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The Real World (TV series)

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For the play by Michel Tremblay, see The Real World?

The Real World is a reality television program on MTV originally produced by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray. First aired in 1992, it is one of the first reality television shows to gain a national audience, and continues to be the longest running program in MTV history. The show is currently in its seventeenth season. Following Bunim’s death from breast cancer in 2004, Bunim/Murray Productions continues to produce the program.

History

The show focuses on the lives of seven diverse strangers who audition to live in a house together for several months, as cameras record their interpersonal relationships, with the show moving to a different city each season. The footage shot during the housemates’ time together is edited into half-hour episodes. As the narration given over the opening title sequence by the seven housemates states:

"This is the true story, of seven strangers, picked to live in a house, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real. The Real World."

Before the televised version of the show debuted, a "scripted" version of it was toyed with. Rather than being themselves, a set of strangers (not the New York cast) were given story and character arcs to attempt to recreate (a la a soap opera). Bunim & Murray decided against this, and, at the last minute, pulled the concept (and the cast) before it became the first season of the show, believing seven different people would have enough of a basis on which to interact without scripts. Immediately prior to season 1 (New York) being filmed, the idea of bringing the scripts in was briefly toyed with as well. One of the original seven picked for "season 0" went on to minor fame herself (see Trivia section below).

One sign of the show’s popularity occurred on the October 2, 1993 episode of the sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live, which poked fun at the show, in particular its second season Los Angeles cast, whose members were depicted as contentious and bigoted, a parody of the numerous discussions of racism, bigotry and political differences that served as a recurring theme that season. [1]. The show also gained widespread notoriety when The Real World: San Francisco, the show’s third season, aired in 1994. [citation needed] That season included two memorable housemates: AIDS activist Pedro Zamora, and David "Puck" Rainey, a bicycle messenger with poor hygiene and an offensive attitude towards his housemates. The mainstay of the season included the much-publicized arguments between these two persons. As the show gained more popularity, Zamora’s life as someone living with AIDS gained considerable notice, garnering media attention. Zamora was one of the first openly gay men with AIDS to be portrayed in popular media, and after his death on November 11, 1994 (hours after the final episode of his season aired) he was praised by then-President Bill Clinton. Zamora’s roommate and best friend during the show, Judd Winick, went on to become a popular comic book writer, and wrote the Eisner-nominated graphic novel Pedro and Me, about his friendship with Zamora, as well as high-profile storylines in mainstream superhero comics that featured gay and AIDS-related themes. As the San Francisco season continued to grow in popularity, it was clear that the "reality" television format was one that could bring considerable ratings to a network.

Appearing on the program has often served as a springboard into further success in the entertainment and media industry. Eric Nies of the New York cast went on to become a successful model, actor, TV host, and was inducted into the Television and Broadcasters "Hall of Fame" for his pioneering work in reality television. His housemate, Kevin Powell, became a successful author, poet, journalist, and candidate for United States House of Representatives (Powell ran in 2006, in New York's 10th district), and their other housemate, Heather B., enjoyed a successful career as a rap music artist. Los Angeles cast member Beth Stolarczyk has, among other things, produced men's and women's calendars featuring reality TV personalities, including herself, Las Vegas' Trishelle Cannatella, Chicago's Tonya Cooley, and Back to New York's Coral Smith. Cannatella has also appeared in Playboy magazine, as have Las Vegas' Arissa Hill and Miami's Flora Alekseyeun. San Francisco's Pedro Zamora, an AIDS activist, reached a national audience with his appearance on the series, and was honored by President Bill Clinton for his work. Comic book writer/artist Judd Winick, of the San Francisco cast, went on to enjoy an award-winning career, winning acclaim for his work, which, in part, is influenced heavily by his friendship with roommate Zamora. London cast member Jacinda Barrett has become a successful actress, appearing in prominent roles in films starring John Travolta, Joaquin Phoenix, Anthony Hopkins and Renée Zellweger. Lindsay Brien of the Seattle cast became a radio and CNN personality. Chicago cast member Kyle Brandt’s acting career includes starring in the soap opera Days of our Lives. His castmate, Tonya Cooley, also appeared on an MTV special of True Life: I'm a Reality TV Star. Las Vegas cast members Cannatella and Steven Hill appeared in the horror film Scorned. Cannatella herself has also appeared on other reality shows, such as The Surreal Life, Battle of the Network Reality Stars, and Kill Reality, the latter of which also featured Hill and Cooley. Hill, along with housemate Alton Williams, hosts a radio show. Dozens of former cast members from The Real World, and its spin-off, Road Rules, have appeared on the spin-off game show, Real World/Road Rules Challenge .

