Last week marked the final episode of the 25th season of MTV’s The Real World: Las Vegas. I don’t typically watch this show – I haven’t in over a decade. But one of my interns at JMI brought this particular season to my attention when he found out that one of the guys on the show, Michael Ross, had worked on The Terrapin Times, the same conservative college newspaper I co-founded at the University of Maryland back in 2003. I thought this was pretty neat, so I decided I was going to have to tune in.
I caught up with every episode and each episode got crazier. After about seven or eight episodes of the 14-week show, I remarked that “This show changes every week.” It really does, because you find out more and more about each of the cast members and something about their past – or even about their current relationships with each other, that changes our perspective.
Let’s start with the cast member who got me interested in this show, Michael Ross. I have communicated with him over Facebook and Twitter since watching the show. From this mild communication and what I’ve seen on the show, you have to admit, he seems like a hell of a nice guy. He’s probably the only person in the house that gets along with everyone else in the house (for the most part). Other cast members describe him as “the smartest person in the house.” His housemate Leroy is amused by all the big vocabulary words Mike uses. His other housemate Naomi reiterates time and again that Mike is going to be a CEO someday – or at least the most successful among them all. Mike is often seen reading books – including Freakonomics. While everyone in the house (as is typical on the Real World shows) are usually shown partying all the time, there is one episode where Mike actually puts together a resume for a job. And who can forget the episode where Mike, expecting his roommate Leroy to come home with yet another girl he’s going to sleep with, camps out in the living room and makes a tent out of his sheets and calls it “Sexiled Island.” And all of us Terps love the fact that he’s constantly wearing University of Maryland gear all the time. (Way to represent!)
Despite his more conservative nature, Mike isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We learn that even though he has good traditional values, his parents were both drug addicts, in and out of jail. During his childhood, while he lived in small town Virginia, he moved in with a friend’s grandmother, who took the responsibility of raising him. The roommates are almost stunned to hear about this past. With his values and goal-oriented mindset, he seems like he was raised by a perfect family.
At the beginning of the show, when Mike first meets Dustin Zito, he says something to the camera like “me and Dustin are going to be boys.” This is probably based on the fact that like him, Dustin appears a good-natured country boy from another Southern state, Louisiana. On the other hand, Mike actually becomes “boys” with his roommate Leroy, a black guy who was born and raised in the Detroit area. Leroy’s past though isn’t too different than Mike’s. Leroy also had parents with drug problems and was raised by foster parents. Unlike Mike, however, Leroy is a “player.” Episode after episode, he brings home girls from the Vegas nightclubs, sleeps with them and is very nonchalant about this behavior. Mike doesn’t judge.
Leroy and fellow housemate, Naomi, also have a sort of “roommates with benefits” relationship. They sleep with each other when they want to and Naomi doesn’t mind that Leroy brings home other girls. No strings are attached. That is, until Naomi starts having some physical issues – she thinks she may be pregnant or have an STD. She is scared and isn’t sure which would be a greater challenge. She doesn’t want to have Leroy’s baby. This situation raises an alarm for both LeRoy and Naomi who were having unprotected sex as well as treating sex too casually. After Naomi gets checked out, it turns out to be an infection – there’s no pregnancy and no STD. But this scare alters their behavior – to a degree.
Probably the craziest situation in the house involves Adam. Throughout the first several episodes, I and I’m sure many MTV viewers grew a huge distaste for Adam. Not only does he get drunk (and out of control) every night he goes out, but he also treats women horribly. One of those women is his housemate Nany.
When Nany and Adam first meet, you can tell there is a physical attraction between them. Nany, however, has a boyfriend of 6 years back home. But her confessionals to the camera seem to indicate that part of the reason she came to Vegas was to test that relationship and see if she could breakaway from the need to constantly be in relationships with men. Adam, on the other hand, sees Nany as a challenge to be conquered. He finally gets his “victory.”
Nany breaks up with her boyfriend over the phone and sleeps with Adam. Then, when Adam goes out with her and the other roommates, he continues drinking excessively, gets drunk, talks to other women, upsets Nany, and even gets kicked out of a nightclub at the Hard Rock Hotel, where they are living. After too many out-of-control drunken nights and broken glass, Adam eventually gets kicked out of the hotel altogether and booted from season 25.
