There was a prank war and the girls decided to fuck with the boys' food and there was much spitting and sputtering out of milk and cereal and suspicious chicken. (My new detective-themed restaurant idea: Dr. Mystery's Suspicion Chicken. Investors?) Naturally, the boys had to freak out and blow things wayyyy out of proportion until JD had another crazy blowdown and got all ups in Sara's face, yelling at her like she hadn't jumped through the hoop or waved her sad little flipper at the money-paying Seaquarium guests well enough. So it suddenly became embarrassing. As Ryan raged and said hateful things and JD stormed around with a shotgun, picking off anyone he could find.

In the morning, though, on their last day... Everything was peaceful and forgotten. You really got a sense that the girls had bonded. So that was nice. Everyone said their goodbyes and MTV orchestrated their always-cruel-but-soaring-and-poetic one roommate leaves at time thing and there were tears and sad, hopeful songs about growing and experience and you think, because you've had a gallon of wines to drink the night before and here you are in your pajamas in Brooklyn eating toast, you think... This is why people are alive! To miss each other.

Not much else really happened in the final outing. Pranks were pulled, voices were raised, quiet and burning loves were shuttered up and sheet covered, like old summer houses. (I had a writing teacher in college who would kill me right now for using all those passives, but evs! I ain't in college no more!)

Indeed no one is in college no more. Scott and Devyn and Baya all decided that they wanted to stay in New York and that they love each other more than the stars and the moon and the planets and the heavens so they'd like to marry and live together in a beautiful New York City apartment. And they found one! These crazy youngsters. They pooled together all their wrinkled dollar bills in an old top hat and set off, skipping and dancing like some street-wise urchins in a musical, to conquer that great Big Apple. Worms! They were worms! And they found a place. A little corner. A little ground to stake a claim. A piece of the pie. Where? "On fifteenth and first street," was what Scott said. Which. Hah. That doesn't exist, Scott. There is no 15th Avenue. I wish there was! It'd be a party every day on 15th Avenue, where the girls are pretty and the boys don't come back from war in pieces and there's always bossa nova playing and we all wear hats, on 15th Avenue! On 15th Avenue you'll find the love of your life and days won't be soggy and full of worry anymore, and sometimes there will be ice cream. All the kids play baseball and the old-timers die together, here on the one five.

So that's where they're going. Katelynn will disappear into the occluding dusk of Montana, where she will do computers and various men, her soft, horsey hair billowing in the stiff mountainy air. Almost to Canada!, it will seem to say as it reaches North. Sara will continue her bumbling days over in cloudy San Francisco, a city of hills and bridges, of tunnels and turnarounds. A place where you don't have to be gay if you don't wanna be, but man oh man does it sure ever help. JD will go on to feed fish to more squiggly, waterlogged mammals. And when he's not dating, he'll work with dolphins.

Chet will still be hopelessly in love with Ryan. The final episode was just jam-packed with tearful declarations of boy love for one another, all thumpy embraces and gay panic jokes. And while Ryan—who as a military vet has seen his fair share of tough times bromancery—can easily laugh it off, something small and true and hard has lumped in Chet's ribcage. Something's come loose and is rattling around that body, which Chet tries to keep all tight and orderly and contained with his skinny jeans and form-fitting T-shirts. But passion and desire are inescapable witches, dear Chet. Even for someone who's been blessed by the angel Moroni. What sad ephemeral lives we lead! Chet, seize the day. Just kiss him. Just to see what it feels like.

And Ryan. So, OK. There was a reunion special after the finale? And everyone showed up? Including Ryan? In short hair and fatigues? And swoon? It was terrific. That wicked dancing minx Baya has apparently snatched him up. See RyRy and Bella broke up, because she ran off with a vampire. But Ryan has been visiting his friends a lot in NYC and one thing led to another and now he and Baya are bumpin' uglies like no two roommates ever should. Ryan ships out back to Iraq two weeks from yesterday. Scary.

Also on the reunion: JD is still crazy, Katelynn still likes to talk in blackspeak, and Chet doesn't like it when you make fun of Jesus. Because Jesus is a real-life space angel who talks to people in Utah and tells them to send money to a place a few states over where two loving, committed people are trying to get married. And you need to send that money so you can stop them. Because if you don't, then Jesus Space-Angel is going to get mad and he won't send you any more nourishing Moon Rays or Calamity Pies. So that's that. Don't make fun of that hallowed and precious religions, Sara.

These are the extremely hungover ramblings of a crazy person at this point. So I'm going to wrap it up. But before we go, before we fritter off into the remains of this spring day, lost and alone as always, let's ask ourselves: What did we learn? How did we grow from watching this curious, muted, issue-y, reinvigorating, possibly game-changing, but more possibly just plain dull season of The Real World?

We learned that love is a universal language. That everyone can speak it, and that anyone, if they want to, can understand it. And no barrier—political, ideological, or otherwise—should ever come between that. We learned that being an ex-lesbian hippie punker chick from SanFran doesn't make you automatically cool. We learned that dolphin trainers have the shortest tempers, because theirs is a dangerous, yet terribly, terribly necessary, profession. We learned that people who don't know how to spell the names Devin and Caitlin correctly will often yak your ear off with little to no point. We learned that beefy boys from New England are basically like beefy boys from anywhere else, just with funny accents. We learned that Dance (and groove) is in the heart. But if it's not also in the feet, you won't make it as a professional (sick beats!). We learned that TRL was canceled.

And we learned that war is tough, and that war sucks, and that war is what old people wage on the young because they are cruel and jealous and drunk with meaningless power. We learned that war swallows up not just those it kills, but those who survive it. We learned that Change doesn't always come immediately.

We learned that the name of Brooklyn is best not whispered in whitey cafes, but rather chanted and yelled by choruses of African Americans. We learned that Red Hook is perched atop a beautiful, glittering sea. We learned that the world is neither real nor made-up, but is absolutely worth being a part of. We learned that Wednesday nights could definitely have been spent better. But they also could have been spent worse.

And we learned the word "blowdown." And that, I think, is the most important thing.

Until next time! Until Cancun! Mexico!

Ryan was still reeling from finding out that he'd been recalled, but he was hesitant to tell the roommates. Chet was concerned. He knew something was wrong. "I sleep next to him every night..." he said, with a hint of wistfulness that whispered at a terrible, secret longing. A cold wind blew in from the Atlantic. A dog ran sheepishly down the street. Chet stared out at the flickering horizon. Sigh.

Ryan told the girls during their ladies poker game and they were all "Oh you're not actually going to go... Obama's in office!" Ryan ships out next month. On April 15th. Death and taxes. Go figure.

So everyone remained boggled about this big, unwieldy thing. Unsure what else to do, they baked an American-flag cake decided to get a puppy! Devyn figured that the dog would teach her how to be patient and responsible and invested in something other than herself. Good luck, dog. The creature is a little yippers Yorky that Sara, correctly, asserted is not actually a real dog. Whatever. Devyn bought some teeny tiny sweaters for it and Baya said that the dog was having a sexual identity crisis and Katelynn just smiled awkwardly and everyone kinda just looked down at the floor and made little circles with their feet and yikes.

Because the dog was not enough to assuage the mope-ish-ness of the household, the gang rented a bus to take them down to the Borgata in Atlantic City. Chet made awkward jokes about "twenties and hundies" and Ryan just smirked at him. Chet mistook it for a flirtatious grin. That old sheepish dog came back, poking its head around the corner. The sky gleamed again. Chet blinked back hopeful tears. Sigh.

When they checked into their big coffee-colored suite they all hooted and hollered the way every reality show star must when they enter a comped suite, as per some sort of implicit agreement with the owners of the hotel. So that was that and they gorged themselves on free food and Chet made an embarrassing toast to Ryan (they said his last name!), who was wearing a big floppy cowboy hat in honor of the occasion. Then er'body went gambling, except for Devyn who is too young and Katelynn who is too broke. But Kate is desperate to feed the wicked Gamblor that lives inside her, so after about an hour of pretending she wouldn't, she hit the tables. She was doing well ("six up"), but... Scott seemed a little less than happy that she was gambling with what is, essentially, his money. Sigh.

Ryan sat in the hottub in his big floppy hat.