The show currently finished its seventeenth season in Key West.

Format and structure

Each season consists of seven people, age 18 – 24 (a reflection of the network’s target demographic), usually selected from thousands of applicants from across the country, with the group chosen typically representing different races, genders, sexual orientations, levels of sexual experiences, and political beliefs. Should a cast member decide to move out, or be asked to do so by his roommates, the producers will usually cast a replacement.

Each season begins with the individual members of the house shown leaving home, often for the first time, and/or meeting their fellow housemates while in transit to their new home, or at the house itself. The exception was the Los Angeles season, which premiered with two housemates picking up a third at his Kentucky home and driving in a Winnebago RV to their new home in Los Angeles. Upon arriving at the house, the housemates will pick their rooms. If the rooms are not already pre-chosen for them by the producers, this sometimes serves as the first source of tension, as when some housemates do not obtain the room of their choice, or when some choose their rooms before the rest of the cast members show up. The house is typically elaborate in its décor, and usually includes a pool table, a Jacuzzi, and a fish tank, which serves as a metaphor for the show, in that the roommates, who are being taped at all times in their home, are seen metaphorically as fish in a fishbowl. This point is punctuated not only by the fact that the MTV logo title card seen after the closing credits of each episode is designed as a fishbowl, but also by a poem that Judd Winick wrote during his stay in San Francisco called Fishbowl.

The housemates are filmed whenever they are awake. The house is outfitted with cameras mounted on walls, but to capture more intimate moments, numerous camera crews consisting of 3 – 6 people follow the cast around the house and out in public. Each member of the cast is instructed to ignore the cameras and the crew, but are required to wear a battery pack and microphone on their person in order to capture their dialogue, though some cast members have been known to turn theirs off or hide them. The only area of the house in which camera access is restricted is the bathroom. [2] Despite the initial awkwardness of being surrounded by cameramen, cast members have insisted that they eventually adjust to it, and that their behavior is purely natural, and not influenced by the fact that they are being filmed. Judd Winick, an alumnus of the show’s third season, adds that the fact that their lives were being documented made it seem “more real”. The producers made an exception to this protocol during the third season, when Pedro Zamora requested that he be allowed to go out on a date without the cameras, because the normal anxieties associated with first dates would be exacerbated by the presence of cameras.

At the end of each week, each housemate was required to sit down and be interviewed about the past week’s events. Unlike the normal day-to-day filming, these interviews, which are referred to as “confessionals”, involve the subject looking directly into the camera while providing opinions and reflective accounts of the week’s activities that are used as narration in the final edited episodes. The producers instruct the cast to talk about whatever they wished, and to speak in complete sentences, to reinforce the feeling, in the home viewer, that the cast is actually speaking to them. Winick referred to this practice as “like therapy without the help”. The confessionals were originally conducted by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jon Murray, but were eventually delegated to production staff members like George Verschoor and Thomas Klein. Beginning with the second season (Los Angeles), a small soundproof room was incorporated into the house for this purpose, and the room has also become known as the “confessional”. The various casts were often creative in their use of the confessional, which Bunim and Murray referred to as “inspired lunacy”, such as a group confessional conducted by all the Los Angeles housemates on their last day, an appearance by San Francisco housemate Judd Winick in a nun’s habit, and Miami roommates Melissa Padrón and Flora Alekseyeun dressing up as prostitutes for a shared confessional in which they discuss why their roommates did not get along with them. During Mardis Gras, New Orleans cast member Danny Roberts used the confessional to engage in a sex act.

