Real World fan for as long as I can remember, going all the way back to high school in 1999, and watching most every episode (or at least one episode) of every season since Hawaii. And even with both the new twist to this upcoming season & being engaged more in The Challenge, it will still be the case. I'll still give the legacy show priority over the spinoff as far as stature & preference when it comes to remembering cast members in this franchise.

   While I do have some traditions & occasional tweaks to the things I do everyday, I'm always someone who is open to any changes in the format, provided that it would be beneficial in the end. I am able to handle anything & everything that the show focuses on each season whatever the case may be. I've been able to handle the old-school oriented seasons where social issues & life experiences are focused more, and the new generation of the casts are having fun in exotic locales. And of course, I can handle whatever twist TJ gives the Challengers more than others.

   And The Real World one of those shows where I feel I'm most comfortable in watching, where I can just simply sit back, relax, watch and be engaged. Unlike The Challenge where I'm on the edge of my seat watching the drama that occurs on the competition field and in the house, The Real World is much more my comfort zone: more laid back, more storytelling oriented, and more of a steady pace of following young people & their everyday lives, the same people who I've been talking to a lot in social media since I joined the night of the St. Thomas premiere.

As for my thoughts on this twist of the cast's exes moving in, I think it's a good idea to tweak the system a bit if the formula gets stale & predictable. And though I've enjoyed watching this recent generation of the show, the folks realized that their playbook was becoming somewhat outdated and felt it was time to a page out of The Challenge, take a bold gamble and tweak it a bit. If what we see all the time of twists being made to everything that goes on in Challenge land, such as the ones we saw a lot of on Rivals II and the one that inspired this RW season in the first place - Battle of the Exes, then it should be beneficial in the end. There's nothing like getting making a big twist to a good formula to try & get people talking and get themselves interested in something once again. If viewership is very good (even though I would still have to miss watching two episodes live in February due to the Winter Olympics), then it should get a whole new generation of viewers right into the door of the show that Generation X & Y have watched since the '90s and breathe some new life into this franchise instead of being one that's just there to cast potential new challengers.

   But we all have to remember that saying, you shouldn't really judge a book by just glancing at that cover. Just as I've been seeing with my good friends of Scrubbing In where lots of people have been pouring haterade on the cast for the nurse life that they live in and outside the hospital, I feel that instead of continuing to go off on this new twist, we should show a touch of class in just waiting for the trailer to come in a few weeks (and by then the entire RW/Challenge community will be at capacity after those doing Challenge 25 will be able to tweet again) and then for the season to finally premiere before we can give our judgements. I'm going to do exactly that and wait it all out with everyone else.

So, that's my view. And to Arielle, Ashley, Cory, Jamie, Jay, Jenny and Tom (and the extra roommates we'll be seeing eventually), welcome to Team MTV. Let the countdown to the fireworks begin.

- DC