Getting Nostaglic For “The Real World”
Over the holiday break, I watched The Real World Homecoming for New York and Los Angeles. I watched the original first three seasons of the show 30 years ago (yeah, I’m that old)! I really enjoyed the social experiment of bringing together people from vastly different backgrounds “to see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” I lost interest in the show after season five because it started to evolve into a “hookup” show.
I learned a lot about others from watching this show. The first time I saw an openly LGBT person on TV (Norman from New York), the first time I saw a woman talk openly about her abortion (Tami from Los Angeles), and the first time I saw someone talk openly about living with HIV (Pedro from San Francisco) all happened on The Real World.
So, it has been great to watch the reunion homecomings and see how much – or little – the cast has changed. Too bad there are no plans to do a homecoming for San Francisco. There could be many reasons for this, including primarily Pedro Zamora’s death, but also the original house the cast lived in was significantly damaged in a fire 20 years ago, and any lingering animosity towards Puck and Rachel Campos, who is now a Fox News personality from the rest of the cast.