Initially, the show would document the housemates as they struggled to find and maintain jobs and careers, with minimal group activities aside from their day-to-day lives in the house and their socializing in the city. The only group activity engineered by the producers during the first season was a trip for the three females to Jamaica. By the second season, sending the entire cast on a vacation would become the norm, and the second season cast was also sent on a day trip to Joshua Tree, California. By the time of the fifth season, the cast would be given an ongoing, season-long activity, with the Miami cast given startup money and a business advisor, Landon, to begin their own business. Subsequent seasons would feature the entire cast working together at a particular job, such as running an after-school daycare program, a radio station, public access television station, etc.

Physical violence of any kind was not tolerated by the producers. After an incident during the Seattle season in which Stephen Williams slapped Irene McGee as she moved out, the incident was debated by the housemates, who were not present but were shown a videotape. The producers, not wanting to be seen condoning violence, gave the housemates the choice of having him leave, but instead the housemates chose to let him stay, and Williams was ordered to attend an anger management class.

Recurring themes

  • Prejudice

As their experiences on The Real World were often the first time that cast members encountered people of different races or sexual orientations, many episodes documented arguments over these issues. First season housemate Kevin Powell had such arguments with Eric Nies, Julie Gentry and Becky Blasband. The Los Angeles cast was possibly the most contentious, with racial and regional epithets exchanged between Jon Brennan, Dominic Griffin and Tami Roman in the very first episode. San Francisco housemate David "Puck" Rainey mocked both Pedro Zamora’s homosexuality and his Cuban accent, even leaving messages with derogatory jokes about homosexuals on the house’s answering machine after he was evicted from the house. During his stay in the house, he at one point wore a T-shirt with a swastika design on it, which the Jewish Judd Winick saw as a betrayal. Flora Alekseyeun, during an argument with Miami roommate Cynthia Roberts, dismissed what she referred to as Roberts' “black attitude”. Their roommate Melissa Padrón, during a heated exchange with homosexual Dan Renzi, called him a “flamer”. Racism was also a subject of argument for New Orleans housemates Julie Stoffer and Melissa Howard, as when Howard took offense to Stoffer mentioning that her stay in New Orleans was her first encounter with “colored” people. Howard also took offense when a boat guide referred to a group of storks as “nigger storks”. The stereotypical views about blacks that Back to New York’s Mike Mizanin related to Coral Smith and Nicole Jackson offended them, and they tried to educate him on black culture. They were also oddly offended by the fact that bi-racial roommate Malik Cooper wore a T-shirt with the image of Marcus Garvey, who was against miscegenation, despite the fact that Cooper was of mixed heritage and dated Caucasian women. Philadelphia's Karamo Brown stated opposition to biracial dating, specifically in regards to Landon and Shavonda's relationship.

  • Politics

Jon Brenan disagreed with Tami Roman’s decision to have an abortion, and argued with Aaron Bailey's girlfriend, Erin, who was pro-choice. Rachel Campos, a conservative Republican member of the San Francisco cast, clashed with liberal roommates Mohammed Bilal and Judd Winick. Paris housemate Chris "CT" Tamburello became belligerent during a discussion of the Iraq War, even threatening Adam King. Nehemiah Clark, of the Austin, Texas cast, expressed liberal opinions about President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, sometimes coming into conflict with Rachel Moyal, who served in Iraq as a combat medic for the US Army.

  • Religion

Philadelphia castmates MJ and Sarah argued over the film The Passion of the Christ. Sarah, who was Jewish, found the film anti-semitic, whereas MJ, a Christian, did not.

  • Romance

Many cast members were documented in various stages of their love lives, either attempting to maintain long-distance relationships with loved ones back home, looking for love in their new city of residence, and in some cases flirting or even developing serious relationships with their roommates. San Francisco roommates Pam Ling and Judd Winick are now married and have a child. Their roommate Rachel Campos married Sean Duffy of the Boston cast, and they have three children. Las Vegas roommates Trishelle Cannatella and Steven Hill consummated a romance during the show, which resulted in a pregnancy scare for Cannatella. Their roommates Irulan Wilson and Alton Williams began a relationship that continued after they moved out of the Las Vegas suite. Austin roommates Danny Jamieson and Melinda Stolp are currently engaged. Many cast members had ongoing steady relationships that predated their appearance on the show, but for those whose relationships were of the long-distance variety, remaining faithful was often a challenge. New Orleans’ Danny Roberts cheated on his boyfriend Paul, who was stationed in the military. Seattle’s Nathan Blackburn’s girlfriend worried about their relationship. Miami’s Flora Alekseyeun attempted to maintain relationships with two boyfriends simultaneously. Relationships among cast members of the various seasons of The Real World and its spin-off, Road Rules, are frequent on Real World/Road Rules Challenge, a game show which assembles dozens of alumni from the various seasons together.

