Compensation Aside

01 - It’s hard to not start with the clothes. 1996 was a long time ago, you guys. Very much in fashion for the reality-TV stars (and other residents of south Florida) in the mid-’90s were: high-waisted pants; high-waisted shorts; high-waisted jorts; any number of crop-tops that, when combined with the aforementioned high-waisted bottoms, produce the curious effect of a midriff with no belly-button, making 1996 Miami the Kyle XY of mid-’90s cities. Also, when tops weren’t cropped, they were insanely baggy/blowsy. Oh, blowsy men’s dress shirts tucked into pants, you so warped my early fashion choices. Even the socks in ‘96 were bulky.

02 - Those bulky socks were all being shoved into roller blades, it should also be noted. If we weren’t at the absolute apex of roller-blade usage in 1996, I would be very surprised. If they had gotten any more omnipresent, cities would have had to designate special “blading” lanes, and then we’d still be seeing them today, paint half-washed away, a sad/poignant symbol of urban blight and failed proto-green transportation initiatives. LOTS of roller-blading, is what I’m saying.

03 - So there were people! Brought together to both live AND run a business. Joe the inexplicable “ladies man” with the Amazon girlfriend with ALL the hair; Mike the fratty piece of frat; Melissa the local Cubana witch who ultimately couldn’t deal with the idea that she’d be on TV; Dan the dramatic gay with morals, multiple boyfriends, a territorial attitude about slides, and giant fucking facial features that are still embarrassingly alluring; Cynthia the normal one with the fingernails who taught a teenaged boy named Joe Reid about what “hella” was; Flora the best; Sarah the worst.

04 - Flora basically invented the template for every reality-show star who came after her. She was delusional, confrontational for the sake of being confrontational, sociopathically self-centered, and utterly addicted to drama. The way she shuts down Sarah’s friend “Hank” — who made a video “project” of filming the roommates while they were being filmed for MTV and in the process caught Melissa acting “slutty” (1996 slutty, which I think meant flicking her tongue at the camera in a manner suggesting cunnilingus) and Flora lifting up her shirt — is a master class in fucking with a lesser being and knowing you’re going to win because you are far crazier than he knows how to deal with. And that’s not even getting into her boyfriend juggling. Wherever she is in the universe, i hope she’s cashing royalty checks from Bachelor contestants.

05 - Joe and Nic were the total grossest at all times, be they sharing a treadmill, or baby-talking while sharing a treadmill, or otherwise making New York City look the least cosmopolitan it maybe ever has.

06 - These people all had SOBER arguments! I don’t even know when was the last time that happened on The Real World. Flora told Cynthia she had a “black attitude” while completely free of chemical intoxication. I cannot stress enough how bracing this was to watch.

07 - Also argued without intoxication: the epic “stupid bitch” / “fucking flamer” throwdown between Dan and Melissa. Fought, naturally, over an opened envelope containing two slides from The Birdcage. Because Ocean Drive Magazine was ON IT back then. Melissa also called Dan a “faggot” (bleeped, of course), but is it weird that I was more offended by “flamer”? Because of how antiquated that word is now? Anyway, weirdly enough, this season was probably one of the more drama-free ones when it came to Dealing With the Gay. Everybody was basically cool with Dan’s sexuality from jump street. Compare that to the most recent season, which starred a human hate crime and the world’s only twentysomething female homophobe in captivity.

08 - 22 episodes! Half-hour episodes, but still. All pretty self-contained too. I mean, the saga of The Business carried over, growing ever more ridiculous until the point when half of the roommates “quit” and the other half was like “Let’s just call it ‘Delicious Deliveries’ and run out the clock on this.” Even the threesome in the shower took up less than a full episode. Today there would be eight house meetings about violating the sanctity of the shower and (let’s be honest) one or two sexual assault charges that MTV would sweep under the rug.

09 - Sarah. The worst. At twenty-five, she was the oldest of the show’s cast, but boy did she not seem like it! Always skateboarding and hiding her face behind plush tchotchkes and saying “radical” and inviting unattended neighborhood children over to her communally co-habitated home so that they might run around and poke at people and things with their grubby child-hands. And yet while there were house meetings about how awful, alternately, Flora, Melissa, and Dan were, nobody got to the central issue of Sarah’s worst-ness. 

10 - Tyler anticipated that the rewatch would prove that Flora invented the phrase “I’m not here to make friends” for reality TV. Close! Flora was dancing around the term during the first (!) house meeting about creating a business (FYI, she wanted to run a coffee shop that catered exclusively to “attractive” people; this offended Dan’s morals), but it was Cynthia who clarified her roommate’s position: “You’re not here to make friends.” You guys? She WASN’T.