They all went clurb dancin' and apparently JD won a ton of money so he made it raiiiinnn y'all. Meanwhile Katelynn was anchored to the Blackjack tables. Her reasoning was that she wanted to pay Scott back. And that's young America everybody! What with their unearned American Idol outlets to fame and whatnot. Katelynn didn't dare want to save and work and do it the old fashioned way. Nah, everything had to be quick and easy for ol' Katez.

Poor Devyn. She couldn't waste her money, so she was just sulking in her room, sleeping in the nude. Twinges of Tami and David in Lost Angeles came lilting in as Chet pulled the covers off and saw exposed ladyparts! It was the first naked lady he'd ever seen, like in the flesh! Ohhh he was so excited and Ryan cackled and said "I don't know why Chet does these things, but I'm glad he does", because Chet is just so ridiculous to laugh at. Chet then apologized to Devyn and she said "I"m not naked, I'm wearing underpants." And he was like "Oh... frig."

The ratty old dog trotted down the boardwalk, a distant bolt of lightning flashing in the pearly sky. Chet stared out the huge picture window in this lovely suite in this gritty city. Sigh.

Katelynn was making jokes about losing all that money and Scott just grumbled. Everyone was super stressed so they went to get sensual massages. Chet was suuuuuuuper excited because a lady got to touch him. He looked at Ryan's hands. They were soft enough. Small enough. He'd imagine the masseuse's hands were his. Alas, he got the ugly old mom lady, not the hot one, to rub his "smelly" feet. So Chet didn't get what he wanted, but he never does.

Sigh.

It was time to leave the rainy Borgata and everyone bemoaned their losses. Katelynn most of all. "Just another hour on the tables..." she begged of big, fleeting Time. But to no avail. The roommates arrived home to a smelly refrigerator. Fitting, in some small poetic way. JD, who apparently won $3,000!!, told Scott that Katelynn was basically never going to pay him back. Scott shrugged his shoulders and said "Sometimes people have to do things their own way."

Ryan decided not to tell his PA ladyfriend that he was going back to the war, because she had worries with school and whatnot. That was sort of sad. Then it was time for Scott to help get Ryan back in fighting shape, so there was a sweaty montage of squat thrusts and chin-ups and curled biceps and somewhere Chet's glasses went "sproiiinngggg" and his hair stood on end.

That old dog that used to live around here, where did he go? He left one rainy day, we saw that last swish of his tail and heard the scatter of his paws on the cement before he disappeared. Maybe he's in mountains now, or paddling some river. Maybe he's lying still somewhere forever, his last great doggy sigh long gone. Maybe he's lost and lonely in some windy desert, that same big sky a tent, a blue umbrella.

Maybe he's used some small bit of magic and become a man. He's curled up somewhere, in dreams, beside a blonde-haired boy. The lazy day surrounding them, the calm hush of breath and bodies their musical score. A swell of strings, of skin taut like drums. Peace, like peace has never been. And then a lick, a quick dart here, and damp slap there. And Chet wakes up. It's Devyn's damn puppy. And he's fallen asleep on the couch. Ryan's off somewhere, in that big floppy cowboy hat. But he'll be back tonight. He's not left just yet. There's still a chance.

So Chet will sit and wait, and watch for him in the window, eager as ever, fascinated by every car. And then he'll realize, like a sudden storm, "Wait... it's me. That old dog is me."

Sigh.

was riding the uptown 2 (or 3) this morning at 9:45. He was wearing a "please look at me" outfit that included the dopey black glasses and neon pink sneakers. He sat fiddling with a pink Blackberry (or something) the whole time, in between glimpses around the car to see if anyone was noticing him.

Oh, so sad. That furtive, guilty look that lesser celebrities get when they desperately hope someone recognizes them. Especially if they're Mormons named Chet who wear pink sneakers and whose chief aspiration in life is to be an MTV VJ. Also the flirtation with pink, Chet? Gay or not, actively courting the "controversy" is just plain old lame.

Everyone was Hope-Hope-Hopey about Election Day. Devyn gave us an important lecture on what black people are, while Chet motorboated a picture of Mitt Romney and said something about the economy. You know what Mitt Romney is qualified to do? Enter a Square Jaw contest at the annual Provo Tabernacle Picnic. And come in third. That's what Mitt Romney is qualified for. Ryan the veteran was an Obama supporter, like everyone else in the house, except for Chet and the dimbulb Scott, who was a Republican because he likes sandwiches (his reasoning made exactly that much sense). So election fever was blooming, the perfect opportunity for MTV to train its wobbly cameras on worried, scared Ryan—suffering as he is from some unseen war wound, a black hole or a pin prick, slowly hemorrhaging.

He made a student film about being in black & white and drinking beer while the 'Moonlight Sonata' plays and somewhere an Italian woman dances across a pristine ballroom in a long black gown and a rose petal falls and baby hand touches a big adult hand and then a snowglobe shatters and in the rubble we read... 'Mr. Plow.' Some people laughed when Ryan drank beer in the movie while brushing his teeth, but Ryan was upset because the movie was supposed to be deep. When it had reached its inexorable Fin, Chet squirmed in his pants, more aroused than he'd been since he saw Mitt Romney doing sexy calisthenics at the BYU Y. The Buoy they call it, on account of all the sailor-like behavior. He really dug the film and felt that Ryan was a beautiful, terrific genius and that such a mastermind of cinema must surely have something wicked and wonderful twixt his leg bones—a chalice, a serpent, a flaming apple pie. He desired it so.

Back at home, Ryan showed the gals some pictures of Iraq. Sara tried to be all self-important about it, of course. "Mm... Mmm..." she cooed. "He was really there," she gurgled to the confessional cameras. Thank you for explaining military service to us, Sara.

Ryan and Scott (who would totally be in the army if it wasn't for his murdeling, like totally) went to hear Anthony Swofford speak at a veterans' organization. So that was nice. Then Ryan's brother was in town, and Chet ogled him strangely and asked coyly "Were you in the military tooo....?" The brother said yes, and a whole host of furtive, squirming fantasies flashed through Chet's head. Later Chet went to the Fairway supermercato and had a life-size cutout of himself made. It was a lifelong dream he said. Of course it was. "You can put it near the girls' beds," said the (young!) owner of Fairway. Chet's face darkened. "I have lots of ideas of what I can do with this..." It was ominous and peculiar. Deep and strange. Like all of Chet's quiet, lonely longings.

Then it was Election Day! Ryan was dressed as Uncle Sam. Everyone was super awesomely excited because Marbeck Barama was winning the trophy. Scott was saying "You should not celebrate elections. Everyone wins, you're still an American." Chet said "It's just not functional to have Democrats running everything. You need to have opposing sides, or things just get skewed." Or they stall forever and nothing ever gets done, Chetterz. Katelynn mumblemurmured something about being happy and a nation turned its weary, thrilled, tear-stained face to her and said, urgently, "Please, shut up."

When they got home, Chet had hung himself. No! Hahahahaha, he wasn't dead. (Not yet...). He put the life-size cutout really high up on the wall with a quote bubble saying "Chet is so cool!" The roommates, still drunk and giddy and Changey, put Sarlack Morgana's face over Cheese's crotch, as means of a prank. Then Ryan painted Scott's finguhnails red. Haha, jokes are jokes. In the morning Chet was really mad, because the cutout that he'd hung up on the wall was ART! Paging Yasmina Reza! It was art! Because he stood really hard and had his picture taken really hard and then carried it all the way home. So how dare the roommates deface it. Chet = Dingus. Capital D Dingus. The thing is, I can see getting pissed that my new life-size cutout was defaced. But if you get pissed, then you're an arrogant dingus. So it's a Catch 22. You lose either way. Much like Mormons, who lose in this life and in the afterlife.

Then it was time for Ryan's sad, sparse-clapping Veterans Day parade. Of course the roommates made a gaudy show of hooting and hollering when he came trundling by and it was awkward. But it was nice to see people in New York, who I think outlanders think can be cold and angular and unfriendly toward the idea of the military, come and cheer some forgotten folks. Afterward they went for sad, boozy drinks and told sad, boozy stories about the war, about people who'd died. One of Ryan's Army pals talked to the roommates about the medals that Ryan had won and stuff and Chet got that same primal geyser feeling in his nethers, that underwear privates swoon. "We're in the presence of greatness," he declared. Was he talking about Ryan? Or was he referring to that which suddenly stood beneath his magic undergarments? We may never know.