  • Sexuality

The level of sexual experience varies among a given season’s cast members. Los Angeles’ Jon Brennan, San Francisco's Cory Murphy, Seattle’s Rebecca Lord, New Orleans’ Matt Smith, and Austin’s Lacey Buehler, for example, were virgins during their respective seasons. On the other end of the spectrum was New Orleans’ David Broom, who was highly promiscuous, having had many sexual partners during his season, including more than one during Mardis Gras alone, some of whose names he did not even know. New Orleans’ Danny Roberts engaged in a sex act in the confessional room with a man during Mardis Gras. Some cast members expressed difficulty with relationships, such as London’s Sharon Gitau. Overt sexual behavior was minimal during the show's early seasons, relegated mostly to discussion. In subsequent seasons, the level of sexual activity greatly increased, beginning with the Miami season, which depicted or touched upon activities such as exhibitionism, frottage, voyeurism, and threesomes. This increasing level of sexuality became a focus of criticism of the show, with the Las Vegas season serving as another prominent example.

  • Unrequited love

Jon Brennan’s Los Angeles roommates speculated that he had developed a crush, or possibly had fallen in love, with Irene Berrera, and observed him looking somber at her wedding. New Orleans’ Melissa Howard was attracted to Jamie Murray, who did not reciprocate. Their roommate Julie Stoffer harbored similar feelings for Matt Smith, who also did not reciprocate. Back to New York’s Lori Trespicio developed an attraction for Kevin Dunn, but he did not see her as anything other than a friend.

  • Departed housemates

Many times housemates have left the Real World house (and production) before production was completed, usually due to conflicts with others. David Edwards was asked to leave because his volatile behavior made the three women in the Los Angeles house feel unsafe. David “Puck” Rainey was voted out of the San Francisco house when housemate Pedro Zamora, whose contentious relationship with Rainey was affecting his health, told his housemates that he would move out if Rainey did not. Rainey moved out, but he appeared in some subsequent episodes in which he continued to socialize with former housemates Cory Murphy and Rachel Campos, and in the season finale. Irene McGee moved out of the Seattle house because of ethical objections to the show's production, though at the time, she claimed it was because of illness. Melissa Padrón and Justin Deabler moved out of the Miami and Hawaii houses, respectively, though Padrón continued to appear on the show. Irene Barrera moved out of the Los Angeles house when she got married. Frankie Abernathy moved out of the San Diego house due to homesickness.

  • On-screen marriage

Irene Barrera-Kearns got married during the Los Angeles season, and moved out. Pedro Zamora exchanged wedding vows with his boyfriend Sean Sasser.

  • Life-threatening illness

Pedro Zamora struggled with AIDS. He succumbed to the disease hours after the San Francisco season finale aired. Seattle’s Irene McGee suffered from Lyme disease, and ostensibly moved out of the house because of it, though she later revealed that this was a cover for her ethical objections to the show’s production. San Diego housemate Frankie Abernathy suffers from cystic fibrosis.

