WHAT THE REAL WORLD HAS COME TO

The Real World. The name in itself is an insult, this show is no more real than Disneyland. Or Bush. Or Fair and Balanced. They should call it the NOT Real World, or the UN Real. The newest installment based out of Philadelphia smacks so much of contrived manipulation that I'm finding it hard to manipulate myself. I admit, I am a devotee` of the series, I don't know why. Why I can throw stones at the Bachelor or the Survivors or the Big Brothers or the Fear Factors and still watch this tripe…I don't know. It started back in 93 or 4 with the R.W. Los Angeles. I was home a lot, not touring, writing in the morning, which left the afternoon to drink Dr Pepper and gape at the tube. Back then it seemed more real, everybody didn't look like bodybuilders, there were geeks and misfits and miscreants amongst the beautiful people. But now it's ten years later and the formula has been perfected, the producers have developed a Frankenstein-ian policy towards the cast and it works, God, it works…

a) All cast members are now good looking, muscular white men and petite big-titted women, the exception being the token Negro male, he is allowed to be goofy and therefore non-threatening to the White constituency.

b) Throw in the token gay man, Flaming if possible to create tension for the two heterosexual Bucks (which also explains picking a male cast member from an urban setting, Tennessee or Arkansas where gays stay in the closet.) The gay man is disconcerting at first but will ultimately be 'accepted' by the rest of the cast, giving the impression that the Real World is promoting understanding and not just exploiting the fuck out of the stereotype just to get a ratings jolt.

c) A token Slut, in this case Sarah, a fatter version of the ever-popular Trishelle from RW Las Vegas. The inclusion of the House Slut is an important one, it makes me wonder what Sarah said or did on her audition tape to get the gig. The producers need a match to light the sexual candle, some guy or preferably a girl to spread her legs immediately so people will get hooked. It's also more entertaining if she'll fuck like a dog and be racked with guilt the next morning, a remorseful slut is more fun to watch.

d) Booze. This is probably the most important component of the RW, the open bar policy. These people go out drinking every night and pay nothing, encouraged to drink to excess, kept filming and fucking on a constant IV of cocktails to deaden the areas of the brain most associated with judgment and inhibition. And finally-

e) Conflict. Through the Magic of TV editing we are entertained by sexual tension, sexual drama, sexual intrigue, love, lust, humping, fighting, drunkenness-we don't have to imagine what goes on in their pretty little heads, that's where the editing comes in, the producers effortlessly make our cast members act out their little fantasies with the marionette-like precision of the Thunderbirds, Greek Drama on a junior-high school scale.

So here we are. In this latest Philadelphia installment I have noticed a few new trends, probably Things to Come for future episodes. Such as…

Any and all previous relationships by cast members MUST BE DESTROYED. It's gonna happen anyway, four months away from your Significant Other and a barrel full of booze always achieves the desired result, flirting, cheating and eventually the agonizing break-up over the two-way phone so we can listen. But now, for reasons of expediency, cast members are picked on how SHORT their relationships are, that is to say people are specifically chosen if their relationships are only a month or two old. In previous RW's it sometimes took MONTHS for someone to break up with his or her boy/girlfriend and that just won't do. Picking a cast member with a girlfriend only two months old gets the desired result, quicker. So we can get on with the Roman Orgy. And in fact in episode 3 of the newest RW we already have one cast member breaking up with his girlfriend (called "Taking a Break") and another one already contemplating it...what a timesaver! Now without the useless baggage of a boy/girlfriend we can get down to some SERIOUS FUCKING & SUCKING. The cast members must fuck, hard, on camera, then of course at some time they must also 'break up' on camera, all the anguish and drama played out for us via the so-called 'confessional'. We love that, we want to see sluts slutting, taboo gay sex, blacks with a racial chip on their shoulder, we want to see shots of Jack going down and stumbling, low blows and cunt-like cattiness, we want to see that, focus groups are all agreed, we want to see that.

The producers of RW Philly are taking no chances. After the Caligula-fest that was RW Vegas came RW Paris which SUCKED, no one fucked and only a few people fought. A major disappointment, being that Paris is the City of Lovers. After that came RW San Diego which was OK, this was the third cast-iron placement of body builders and Fem-bots but again, no one really fucked. We had high hopes for Frankie our little Welcome Back Cutter but she disappointed us by leaving early and thereby creating a huge vacuum of no personalities and empty boring drunks. The obvious lesson learned from this cast was, Yes, you fucked other people outside the house but you didn't FUCK EACH OTHER. We can't have that, ratings demand that the cast members fuck each other, shit, we're giving you all the free booze you can drink and a hot tub---what's the problem?

So now here we are in Philly and I have high, or should I say Low hopes. There will be major manipulated drama, a Rolodex of emotions, crying and lashing out---does it all come under the heading of Shame TV? Is that why there are so many Judge Judy's out there? So we can get off like lab technicians watching our fellow men with the extra Y chromosome make asses of themselves running the maze? Watching Maury Povich assemble his stable of unwed mothers and point at some guy like the Grand Inquisitor

"ARE YOU THE FATHER OF YOUNG TANISHA??" Or watching people eating their sixth deer scrotum, are we still getting off on that? We like, indeed, love watching people make idiots out of themselves on TV, we point at them and say "Can you believe it?" but it begs the question why are we still watching? Why, after the thousandth variation of the so-called reality program are we still watching? TV gives us what we want, not what we need, if that were the case then every channel would be the History Channel and it sure the fuck isn't. Why are we watching, what's so fucking cool about this insulting horseshit television, why are we still watching?