At the wicked Junovivanti Coporation, where Devyn works as an assassin/receptionist, Katelynn got to wear a fancy ballgown for Ryan's big Veterans gala. So Katelynn was happy to be in a dress. That's good. Ryan in a suit and a funny patterned tie looked like an awkward 8th grader at an old relative's funeral. How sad for Aunt Bertha. But also how sad to not be home, playing Final Fantasy. Ryan looked at all the roommates sitting at a table and said "When was the last time we were all together? Gettysburg?" And it was like a Civil War reunion there for a second, with JD as a swaying, Latino, drunken Ulysses S. Grant.

Back at home, everyone was excited and happy and still reeling from Morlock Carama becoming our 7th Prime Minister. And then Ryan got the phone call. It was his brother, clearly upset, and he said that Ryan had been recalled for active duty. Obviously, Ryan was boggled. There were tears and whatnot and Scotty came out and offered the strange, faraway, manly comfort that dudes give to each other and ugh. What a shitty, rotten, sandy fucking mess that is over there and what a shitty, rotten, shrubby disgrace it is that the avatar of this great crime done to our young men and women is just sitting back and farting and smoking cigars in some ugly part of East Texas, with complete impunity.

Anyway, that's how the episode ended. Not exactly an upper.

Can't they send Chet's cutout instead?

See what had happened was, Katelynn was broke. Broke as a joke. She had to pay her car payments and her 'storage unit' and plus she had a really huge tab to settle with the Teeny Tiny Underpants Depot. So what could she do? Well, there aren't any restaurants in New York, so waiting tables is out. And there aren't any stores or anything, so retail is a no go. Hey! Speaking of go! What about go-go dancing in a cage, twirling high above a pile of gays and other strange-os?? Sounds teriff! So that's what Katelynn did, 'cause she knew a guy who knew a guy who got her a sweet gig at the Chicken Coop or whatever the name of the clurrb was.

So good. Episode over, right? Katelynn had a money issue, and she solved it in the most reasonable way possible. BUT NO! Just when you thought you'd get to go to bed at 10:15 last night, MTV threw you a dilly of a curve ball. Not everyone was happy that Katelynn was go-go dancing. Specifically, pretty pretty pink pucker-lipped wannabe models named Scott who are having a big fun birthday party. Scotty had a party and no one came. Well, OK, his clam and lobster scented brood from the northern wilds of New England came, but certain transsexuals were too busy go-go dancing in cages while wearing their teeny-tiny underpants to attend the most important party that New York City has seen since 4th grader Mitzi Kleinman's Central Park petting zoo gala last weekend.

But really their two-hander production of Pinter's The Birthday Party wasn't the root cause of the Katelynn/Scott blowdown. It was dishes. Tall dishes, short dishes, even dishes with chicken pox. Katelynn never, ever cleans. Scott is always cleaned and waxed and polished, so it's really aggravating to him. Rather than confront the problem head-on, he prefers to passive-aggressively yodel things in the Great Room, while Katelynn stands on the sidelines, muttering in her blackspeak. Shockingly, this is not an effective method of roommate communication. So Scott decided to pull pranks and put furniture in Katelynn's room. Didn't work. Then he put a lock on the cabinets where all the dishes were. Triumphantly, Katelynn tried to research how to crack a combination lock. Like she was in The Italian Job or something. Amazingly she was unable to do it. But she got a prank in one better! She put the pool balls in a bag and then put that bag in the TV cabinet. Nefarious, Professor Moriarty!

So, of course, there was another blowdown and Katelynn started yelling about things being childish, and Scotty yelled about things being about respect and really important birthday parties. Scott was wearing a pretty jacket with a fur collar at this point, so I just chucklewept and thought about cheeseburgers. Katelynn returned the pool balls, and Scott unlocked the cabinets and set the dishes free. They cheered and clapped and the side dish ran away with the spoon to get married and the saucer and the teapot made slow, careful love to each other while Devyn watched, beguiled. (Earlier, Devyn stormed out of her lair, the phone room, to throw herself into the Scott/Katelynn blowabout. As she yelled and yelled and yelled about something she had nothing to do with, she called Scott a bully. A tip of the hat, Devyn!)

Also happening in this episode was a story about AIDS. Pedro AIDS, to be exact. Pedro was a cast member on the Real World: San Francisco. He was living with the disease on the show, got married on the show, then died after the show was over. It was landmark television in the same way that MTV has ever been landmark television. But it was important. Anyway, MTV made a movie about it and it looked terrible. But the house kids had to put together a screening for the movie so young people could see it and learn about AIDS and being on TV. Chet really wanted to host the whole thing, because hosting is his dreeeeeam guys, but the other roommates figured that if you've never done the nasty, and don't plan on doing the nasty until you're married and it won't actually be The Nasty then anyway, it'll be The Upstanding, then you probably shouldn't lead a panel discussion about doing the nasty safely. Sigh. It didn't really matter who hosted anyway, because young people forgot how to do real work about twenty years ago (I'm currently writing, in bed, about the Real World), so the cast members could only muster the motivation to wrangle about 15 people to show up for the sad little event. 13 of those people were just there for the free Subway sangawiches.

When they all came home, defeated, Katelynn learned that her cage dancing job had flown the coop. The DJ who was paying her (hadn't actually paid her yet) stopped showing up to the niteclurb. There fleeted, on the winds of disappointment, her job prospects. So she decided to pack it all in and go back to Montana, where the money flows like wine. Everyone was sort of not really sad and then Scott came flaming in, like a burning model knight, to rescue the damsel in teeny tiny unperpanted distress. He gave her the $1500 she needed to pay for her unit's storage, and wrote "To Be a Voice" on the memo section. (Somewhere, a bank employee looked at the deposited check and was like "The fuck does that mean?") Devyn said it was a good thing, because what if Pedro had decided to leave his season of the Real World because of poverty or AIDS or something? Then there would be no more AIDS. Wait. I mean there would be more AIDS. Wait.

So Katelynn tired to act like she wasn't going to take the check, but no one in this country is really in a position to turn down free lunch (just ask those 13 people), so she took it and hugged Scott and he suddenly realized that he was being hugged by a transsexual who owed him $1500 in front of a camera crew. Pedro's dream. No longer raisined or deferred. Realized.

At the very end of the episode, an old witch broke into the house and devoured Baya. No one noticed for three days.

Our episode began with Chet, the blonde-haired Mormon fop with a spine-tingling sex obsession was fascinated by former male Katelynn's tranny bits. You see her new bagina hasn't quite set yet, so she needs to expand it using an elaborate series of elephant guns and cotton gins. Or dildos or something. I don't know. Whatever it was, Chet was very, very, very, very, very interested. Because it was like a boy. With a hole where you can put your dingle. A boy with a dingle hole. The angel Moroni came down and blessed Chet with this knowledge.

Also milling about like sad idiots were Devyn and Baya. Both of them desperately wanted to achieve their reasonable, completely unselfish dreams. All Devyn wanted was to be a movie star with a fashion line. All Baya wanted was to be the world's most famous dancer. Unfortunately nobody wants to be veterinarians anymore. Or teachers. Or travel agents. They just want to play them on TV. So Devyn flew to Micronesia where she met the chipper child murderer spokeswoman of the Junovivanti Corporation, a wicked syndicate that traffics in drugs, sex slaves, guns, and beauty pageant fashions. After a retinal scan, Devyn was given a sidearm, a taser, and an ID badge. She was hired!

Baya fell down the stairs.

Chet Chetterson, when not furtively tug-tug-tug-tug-tug-tug-tug-tugging in the confessional while thinking about Katelynn's dingleable boyhole, was busy trying to be an MTV VJ. How on Earth will he ever get in with MTV? He's so far away from it, out there in Brooklyn!!!!!! Oh calloo callay, happy day, thankfully he met Patricia Wentz, an old woman who sings in a rock and roll band, who gave him an MTV producer's phone number. So Chet went and interviewed some chubby band about being chubby and about Seattle and then he had them over to the house so the beautiful, toussle-haired Adonis that is Ryan could play them a charming, mincemeat pie of a song called "I Live in a Small Town and Have a Dingle, So Show Me Your Boyhole." That was cute!

At the bottom of the stairs, Baya kept rolling. Out the door.