The Real World seasons

  1. The Real World: New York (1992)
  2. The Real World: Los Angeles (1993)
  3. The Real World: San Francisco (1994)
  4. The Real World: London (1995)
  5. The Real World: Miami (1996)
  6. The Real World: Boston (1997)
  7. The Real World: Seattle (1998)
  8. The Real World: Hawaii (1999)
  9. The Real World: New Orleans (2000)
  10. The Real World: Back to New York (2001)
  11. The Real World: Chicago (2002)
  12. The Real World: Las Vegas (2002)
  13. The Real World: Paris (2003)
  14. The Real World: San Diego (2004)
  15. The Real World: Philadelphia (2004)
  16. The Real World: Austin (2005)
  17. The Real World: Key West (2006)
  18. The Real World: Denver (Filming 06/06-09/06)
Season Location 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 New York, NY Becky Blasband Andre Comeau Heather Gardner Julie Gentry Norman Korpi Eric Nies Kevin Powell
2 Los Angeles, CA Aaron Bailey Irene Berrera-Kearns / Beth Anthony Jon Brennan David Edwards / Glen Naessens Dominic Griffin Tami Roman Beth Stolarczyk
3 San Francisco, CA Mohammed Bilal Rachel Campos Pam Ling Cory Murphy David "Puck" Rainey / Jo Rhodes Judd Winick Pedro Zamora
4 London, England, UK Jacinda Barrett Neil Forrester Jay Frank Sharon Gitau Mike Johnson Kat Ogden Lars Schlichting
5 Miami, FL Flora Alekseyeun Sarah Becker Mike Lambert Melissa Padrón Joe Patane Dan Renzi Cynthia Roberts
6 Boston, MA Jason Cornwell Sean Duffy Montana McGlynn Genesis Moss Kameelah Phillips Elka Walker Syrus Yarbrough
7 Seattle, WA Nathan Blackburn Lindsay Brien David Burns Janet Choi Rebecca Lord Irene McGee Stephen Williams
8 Honolulu, HI Ruthie Alcaide Amaya Brecher Kaia Beck Justin Deabler Tecumseh Holmes, III Colin Mortensen Matt Simon
9 New Orleans, LA David Broom Melissa Howard Kelley Limp Jamie Murray Danny Roberts Matt Smith Julie Stoffer
10 Back to New York, NY Rachel Braband Malik Cooper Kevin Dunn Nicole Jackson Mike Mizanin Coral Smith Lori Trespicio
11 Chicago, IL Chris Beckman Kyle Brandt Tonya Cooley Aneesa Ferreira Keri Evans Theo Gantt III Cara Kahn
12 Las Vegas, NV Trishelle Cannatella Arissa Hill Steven Hill Frank Roessler Brynn Smith Irulan Wilson Alton Williams
13 Paris, France Ace Amerson Leah Gillingwater Adam King Simon Sherry-Wood Mallory Snyder Chris "CT" Tamburello Christina Trainor
14 San Diego, CA Frankie Abernathy / Charlie Dordevich Randy Barry Jamie Chung Cameran Eubanks Brad Fiorenza Robin Hibbard Jacquese Smith
15 Philadelphia, PA Shavonda Bilingslea Karamo Brown Sarah Burke M.J. Garrett William Hernandez Landon Lueck Melanie Silcott
16 Austin, TX Wes Bergmann Johanna Botta Lacey Buehler Nehemiah Clark Danny Jamieson Rachel Moyal Melinda Stolp
17 Key West, FL Janelle Casanave John Devenanzio Tyler Duckworth Zach Mann Paula Meronek Svetlana Shusterman Jose Tapia
18 Denver, CO Alex Steve Brooke Colie (Nicole) Davis Jenn Ty (Tyrie)

Denver Cast Speculation

Criticism

Authenticity

As with other reality shows, The Real World has received criticism for being staged. During a reunion show featuring the first four Real World casts, Heather Gardner, of the original New York cast, asked some members of the San Francisco cast if their situations were real. She noted that situations from the original season seemed to repeat themselves in the other incarnations, stopping short of accusing them of acting. On an edition of the E! True Hollywood Story that spotlighted the series, Los Angeles cast member Jon Brennan revealed that he was asked by the producers to state on the air that he felt hatred towards housemate Tami Roman for her decision to have an abortion, and that he refused to do so, stating that although he disagreed with her decision, he did not feel hatred towards her. Another issue is how MTV actually portrays the people on the show. There have been accusations of them toying with the material to make it seem like people react in certain ways or feel certain emotions.

