If you want to see true madness this upcoming weekend, turn off CBS and click over to MTV (or set your DVR), as, in a counter-programming move for the ages, MTV is firing up the wayback machine for “RetroMTV: The Real World”, a three-day marathon of classic Real World seasons. The retrospective comes on the eve of the 4,786th 28th season of MTV’s flagship reality show, The Real World: Portland, which debuts March 27th.
The three seasons MTV chose make total sense, even if not all of them are this writer’s favorites. There’s the original New York season, which aired in 1992 — a time referred to in the MTV reality realm as “Before Any Of The Moms On Teen Mom Were Born”. It’s a nice history lesson though, along with the epic San Francisco season featuring the famous Pedro/Puck battle, and the searing reality of Pedro Zamora’s battle with AIDS.
For the younger crowd — the Teen Mom crowd, if you will — wondering when the show took a shameless turn into a season-long drinking binge, MTV is offering up the original Las Vegas season. The infamous Palms Casino penthouse housed the Magnificently Dysfunctional Seven — Alton, Frank, Irulan, Arissa, Trischelle, Brynn, Steven — whose tales of debauchery are the stuff of legend.
Speaking of Vegas, it’s wheels up in a few hours, off to hang with the Cosby Sweaters Whateverwe’recallingourselvesnow crew for some mischief of our own. See ya’ll in a few days.
About John Ferensen