At the raven-circled headquarters of the Junovivanti Corporation, Devyn whipped some small, trembling children then threw her head back and cackled. But what was that that MTV's high-def cameras caught? Was it a slight tear that rolled out of her crinkly eyes? I think it was. But the moment passed and she threw a child to the pack of rabid dogs that followed her around the hallways of the Junovivanti Corporation. She watched in wicked passivity as the dogs chomped bones and blood and brains and the child called out for his mother but it was far, far too late.

Chet Chetterson meanwhile put on his best Dior Dandy Child Molester Homme outfit and grambled off to the MTV studios in sunny, pastoral Times NYC Squarecity. He'd debated about his look at nauseating length, but then he called his mother who commanded him to put on a bow tie, slap on a vest, grease his hair, throw on his fashion lenses, hand-diddle a boy's dingle, and go put a damn ring on his VJ dreams. So he did, and when he arrived at the nickel-plated headquarters of our most important network (owned, shadow-like, by the all-knowing Junovivanti Corporation) he decided to tell the underling that met him that his mother had told him what to wear. Good move, Rico Suave! Then, at his screen test, he had a self-described brain fart. He recovered with a junky lead-in about Britney Spears, and the ladies who were interviewing decided that they sort of liked him.

Then Baya came tumbling by, having picked up dust and dead bugs and other manner of street detritus.

Devyn, on a terrible murderous mission from the Junovivanti Corporation, took Sara to model gowns for old ladies. They thumbed the fabrics and oohed and ahhed and Sara worried about her awful tattoos. But Devyn said "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." As the old ladies—Gertrude, Edie, Ethel, Sal from down the block's wife—rubbed their dentures all over the garments, Devyn pulled a pistol with a large silencer affixed to its muzzle out of her breasteses area. She quickly dispatched with the grizzled old broads, giving them each two half-dime sized bullet holes in their wrinkled, ruined foreheads. Splattered with ancient, acidic blood, Sara shrieked and fell over, dead. Devyn's true plan, her evil Junovivanti master plan, was complete. Sara was dead.

Baya caught the lip of the floor and went flipping up into the air, soaring over Devyn's head. She crashed through a window and disappeared into the black of the night, like a squid escaping.

Katelynn—when not canyoning open her ladyboyhole dingle-hangar with pliers, tweezers, a blowtorch, several Laotian children's fingers, a mountain goat's horn, three pounds of Fiddle Faddle, and a daguerreotype of Willa Cather manipulating a railway hand car—apparently created some sort of website about people whose genitals don't match their feelings, so hey let's go get terribly invasive surgery. Everyone was proud of Katelynn for having people make her a website, though not proud enough that MTV gave us the URL or anything. (URL! I just used URL in a sentence! After two plus years of working at Gawker Media, I've finally learned internet speak! You there, send me that link code, right away! Hey girlie, are you having problems with your downloader's upload speed cache performance? Just enhance your megaROM with this CD drive box!)

And, um... Oh I don't know what happened. The Junovivanti Coporation got involved in a bloody turf war with the Globex Corporation, until Hank Scorpio emerged from the shadows and brokered a peace deal. Devyn is now a freelance assassin/model/singer/actress who is available for any and all Bat (or Bar) Mitzvahs, automotive trade shows, conference attendee bookings, and business executive fluffings. Sara's ghost, meanwhile, is gonna strap a Harley onto her Kawasaki's Ninja Honda and zoom off to get more fucking rockass tats, man! Fuck! Dykes 4 Eva! Until we meet men! Go suck a lemon, Sara! You're lame!

Baya tumbled through the air and, like Icarus, flew too close to the sun. She burst into flames and fell, a shining dance beacon to the rest of the dance community, back to Earth. A meteor, a space rock, a glimmering asteroid. Dead as biscuits, but an avatar of hope nonetheless.

Disclosure: I have absolutely no idea what I'm writing right now. Except I do know that this makes absolutely no sense. For this I apologize, while blaming martinis.

At the end of the episode, everyone scratched their heads and asked "Where's Scott?" They called the ASPCA and told them to keep a look out for him, but most of the roommates figured he'd been hit by a car or had run off with that band of teenagers that was always hanging out by the gate. Chet hated those teenagers, but he also longed for them.

Sometimes, in the mornings, back in Utah, Chet would wander out into the backyard and climb the biggest rock he could. There he'd stand and stare out at the sun-baked, bony desert. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the wind talking to him. It was a sound like an angel's whisper, like the furtive secrets shared between two school kids who realize, with giddy abandon, that they've been seated at the back of class, and the teacher will never notice. It was the wispy hush of time passing. It was the hum of an earpiece and the cold glow of a camera. And what did it say? This morning desert ghost voice?

"Go with the bowtie," it said. "Please." And then Chet would turn around and it would be his mother, talking through a paper towel tube and fiddling with a rain stick. "Sorry hun," she'd say. "Pancakes are ready."

"Aw jeez, Ma" Chet would whine. But then he'd huff and paw his hair and eventually decide to go back in. Because it was warm inside, and his mom's pancakes were good, and his sisters were nice, and sometimes that is the best thing—that is the only thing. Somewhere nice to sit, to eat, to be a person.

Had he stayed outside, though, just long enough, he'd have seen Baya flailing over the Rockies. A strange phenomenon—a quasar, a supernova, a comet.

A dancer.

We mourn for Devyn, who was dumb and lazy and would not put up with your negative energies. She didn't do much in the last week of her life, mainly lying on her back and talking on the phone upside down while a brutal roommate storm raged just outside the tiny phone room. In the final few moments of her too-short existence, JD stormed in and ripped the phone out of the wall and tossed it into the murky New York Harbor. Devyn was heard to have yelled "You psycho!!" before JD threw her through a wall and she lay still, for eternity.

We grieve for Baya, because she never got the chance to do anything remotely interesting or say anything resembling a salient comment on the state of the union. We will remember her dance pants and her jingly jangly bangly earrings. We will try to forget when a manic JD pushed her into the bathtub and tossed a radio in after her.

What is there to say of the life of Chet? He lived fiercely and he lived boldly, and that was just his pants. Chet spent his last fretful hours worrying about his beloved roommate Ryan. For whom he had a love as unrequited as the stars' for the wispy dawn, as the mermaid's for the golden and expanding land where she will never walk, run, or spend all day in the sun. It was a good love, true and able. But it was never meant to be fulfilled. Ryan was late in coming home from film class, very late, so Chet paced in the house's parlor, the old grandfather clock ticking and tocking and bicking and bocking as it does, and he remembered the student film he'd made with Ryan, in which he'd had a precious apple stolen. When Ryan finally did arrive, perhaps knowing that his inglorious end was drawing near, Chet pulled him close to his bosom and said Hallelujahs. As he pressed against Ryan's warm, supple body, Chet felt as if a great shield or pair of angel wings was expanding around him, as if he were being inoculated against all the world's perils and torments. But this was only a falsehood trick of his heart's great desire. Because JD approached him from behind and lashed a garrote 'round his neck and made quick work of the life of Chet V. Chetterson.

It was too short a walk down life's strange path for Scotty the Body. Though he spent most of his time taking his meaty paws and scooping out exercise pills from the enormous plastic tubs he kept in the kitchen, he will also be known as a principled and steadfast fellow. One who will hide your m'f'in car keys if you don't wash your dishes, as he did to Katelynn and the girls. Scott will also be remembered for stealing Chet Chetterson's apple in the landmark short film An Apple a Day.... ?. Though Scotty's brawn and keen, trundling intellect could surely prove of use in a neighborhood alleyway bout of fisticuffs, it was not enough for JD's immeasurable wrath. He was struck about the Gumby face and pork chop neck with a rolling pin and perished, in the forty-second year of his life.

Dear sweet Katelynn, you were too beautiful for this ugly world. When you pranced about in your delicates for all to see, you were an angel from Florence. When you inexplicably slipped into "Oh no you di'n't" ghetto speak during the final week of your life, you were like a brilliant bugle call from Heaven's most talented orchestra. When you said "You ain't my boss, you ain't my father, you ain't my boyfriend, so don't choo tell me what to do" and other silly phrases, it was as if Donatello himself had farted softly into the nave of a holy basilica. Though, um, it was terribly confusing. Seriously, where the hell did that voice come from, departed Katelynn? It's a mystery we will never have explained as JD, angered by her consistent failure to do her dishes or take out the trash "on my owwwn damn tiiime", set her ablaze and pushed her onto the porch where she shrieked and caterwauled and crumpled into a smoldering heap. Like a wigger witch.