Ethics

The show has been accused of disregarding ethics. On the final track of his Become the Media spoken word album, activist Jello Biafra discusses a conversation he had with Real World Seattle cast member Irene McGee:

We know Real World is not the real world. I recently met a woman named Irene McGee who quit this show and said not even the house was real. The fridges were all filled to the brim with Vlasic pickles delivered daily by the crate load along with gallons of Nantucket Nectar. If she drank anything else, the crew took it from her hand and made sure the Nantucket Nectar label was facing the camera instead. When she walked out, another guy in the cast of Real World hit her and the camera guy did nothing . . . When she spoke out, MTV sued her. And Entertainment Weekly rated Irene getting smash mouthed the 47th most interesting event on TV that whole year . . . Can’t you MTV think of a better way to raise audience awareness of domestic violence than to make it look cool?

McGee has toured colleges to discuss media manipulation and the falsehoods of reality television. She recently began a radio show/podcast, "No One's Listening,"[3] which is a youth-oriented show covering a wide range of pop-culture and media-related issues.

Sexuality and relevance

The show has also been accused of being overly sexualized, most notably with its Las Vegas cast. [4] There is a larger conception that it has become increasingly unserious. As critic Benjamin Wallace-Wells put it:

“No longer an outlet for 20somethings to brood about their future careers, the show has become a cyclic three-month on-air party for young adults to mingle in hot tubs and obsess about the present. The locales have changed from creative meccas like New York and London to vacation spots like Las Vegas, New Orleans and Hawaii. MTV has rejiggered the show to require characters to engage in artificial, season-long contests or projects—like putting together a fashion show—which the characters embrace in the way most American teenagers experience spring break: as a big party.” [5]

Quick Facts

  • Total no. Of Episodes: 383
  • Total no. of castmembers: 123
  • Location Statistics: 3 Countries, 12 Different States Within US, 17 Different Cities Total(Including Denver)
  • Longest Season Running: Las Vegas (28 Episodes)
  • Shortest Season Running: New York (13 Episodes)
  • Season With the Largest Number of Roommates: Los Angeles, 9
  • Biggest house: Seattle (140,000 sf, including production areas)

Trivia

File:TVGNOrleansCast.jpg
The New Orleans cast on the cover of the June 24, 2000 TV Guide.

The Real World is the longest running show on MTV as well as the second-longest running reality show on television (after COPS).

  • Tracy Grandstaff, one of the actresses from the unused 'scripted' season (season zero, or “season 0”), became the voice of the animated Beavis and Butt-head character Daria Morgendorffer, who eventually got her own spinoff, Daria.
  • The Los Angeles season's original title was The Real World: California until 1994, when the San Francisco season premiered.
  • The season with the most castmates is Los Angeles (1993) with 9. Other seasons including more than 7 housemates (never at once) are: San Francisco (1994) and San Diego (2004).
  • London (1995) and Paris (2003) have been the only seasons that have taken place outside the US. Both were poorly received by US viewers.
  • David Burns and Nathan Blackburn from the Seattle season have been the exception of roommates that know each other before being on the show.
  • The Hawaii cast (1999) was the first one to be able to pick a destination for their annual trip. They chose India.
  • The Hawaii cast was also the first to feature more than one non-heterosexual roommate, the bisexual Ruthie Alcaide, and the homosexual Justin Deabler. The Chicago cast (2002) was the first to feature two homosexuals, Aneesa Ferreira and Chris Beckman. The Philadelphia cast (2004-2005) was the first to feature two male homosexuals, Karamo Brown and Willie Hernadez.
  • The New Orleans cast was the first (and to date the only) cast to be featured on the cover of TV Guide, appearing on the June 24, 2000 edition.
  • The Chicago season was in production during the September 11th attacks, during which, for the first time, production stopped for about 3 hours. Producers made an exception to the "no-tv" rule and allowed the Chicago cast to have a television in order to see the latest national developments concerning September 11th.
  • The Paris season (2003) marked the first time that a season of The Real World was set in a country where English is not the primary language.
  • Las Vegas (2002) holds the record of the longest season with 28 episodes, also, with the longest running on air, from September 2002 to April 2003.
  • The San Diego's phone lounge was redecorated during filming because apparently the producers weren't happy with the design. [citation needed]
  • The Las Vegas and Philadelphia seasons were the only casts to have only castmembers 21 or older.
  • As of 2006, the most viewed season has been San Diego, followed in second place by Las Vegas (2002), and Chicago (2002). [citation needed]

Franchise

Since the introduction of The Real World, Bunim/Murray has spun off a number of other reality shows, including most notably Road Rules, in which 5 strangers (6 in later seasons) are put in a Winnebago and asked to complete certain tasks to eventually gain a "handsome reward". Other shows include the game show Real World/Road Rules Challenge, which pits teams of alumni from both shows in physical competitions.