This paves the way for MTV to introduce a new roommate to the house, Cooke. She is athletic and spunky. But the females in the house immediately become jealous. Naomi, Heather, and Nany already have formed a tight female bond with each other and they aren’t ready to allow another chick into the house – especially when it appears that Cooke may be interested in Dustin Zito. Eventually the girls get over it and welcome Cooke into their club, but not without some pretty ridiculous abuse.
If the situation with Adam was the craziest, the most shocking has to be with Zito. In the first few weeks, he befriends Mike, but by season’s end him and Mike have a rocky “love and hate” friendship. Also in the first few weeks, Zito starts a “no strings attached” relationship with Heather. Zito and Heather have clearly fallen for each other. Neither wants a relationship, but both appear to be in love. It gets to the point where the other roommates just want to puke. Well, they’re about to get their chance.
Half way through the season, the roommates learn – via emails, phone calls, and the internet – that Zito has a past he has told no one about. The internet is abuzz that one of the cast members of the real world, Zito, has a porn past – a gay porn past. When Heather confronts Zito about this, he is caught off guard and is left ashamed and embarrassed. He says he wanted to tell her on his terms but that they have barely gotten to know each other (even though they’ve clearly slept together). While virtually every member in this house has displayed a sense of no boundaries in their relationships, they now all express a sense of judgment against Zito. Perhaps, rightfully so.
There is perhaps one sin that Zito has exhibited that is greater than all the fornicating, drunken, licentiousness that is prevalent among these house members: Zito is a liar, a fraud. All the cast members feel like he owed it to them – and especially to the woman he is sleeping with, Heather – to tell them about his past. While I am just as stunned as everyone else about Zito’s pornographic past, I find it a little troubling that the cast members cast so much judgment on him, when this is obviously a very tough moment for him. There are mixed emotions among them ranging from anger to pity.
After Zito apologizes to them, his relationship with Heather seems to go sour. She has a hard time wanting to be with him after this. That is until the next episode. When the four girls are left home alone, partying it up in the hot tub with plenty of alcohol, two of them start making out – Heather and Nany. The guys all walk in during this display. And they cannot believe what they are seeing. Heather and Nany make no bones about it. They are all over each other. They even go the distance by getting in bed together and performing on each other. It is apparent that the two women in the house who have been mistreated by guys are now acting out against the entire male sex and taking sexual pleasure upon themselves.
The next day Nany just laughs about it while Heather feels ashamed. Zito doesn’t know what to think. He and Heather end up getting back together and by season’s end it seems that they are going to miss each other.
Even though Adam is back in New York, he continues talking to Nany on the phone and eventually visits Vegas one more time during the season. During that 3-day stint, he stays across the street, entertains Nany for one more night before she finally questions why she puts up with his nonsense.
In the meantime, we also learn more about Nany. She seems to have “daddy” issues. And we learn she grew up never knowing who her dad was. So, she hires a private investigator to find him. The investigator returns with mixed news. Her father died in 2002, but Nany has a half-sister and half-brother in Florida who she never knew. Nany is devastated that she will never know her father personally, but something in her life is new: she now has two siblings she can start a relationship with. Through them, Nany is already learning more about who her father was. She learns all this at the same time that Adam is in Vegas on his 3-day stint. She finally calls it quits with Adam. It seems Nany is learning that her relationship with men can be different than it was in the past.
MTV constructed a really neat episode – in week 12 – where the story of Nany and her deceased father who she never knew is contrasted with a visit from Mike’s biological mother. Mike has not seen his mother in 2 years – and before that it had been 12 years. She is a recovering drug addict who is now battling breast cancer. Mike is nervous about rekindling a relationship with her because he is afraid that once he gets to know her again and build a relationship, cancer (or drugs) may take her away from him again in the future. Nany advises Mike that he is fortunate for this chance to get to know his mother. Mike takes his mother around Vegas, spends quality time with her, and when they say good bye, I swear I started tearing up. She tells Mike she is sorry and that she is so proud of him because he is such a good kid. They hug and say goodbyes.
There are lots of other things that go on during this show, but we learn a lot about human nature in front of the lights of Vegas. Man is a fallen creature – none of us is perfect. And our pasts seem to always be with us. For some people, the past is haunting. For others it is defining. Still others find they can bring the experience of their troubled past to make them more capable to handle the present and seek a better future. I hope and pray that for this cast of the Real World, their past and the experience of having their lives taped for the world to see is something they can learn from and grow from.