O Muse! Sing to me of Ryan, forged as he was by Hephaestus' most prized hammer. Sing to me of his chestnutty good looks, his floppy suave. Tell us the old stories of his student films, made while studying at the not-exactly-prestigious New York Film Academy. Sing to me the song older than our fathers, the poem of Ryan's inexplicable apple-stealing movie and then the one where he wandered around vacant lots drinking beer bottles and then smashing them. Call upon the wisdom of the ancients, dear Muse, and show me the late-night subway ride when he fell asleep and unwittingly sent Chet into a worrying spiral of despair. Show me his hangdoggery when he was finally rescued from the grimy bowels of the Smith and 9th F train stop (just one more stop to my house, dear Ryan! Just one more!) O Muse. Please explain why such a presence did depart this Earth, when JD ran him over with the tiny car they all drive but the girls never, ever, like not fucking ever, fill up with gas.

Sarah. She died. She spoke behind everyone's back and put rouge on her cheeks and taught art therapy to strange gay children and old men. She went into the confessional and loudly bitched about everyone, seemingly unaware that she could be heard. But was she truly unaware, or did she just not care? We shall never know, as she was the focal point of JD's unending stream of dino-damage. Sarah was accused of being fake in her last days of disco, mostly because she chose not to confront her issues with roommates head-on, but would rather quietly harp on them when they weren't around. She claimed it was because she didn't care about the boys, no she really just liked playing poker with the girls and dabbling her cheeks with makeup like a tart and flat-facing off into the pebbly world with her meager convictions intact. Alas she was impaled by a curtain rod, wielded at the hands of a foaming JD. Shocked, she gurgled as blood sputtered from her soon-to-be-unmoving mouth, "But I teach art to gay children..." And then she staggered, fell into the kitchen cabinets, and slumped over dead. We mourn. Sorta.

JD was the last to go. As he toured the house, looking at all the life he'd ripped from this world, he remembered why he'd flown into such a frenzy. It was, of course, because the girls wouldn't clean and, especially in the case of Katelynn and Sarah, they were insolent and petulant about it. Katelynn with her ridiculous blackspeak, Sarah with her fake moon goddess bullshit that dear smooshy Ryan so brilliantly called her out on. It was really Sarah that stuck in his craw the most, because they were supposed to get along. You see, he was a gay person. And she used to be a lesbian and was very with-it. But that was not a solid enough foundation for the babbling tower of sycophancy and placation and facetiousness that the two built. And so it all came tumbling down as JD coined the term "blowdown" (meaning a fight, a blowout) and smashed a glass table and said "You just contradicted yourself!!!" Immediately he felt stupid because it was completely disproportionate for the fight, but hell he was in it now so he went and ripped the phone out of the wall as Devyn grambled on to some idiot and threw it o'er the rail and into the sea. Then he went about his wicked murdering spree and took a taxi to his beloved hotspots. Urge, where all of his roommates, straight or gay, oddly seem to end up at a lot. And then up to Elmo, where he sat at a table for one and contemplated his choices. He then casually slipped a cyanide pill into his diet Coke. He stirred, sipped, and expired.

In lieu of flowers, please send money to Richard c/o Gawker, New York, NY. Now if you'll please join us at the reception, there will be cold cuts and warm Sprite for everyone. Oh, and if you'd like to rent out the now empty and tragedy-tainted Real World Brooklyn house for a Bar Mitzvah or a wedding or something, you can do that now. No one ever said life was a bowl of cherries.

At least I don't think they did.

Yeah this season is squeaky—mouse squeaky—clean. Well, in comparison to seasons past at least. No one's drunk and horrible and spreading love diseases everywhere. No one's drunk and getting into histrionic fights with roommates and hurling racial epithets. No one's drunk and... Uh. No one's drunk. Where is the limitless supply of alcohol that's plagued this reality experiment gone awry for the past ten years or so? I guess MTV decided enough was enough. It's time for a hiatus. The only trouble is that while it's all well and good and refreshing to see all these perky youngsters livin' life with un-booze-fuzzy clarity, it's also kinda boring.

I mean, what happened last night?

Devyn had boy issues. You know Devyn. She's the beauty queen with the enormous bookshelf protruding from her sternum who is the house's very own Mrs. Malaprop. I can't think of any specific examples right now because that strange first hint of spring in the air is sort of distracting me by making me want to get in a car and keep on driving forever, but she does misuse words all the time. Well, anyway, she has a "sort of fiance" named White Boy who is a club promoter in Kansas City. Being a club promoter in Kansas City means that you walk around dressed as a club sandwich, passing out fliers for the new Panera Bread at the Zona Rosa. It must pay a lot though, because he's always giving Devyn money. And she demands it, in that dumb collegiate insolently bucktoothed way of hers. But she's also kinda jeepin' on him with another guy, named Cracker Head. So all the roommates knew Devyn's wicked secret when White Boy came to visit and they mocked her, gently, about it (see clip above).

So a big confrontation was in order, right??? Well, no. White Boy left. Devyn wrote him an email/called him on the house phone and broke it off. That was it. Nothing. Then Devyn took a feather duster and cleaned off the shelf and went to go make herself a club sandwich. Sigh.

The other big thing that happened was that my pathetic crush on Ryan developed unabated. He had his cute girlfriend Bella come to visit and they went to Coney Island with the gay dude JD and everyone was kind and Baya gave her a big hug and it wasn't as awkward as it could have been. Did you expect some big drunken fight or fuzzy, nightvision fucking? Well too bad. The happy couple just talked and walked and she said he had a beautiful face (no argument there, honey chile'). That was it! I'd like to say that Chet climbed into the wall again, weeping and furtively masturbating while staring at them from the eyes of a portrait, but that didn't happen. I'd like to say that Katelynn farted so violently that all her boy parts came back. But that didn't happen. Nope. Everyone was just nice and calm.

There was a third jokey plot with the boys putting a little white rat named Stinkers Gyllenhaal (or something) in the girls' beds, but it didn't amount to much other than Chet being surprisingly likable. Yes even as he desperately tried for more and more precious boytime during so he could gaze upon Ryan's puckish countenance and quietly imagine the little cottage by the sea that they could share someday, Chet was tolerable. Kind of funny even. Meanwhile the girls launched a charming little detective initiative to discover the source of the rat. Katelynn was sort of annoying and credit-takey about the whole thing, but that was it. Little rats. Little jokes. No freakouts. Hardly any swearing, even.

It looks like the season will take a turn at some point, if preview clips are anything to go by. Which will be exciting but also kind of sad. Sedate as it might be, it's kind of pleasant just watching young people be nice to each other. Thrilled to be sharing this experience in their precarious mansion by the harbor, the cool blue Verrazano in the background, stretching across the ocean like a welcome arch. The narrows there, through which so many people over so many years arrived to find, one likes to believe, a welcoming America. One that wasn't drunk and yelling and screwing and fucking up. But instead laughing or hugging or lifting weights or dusting shelves or petting mice. Or maybe just staring out at the limitless horizon, waving hello to all the little boats bobbing merrily along. Out there on the friendly, sparkling sea.

What I'm trying to say is that last night's installment of MTV's venerable old warship was a masterclass in reality TV editing; a multi-layered trip into strangers' brightly-lit lives that didn't involve drinking (well not really). There was adventure and intrigue and sorrow and joy and pole dancing. This is still The Real World, after all.

Our journey began (and ended, really) with Katelynn. I'm not sure if you knew this, but Katelynn is something called a Transgendered. A Transgendered is a creature from the southern slopes of the Andes who once subsisted on grubs and assorted berries but now exists mostly in captivity. You can identify a Transgendered by the distinct teeny-tiny-underpants markings on its lower torso. Another trait of the Transgendered is that it likes to constantly remind you that it is a Transgendered, issuing its shrill-yet-guttural hoots into any ear that comes its way. In short, shut the hell up Katelynn. We get it. We support you! Enough.