Parodies, derivatives and references

  • A satirical TV movie called The Lost Season parodied The Real World. It depicted a season of the show that supposedly took place in Vancouver, BC, and was abandoned because its participants were kidnapped.
  • The reality show The Surreal Life on is structured similary to The Real World, except that the housemates, who live together for ten days, are celebrities. The show's original name was "The Surreal World". [7]
  • An episode of the crime drama Law & Order featured a plot involving the investigation into the murder of a housemate on a reality show akin to The Real World.
  • An episode of the crime drama Diagnosis Murder also featured a plot involving a murder commited during the filming of a reality show similar to The Real World. The main character of the show, Dr. Mark Sloane (played by Dick Van Dyke) was one of the roommates at the time of the murder, and solved the crime, as he did every episode.
  • Dave Chappelle, lampooning the supposed targeting of minority cast members for criticism or ejection on the show, parodied the program on his Comedy Central sketch comedy show, Chappelle's Show, with a skit called "The Mad Real World", portraying, with hyperbole, the results of what would happen if one white person were to cohabitate with a collection of stereotypical black people.
  • The music video for the Eminem track, "Without Me", contains scenes which parody The Real World, with appearances by New Orleans castmate Julie Stoffer, Boston castmate Syrus Yarbrough, and San Francisco castmate David "Puck" Rainey.
  • In the 1999 romantic comedy film 10 Things I Hate About You Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is watching television, on which the opening credits of The Real World: Seattle can be seen.
  • In "Morality Bites", a second season episode of the television series Charmed, the sisters travel to 2009, and on the TV you can hear "Coming up, The Real World: On The Moon!"
  • The 1999 romantic comedy film She's All That features Matthew Lillard playing Brock Hudson, an ex-Real World cast member. There are a few shots of Brock in which he appears at the confessional and with his housemates.
  • In "Text, Lies & Videotape", a fifth season episode of the television series Dawson's Creek, Audrey (Busy Philipps) is speaking with Joey (Katie Holmes) about recording her audition tape for the fictional The Real World: Ibiza season.
  • In "The Route of All Evil", a third season episode of the television series Futurama, the characters are watching show on TV called "The Real World: The Sun".
  • The WB television series Mission Hill based an entire episode around The Real World, in which the show's protagonist joins the cast and attempts to destroy The Real World from the inside.
  • In an episode of the short lived cartoon series Mission Hill, they had an episode where a character is a member of the cast and shows it as an elaborate hoax with microphones and hidden cameras telling each person how to act and behave on camera.

The Real World DVD's

DVD Title Release Date DVD Cover
The Real World: A Decade of Bloopers 05/28/2002 File:RW Bloopers.jpg
The Real World: Exotic Vacations 09/24/2002 File:RW-Exotic Vacations.jpg
The Real World: Greatest Fights 10/17/2000 File:RW-Greatest Fights.jpg
The Real World: Hook-Ups 11/11/2003 File:RW-Hookups.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: Back to New York 12/04/2001 File:RWB2NY-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: Chicago 05/28/2002 File:RWCHI-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: Hawaii 11/02/1999 File:RWHI-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: Las Vegas 01/28/2003 File:RWLV-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: New Orleans 10/17/2000 File:RWNO-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World You Never Saw: Paris 11/11/2003 File:RWPAR-You Never Saw.jpg
The Real World: Complete New York Season 1 09/24/2002 File:RW-New York.jpg
The Real World: Complete Las Vegas Season 12 05/20/2003 File:RW-Las Vegas.jpg

References

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