We are nearing the end of what's been an eventful season of The Challenge: Battle of the Exes II, as it heads towards determining the final three teams to compete in the final, and we just had the finale to an emotion-packed season of Real World Skeletons last week. Of course, we saw the game-changer known as Exiled trigger a big effect on the entire house that saw a preseason favorite head back into the game, a powerhouse team go home prematurely and one move change everything last week.
But before tonight's episode, here on DCBLOG our focus is more on complementing the recaps and rankings and providing a unique look on this MTV world with stories that relate to its personalities. In this dedicated edition of DC ExtraTime, we'll look back at one of the most memorable and heartbreaking moments in Real World history featuring one of the castmates from this season, and how it relates to what happened in the lead-up to this Challenge.
The most dramatic moment of Battle of the Exes 2 right up to now occurred at the end of last week's episode when Sarah announced her intentions to send in the Exiled winners, Johnny Bananas and Nany, into the last Dome elimination against Leroy and Nia with a spot in the final and at least $15,000 at stake. If all goes according to plan, this will be a rematch of their Week 5 Dome battle that saw the upstarts take down the veterans in stunning fashion, and this time it will determine who will go into the final going for the big cash, and who will be left on the outside looking in. But lost in all this was who the beneficiaries were in being the one team other than Sarah and Jordan, and that would be rookies Jay and Jenna.
We recently wrapped up season 30 of The Real World, the show that pioneered the reality TV craze when many of its viewers in its current generation were in kindergarten when it began in 1992. As much as the past two RW seasons have departed from the original 7 strangers formula and introduced unprecedented twists to the house, there are still elements of the old school format being present as if nothing changed. One of them is the show's great ability to documenting young adults going through those life-changing moments as they mature into young adults. And there's been so many of them in the two decades the show has been on the air.
For the season that just ended, Skeletons had plenty of them in Chicago, from Jason becoming a father and his emotional meeting with his own dad for the first time, to Madison dealing with her dark, drug-ridden past. And last season on Ex-Plosion, we saw a pregnancy scare by an ex of one of the roommates. But the most heartbreaking moment of that season in San Francisco, and for that matter the show's current generation, was what happened to a likable guy from the Bronx who, a year after season 29 aired, finds himself in the final going for the big bucks in unexpected fashion.
There, before the twist of the exes moving into the house in the Bay Area was revealed to the roommates, they already had two budding house romances and dealing with a hurricane. But for one of them, they were not prepared for the saddest news of all that came from back home. That was when Jay received a phone call from his dad in New York that his terminally ill mom had died after being rushed to the hospital after a long battle with cancer.
The emotion and disbelief Jay felt at the worst time of his life was palpable and heartfelt, and the support that came from social media was overwhelming. Unfortunately, this would turn out to be the first of three times in the past year that he would feel the pain of losing someone he was close with...the past two of which was shared with the entire MTV family just after many of them wrapped up filming Exes 2 over the summer.
There, before the twist of the exes moving into the house in the Bay Area was revealed to the roommates, they already had two budding house romances and dealing with a hurricane. But for one of them, they were not prepared for the saddest news of all that came from back home. That was when Jay received a phone call from his dad in New York that his terminally ill mom had died after being rushed to the hospital after a long battle with cancer.
The emotion and disbelief Jay felt at the worst time of his life was palpable and heartfelt, and the support that came from social media was overwhelming. Unfortunately, this would turn out to be the first of three times in the past year that he would feel the pain of losing someone he was close with...the past two of which was shared with the entire MTV family just after many of them wrapped up filming Exes 2 over the summer.
Taken from interviews he did during while he was in San Francisco, and then doing a follow-up when the show was airing last year, after the break, Jay reflects on the most devastating news of his life, in his own words. Plus, my reflection on that moment and how it relates to the deaths many months later of Diem and Knight.