Katelynn decided to help AIDS, so she and her little friends went to the AIDS n' Gay place and offered their services. Not wanting this lumbering, terrifying creature (Devyn) scaring the locals, they shipped everyone off to Gettysburg, PA to wave flags at a gay AIDS bike parade. Ryan was excited because that's his hometown. So, after some early morning dumbness with everyone waking up and Katelynn going into Berzerker Mode and throwing Ryan's alarm clock out the window, they were off! In their teeny-tiny cars. Stuffed in there like clowns or transgendered sardines.

Because boys and girls will never get along—like old people and garage door openers—Chet, Shithead, and the Gang rode in one car, while Claudia, Jessi, Mallory, and Little Sister Karen rode in the other buggy. Those dumb bitches got to Gettysburg all right but missed the tour bus they were supposed to take, while the girls were just driving 10 mph and showed up the next day. The boys made a run for the bus (JD fell down!! JD fell down!!! Hey everyone, the gay guy fell dowwnnnnn!!!!) and made it on. There they sat all smug with their big headphones while Chet swooned and said things about how great it is to be just guys with each other, with all those hard, muscly body parts gently brushing up against each other, the smell of sawdust and beer farts mingling in the purple Pennsylvania air. Transcendent.

Once Chet's Tunnel of Love riverbus tour was over, Ryan took everyone to the fanciest restaurant in town to meet his family. They all looked like nice, salt-of-the-earth folks. And because Katelynn is a slug, she reacted badly to it. "Everyone was nice, but I was bored," she dribbled. Luckily the family portion of the evening ended and the "hey let's feel awesome because we're on TV and no one else here in Shittington Corners is" part began. Because it was the fanciest restaurant in town, just beyond a small dividing wall was a low-ceilinged bar that had a teeny-tiny DJ record-spinning table. Because she's basically a glorified roadie at this point, Baya was made to go over and yell things into a microphone and play music. And then the worst thing happened, the thing that pulled the sweater string of this season and began to unravel it.

Katelynn did a stripper pole dance. On a pole that wasn't a stripper pole. At a family restaurant. In Gettysburg PA.

She lurched and twirled around and everyone in the room was horrified. But odd, loosey-limbed sexuality is all Katelynn seems to think femininity is about, so she was allowed to go about her business. Earlier in the episode Devyn and Sarah were all "you can't wear your teeny-tiny underpants and nothing else around the house" and Katelynn didn't understand because she's a sexy woman now and has to be sexy. Incorrect. It's sort of a sad indictment of our current socio-sexual political landscape that a boy who finally gets his wish and blossoms into a woman—a hard-won, expensive battle—takes her new, lovely wings, embarks into the world of Womanity and... slumps around on a non-stripper-pole stripper-pole in some dumpy restaurant in Pennsylvania. Ah well. Oh, and she fell down. While on the pole. And blamed it on a lack of grease. The clip is above. Words can't do it justice.

So everyone was upset and JD was playing both sides by making tranny jokes but also still trying to seem with-it and then there was some sort of Incident at Owl Creek that involvd Chet flirting with JD by tickling his ear with a gay AIDS flag at the gay AIDS bike ride party. Katelynn and the self-righteous, almost-molested-to-death Sarah got all upset. Some sniping ensued, the boys said more nasty things about trannies in the car ride home, and then there was a fight.

All the boys called Sarah self-righteous and annoying, which was her cue to go to the confessional and act self-righteous and annoying. Meanwhile Katelynn was walking around rubbing her vagina on various corners of the furniture, because she can do that now. Chet was helpfully wearing his big purple Chet hat, in case you forgot his name was Chet. Chet. His name is Chet. First Chet called the girls immature, which is insane considering who he is. Then he was all "your big vocabulary and liberal stances don't mean you're right" and I was all "you're an idiot, Chet. You have a rat tail," and then Mallory moved away to boarding school and everyone cried and made her an honorary member for life.

So there was some fight about that and then a calm and then JD and Devyn got into it. I have no idea how the fight started but they were arguing about the difference between "the psyche of a little girl and the psyche of a little boy." Devyn said she'd studied psychology on the "collegiate" level and therefore knew there was a difference between the two. JD said he is friends with dolphins so he knows they're the same. Then JD dissed Devyn for being a "college dropout," to which Devyn replied "I am not a college dropout." Except she is. Because she dropped out of college. Devyn said she can still say she is "college educated" because she has two years of collamajig under her belt. To which I say no: you are not fully college educated until you have stayed up for at least 24 hours straight, drinking the whole time, then have to sit for hours in the rain while some damn fool drones on and on about choices and roads and writing letters. That's the education: that the rest of your life will be cold and rainy and hungover and full of people telling you to do things. Sorry Devyn, but if you didn't get that in college, you didn't get anything.

So everyone exploded and said they were double majors in things while only saying one major ("I double majored in Psychology." And...?), while Katelynn taught her vagina to sit and roll over and then she told everyone that she was a Transgendered and everyone said "duhhh." Ryan was nice enough about it, if not a little unsettled. Little Scotty Mouthbreather made weird jokes about dicks in jars and Chet thought "what a fantasy!" and then Baya walked by in the distance hauling some lighting equipment, weeping.

Finally, Katelynn played pool with the boys and made tranny jokes with them and gender identity was solved.

So much happened and it was exciting! Good for everyone for fighting and saying things like "the ladies are off trimming their vagina hairs" (10 points to Gryffindor, Scotty). It's just a shame that at the very end of the episode, Katelynn found a little box insider her, um, box and opened it and all the ills of the world came spewing out and devoured everyone in a haze of misery and discord.

Until next week.

Little Scotty Mouthbreather has broken up with Marisa, the girl he left cold and snowy back in New England. She tills the fallow, rocky fields in vain and stares off toward Sturbridge, hoping he'll return, his buckle shoes shined to a bright glow. But he won't. He's left for New Amsterdam and shan't return again. Sad. But anyway, the newly-single Scotty has decided that he's going to start dating a lot of girls because at his age that's what you're supposed to do. You know, sow your wild oats. While your ex-girlfriend Marisa literally sows oats back at the barren New Hampshire farm where you've abandoned her. She prays nightly that the whooping cough will come and take her to Heaven.

Scotty's new lothario personality both confuses, delights, and annoys his roommates. Chet Chetterson is sort of awed but insanely jealous of him. So jealous, in fact, that he audibly farted in one lady's presence just to make everyone uncomfortable. He also made a list of Scotty's dating strategies, which involve showing the lurvely ladies his modeling pictures. When ribbed for this dopey behavior, Scotty got mad and clammed up like the actual clams that poor Marisa digs through the cold, wet sand to find, only to haul a whole sack of them the four miles back to the farm on foot. May the goode Lord Above swiftly end her pains.

Perhaps the most upset by and obsessed with the whole dating affair was Devyn, our beauty queen from KC. You might remember that Devs totally dug (digs?) the little musclebound Chippendale's hopeful. But then she saw the picture of a plain, ruddy woman standing alone in a meadow in her Sunday best, the cold sun illuminating the folds of her simple, long black dress. That was Marisa, Scott said, and they were dating. So Devyn backed off. But now that Scotty is single, Devyn would like to hump up ons. So why is Scotty dating other girls?? Specifically, other black girls? He's totes trying to make her jealous, isn't he??? That's her reasoning, anyway. I don't think it's very sound. Maybe Scotty just has a penchant for darker-skinned women. In a weary letter from the North, Marisa told us to "look up that mulatto child in Concord. Scotthew's surely responsible for that pox on societie." (Marisa may be dying a sad and slow pilgrimy death in the winters of the Nor'east, but she's also, you know, sort of a racist.) In the end, nothing was really resolved. I guess Devyn/Scotty 'shippers will have to wait for another episode for a resolution to this dramz.

Up next was Chet Chetterson's little tale. He wants to be some sort of on-air personality. Someone cool and respected, like Carson Daly or Idalis. Ideally he wanted to host Total Request Live, a call-in show for teens and the people who want to better understand them so they can infiltrate their social networks to either bust a big drug ring or molest them. But! ZOMs! When poor little blonde Chet went to 1515 Broadway he found out that.......... TRL was canceled. So Chet shot himself. And by "shot himself" I mean put himself... in front... of a... camera. [thud] Yeah he got some lame job interviewing lame bands. He asked questions about sex and stuff, which is fitting because he is head over heels obsessed with what in-between-the-legs-parts do when they get near each other. (Do they explode? Can bears smell them better? Jesus?)

But then he got the biggest coup of his burgeoning non-career. The rumply producer guy, who previously chastised Chet for "making fun of" some dopey band, said he could get Chet an interview with none other than Peter Jemimah Jenkins Wentz. From that band, "Panic! At the Fallout Mouse." Or whatever! It was fitting because Angels & Kings, a bar that Jemimah Jenkins built with his own two well-moisturized hands, is the only place that the RW kids go in Manhattan, other than Elmo. Soooooooo, Chet got dressed up like 1) Orville Redenbacher (which is what his roommates, chiefly Ryan, said) 2) Tucker Carlson's magick twink protector daemon 3) a 1920's lesbian or 4) all of the above. The correct answer is actually 5) a dingus. So off he went all be-bowtied and dingusy to interview the equally dingusy but far less bowtied Pete Wentz. The interview went as well as that kind of hellfire-forged interview can go and Chet imagined that this is what no-no special place to no-no special place touching action feels like. Like Pete Wentz being nice to you. He's actually not far off.

There was Ryan's storyline too, about his time in Iraq and the people he saw killed and an army buddy who came to New York for some September 11th commemoration events. And, you know, I've nothing funny or insightful to say about that, really. A bunch of kids headed off into the desert a few years ago and some got lost and were never found again. Even if they came home, sometimes. And that's a sad and big and mysterious thing and MTV, so far, has handled the subject soberly without pandering or sensationalizing. It's akin to the best installments of their True Life series. So good for them on that.

At the very end of the episode, Scotty got an envelope in the mail. He recognized the hard, earthy scrawl instantly. Inside the envelope was a daguerreotype of a steamship. He flipped it over and there, signed on the back, was a simple "M."

And he knew she was gone.

This week's story was told in three parts. There was The Lonely Talents of Miss Devyn R. Actressa. There was I Would Do Anything For Love (Except That, Until We're Married): A Chet Chetterson Romance. And there was Sleeping Bag for Two: A Mystery, which involved the reformed lesbian Sarah and her phone-operating father. First we go to Devyn's Tale.

Devyn wants to be an actress, she says. And because she's studied theatre "at a collegiate level," she feels she's ready to skip the stage and head right on out to instant success in Hollywood. Even though her cousin Kim was in The Color Purple on old Broadway, Devyn will not budge about the theatre thing. Her cuz was kind enough to listen to the MTV producers and place a call to a casting director friend, trying to get Devyn a meeting. Before all that happened, though, there was the Curious Incident of the Gay in the Nighttime, when JD got super drunk again. I think I figured out what the deal with that is. JD is one of those people who's so sure of himself in life, so confident that he's smart and in control and good to look at, that he thinks he can do no wrong when he's drunk. He's just more awesome, right?? Incorrect. He's bitchy and show-offy and loud-mouthed when he gets super drunk, which he's now done twice. I'm keeeeeeping track.

This time the gang was at Angels & Kings, because it's the most awesome bar ever, and JD came in a'saunter, with a transsexual named Lady Coolatta Febreze (not her real name) on his arm. JD was all drunky and bragging about how he has this awesome trans friend and she's suuuch a better trans than Katelynn is (what does that mean, exactly?) and that she can sang much much better than Devyn could ever hope to do because she's an American Idol reject. Everyone was offended at this point. Though Devyn was way more offended than Katelynn, which is completely backwards. Especially because JD spilled the last remaining little wrinkled bean and told Chet that Katelynn was born with boy parts. But whatever. Devyn was angry, and even angrier when the Countess Ticklefeathers O'Houlihan invited her on stage for a little singalong. Devyn was all "no, no, I'm not warmed up, no... no.... HERE I GO, COUNTRY FOOLS!" She sang "I Hope You Dance," which is a lonely sad song for shut-ins by Leeanne Wombat. Devyn sang aight, and then Princess Hydrox McDelicounter warbled and the Angels & Kings audience, a befuddled menagerie of straight dudes and idiots, scratched their heads.

Then came Devyn's big casting director non-audition. She turned left at the wrong place and ended up in New Jersey, but eventually made it, 45 minutes late. She wasn't very apologetic, but that's OK. She's worked really hard for this moment. So she did a monologue from a Lee Blessing play (I shouted alone to myself, drinking Chateau Diana fake wine with seltzer out of an enormous wine glass at this point, that I had taken a masterclass with him years ago and as I said it I realized even I didn't care). Anyway her monologue was flat and terrible and the poor casting director wanted to shoot himself. Then Devyn sang the National Anthem. At an audition. Devyn sang the National Anthem at an audition that she was 45 minutes late to. She's going places! In the end she seemed to forgive JD for pitting her against Argyle Lemonade, RN. So that's something.

On to # 32 in the Chet Chetterson Romance series, about a bumbling Mormon person who's never seen a naked girl. Chet was still pursuing the model ("she's a model... and I'm down with that" or something) named Emily and her force fields were weakening against his Millennium Falcon-shaped hairdid. So they went to the Angels & Kings bar the same night that JD's trans friend, Q'orianka Kilcher, voice-murdered Devyn. I think was the same night anyway. So whatever, after Ryan insisted that Chet had no game, he did seem to have game, backed up by his favorite wingmen, TV cameras. So after everyone in New York wept for a few hours, Chet and Emily went on a date in Little Italy. She was really late, probably because she'd been aimlessly following Devyn and had ended up in Jersey City. The date went well, they went back to the house and cuddled. Chet confessed that he'd never seen a naked woman or touched a boob or self-diddled, and Emily's eyes glazed over. She's only 19! Which Chet said he liked because it means she's "young and innocent," which was horribly creepy. Someday Chet will work his way into some sort of body hole—be it woman, man, or mineral—and the space-time continuum will be forever breached and Buffy will have to jump into the light again to save everyone's life. Sigh.

Sarah, the LUG with the jugs, was having problems with her father. He somehow found her phone number (somehow! whoooo could have given him the number to the house that's also a television show??) and wanted to talk. They haven't seen each other in eight years and it's time. Sarah got very upset and yelled and hung up. She told a story about how her father had been sexually abusive. He kept saying on the phone that it was all made-up by the mother. And I don't want to jump into this too much, because if you've ever seen the sad mystery machine that is Capturing the Friedmans you know that these issues are so murky and muddled and sometimes impossible to figure out and speculating about them is useless at best and cruel at worst. But... OK, so the story was that Sarah had been molested at a daycare center or something and then she'd gone on a camping trip with her father. And on that camping trip, Pops only brought one sleeping bag. And then her story ended. Sarah said that while nothing exactly had happened, she still felt violated and that she and her mother had tried to prosecute her father for the offense. I don't know. I'm no ADA Alexandra Cabot, but that doesn't sound like abuse to me. Maybe all he could afford was one sleeping bag. Or, maybe he did plan on molesting her. Who knows. She's sure of it though, and I guess that's all that matters... ? Sigh. We'll end this segment here.

The other ones, Ryan and Scotty and Baya, they were around sort of. But this wasn't their week. Luckily I can see through both walls and time, so I know the real story of what happened to them. Ryan found an old monkey's paw down by the docks. He brought it back to Scotty, who thought it was "real neat." They figured out, by doing internet research, that you're supposed to make wishes on a monkey's paw but that they always turn out bad in some sort of cruelly ironic way. So they decided to make the wishes in a sing-songy fake-Baya voice. "Dear Monkey's Paw.... I want to be a daaaancer," Ryan shrilled. One finger went down, and a low rumble coursed through the house. The next day Baya got a dancing job. As a chorus girl in Phantom of the Opera. Which is terrible because Baya is "street"! So Baya killed herself and Scotty and Ryan put the monkey's paw away to use on the new replacement roommate.

At the very end there were fireworks and everyone did a slow waltz and the cameras swirled overhead. And I noticed, and I mean this sincerely, that unlike the camera swirling on The Hills or The City, when this particular season of Real World does it... Well, I feel like I'm actually looking at something.

So, that's nice.

We were mostly treated to Gay Panic II: 2 Fast, 2 Curious, the stirring sequel to last week's For Straight Boys Who Have Considered Blowing a Dude When the Rainbow Seems Enuf. By this I mean that Chet—the pathologically irksome platinum-headed Mormon fop—ogled over JD's (who is a homosexual person who commits homosexual sex acts) HUGE ENORMOUS KING KONG DONKEY SCHLONG CONDORMS. They were so big that Chet couldn't stop obsessing over them and complimenting JD for having A HUGE ENORMOUS SOMETHING HIDDEN 'NEATH HIS PANTS. What I mean to say is that Chet is a hormonesexual. He might be gay, he might not be. Either way, he is completely batshit head-over-heels obsessssssssed with the act of doin' it. He put one of the condoms on a banana and put it in the fishtank. Because... comedy?

Ryan, the war-stricken jokey pratfaller, mugged and galoompfed his way through things. Honestly, I would maybe kind of like him, if only he didn't have this awful habit of smirking like a little 13-year-old wiseacre every time he's just about to seem like decent person. Because they want airtime, Ryan and Chet decided that they would let JD take them to a nightclub bar lounge in Chelsea (the only part of New York that JD knows is Chelsea, evidently.) They went to XES. Yeah.

So there was a drag queen there, name a' Peppermint, and Ryan got paid $100 by one of his roommates to get a kiss from ol' Peppermint. Peppermint, wicked little minx, decided to not kiss Ryan on the cheek as was the fashion of the day, but to kiss him right square on the mouth (and suck out his soul, like they do in movies.) Ryan was so grossed out! He spit and slobbered and washed his mouth out with soap like he had just said "dagnabit" in front of his religious 1930's mother. Chet, who was wearing eyeliner and was crazily hungry for any compliments like "those gay fruits who wear assless chaps are going to eat you alive," just laughed and laughed and secretly wished it were him.

Though Ryan behaved like a fucking idiot, he wasn't hateful about it. It was like trying sushi for the first time or something. Um, but not sushi. (POOR CHOICE OF WORDS, DO YOU GET THAT JOKE?)

Then Chet's family came to visit (already?) and his mother was a tiny little ball of abject crazy as were his android blonde sisters. Where did they come from? Can Mormons teleport? They can, can't they? I knew it. Ryan and Chet went to dinner with the good Councilwoman of the Village of the Damned. They told her that JD was gay and she said "that's why he's so nice and nurturing." Which, as stereotypes go, is probably one of the better ones. Back at the house she hugged JD and said "take care of him," because he's colored and effete and therefore must be the help. Then the Mormons blinked their eyes twice and beamed back to their Space Temple and the New York Harbor dried up and left only salt.

So, Gay Happened. Then JD got super duper drunk after talking to detectives about his credit-card-stealing Papa, and came home and issued a loud, slurry tirade against immigrants of a quality not seen since Lou Dobbs had one Jack n' Ginger too many at that CNN Christmas party. Chet got really offended and white about it and there was an awkward discussion about it later that eventually devolved into a pensive staring at each other and then an inching closer. And closer. And closer. Chet could feel JD's warm breath on his face. JD placed his hand gently on Chet's chest. His eyes smiled warmly. Then JD grabbed Chet around the waist and kissed him deeply. Before they knew it they were tearing each other's clothes off, not caring who saw. And then Chet woke up. In the middle of the night. Alone in his bed. He wept. Lonely and bitter tears.

Kumbaya wanted to be a dancer and the Brooklyn Hip Hop Conservatory School for Girls or whatever wanted some attention so she auditioned badly and they accepted her. But she turned it down because... it seemed like work? It wasn't entirely clear.

Also, did you know that Katelynn is a transgender person? Did you know that? Oh, you did. Would you like her to tell you again? 'Cause she will. And then she will hug the little Boston Terrier, Scotty, and he will chuckle like the nice boy he is while also feeling a little gross. That's just the truth.

At the very end of the episode a giant crab broke into the loft and ate everyone.

No doubt much bloggie ink will be spilled discussing dramatic centerpiece Katelynn, a surprisingly well-adjusted, recently post-op transgender ("My brother went to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery and all I got was this lousy etc etc..."). While she flies under the radar of fitness model housemate Scott at the airport, Iraq War vet Ryan's highly attuned trannydar quickly clues in to the fact that Katelynn might be harboring a bepenised past. Someone needs to crack out the Jäger bottle, fire up the hot tub, and get this pansexual fuckfest going already.

Some more gay-themed clips follow from the rainbowiest season of Real World ever:

• Real World: Brooklyn [MTV]

We got to briefly go home with each cast member, to all the respective burrows and glens and hollows they crawled out of, chasing some blinding camera light that enticed them all their lives, hovering just beyond the reaches of their dim existences. Until now.

There was rumply Ryan, a jokester with a secret dark back story about fighting in the desert war, and all the rage and terror that comes attendant with that hellish experience. He's also an idiot smalltown prick. But we'll get to that later. There's Katelynn, the most worrisome and pitiful cast member, a post-op male-to-female transgendered woman who was just three weeks out of recovery when the show began taping. She's nice and shy and sexually daring and seems a bit like a witless sheep led to the slaughter. Considering two of her roommates are such magnificent jackasses about her particular circumstances. The other prick—a worse, far more malevolent presence than the aw-shucks dopery of Ryan—is our friend Chet, the blonde Mormon hipster fuck who we previously thought would just be a cute "watch him get laid!" character but instead swiftly revealed himself to be a creepy, prurient, lecherous asshole. I don't care if he's gay (he probably is), straight (he probably hates women), or whatever. He's just an unrelenting bag of dicks.

The other roommates seem fine for the most part. I was surprised to really like JD, the gay dolphin trainer from Miami. We'd previously ragged on him for maybe dating Anderson Cooper and stuff (although, is that really teasing?) but on this episode he mostly came across as an articulate, kind, intelligent person who doesn't put up with shit from anyone (see: table Hulk smash in preview of upcoming episodes.) Devyn is just a dopey beauty queen with a crush on the boring but nice Scott the Bodybuilder. Baya the dancer seems fine, and Sarah the tatooed reformed lesbian seems kind of cool one minute, then really way too into the idea of being on the show the next.

Basically the episode revolved first around the meet and greets, of which the only real moments of note were Scott saying "she's cute but um... not my type" when he met Katelynn, and Chet, having hung out with Devyn for about twenty minute, saying "OK, let's get personal... What did you think of me when you first saw me?" Because he's completely obsessed with his heinous, stupid self and hopefully will get a lesson that his little hipster party boy with filthy, sex-starved ultra-religious insides shtick may serve him well in Salt Lake, but here in Brooklyn they will beat a fucker down for such behavior. (That is also something to note! Every time they mentioned Brooklyn or played a song about Brooklyn they used, well, a lot of black dudes shouting "Brooklyn!!" Which is all well and good, that kind of Bed-Stuy braggadocio is certainly a significant part of popular, visible Brooklyn culture. But I hope they switch it up sometimes. To like a bunch of Lubevitch from Midwood singing "Brooklyn!" or some old Polish ladies from Greenpoint or a Chinese guy from Sunset Park or a nice Italian girl from Bensonhurst. If we're going to stereotype and noveltize, let's get everyone in the pot.) For the record, Devyn thought he was gay because he was wearing a purple shirt. Nice.

The other major segment was the poke-it-with-a-stick antics of the tittering Ryan and the leering, skin-crawling Chet when they figured out, through no admission on Katelynn's part mind you, that she was in fact transgendered. (This was mostly JD's doing. Not so cool there.) "She touched my nipple!" Chet tweeted at one point, referring to an extremely brief friendly tap Katelynn gave him in the hottub (of course these people went in the hottub right away, their Real World chips flipped on the minute they landed in New York). Ryan was just rude and unfunny, making loud wisecracks about her underwear and treating her like she was a circus freak. Seemingly completely unaware that she was, in fact, an actual fucking person who was living in the same place as him and that he couldn't just discuss her openly like she was some kind of odd, misplaced piece of furniture.

The boys basically continued like that the entire episode, speculating disgustedly about who was gay—it was a peculiar, telling obsession of both of theirs. In Ryan's case I'm guessing it has something to do with his time in the military—I'm sure that kind of coiled, prickly suspicion and curiosity can easily seep into that primarily young male environment. In Chet's case I think he's just a lustful motherfucker who can't reconcile his raging desire to have dirty, rough sex with a man (or a man dressed up as a woman, perhaps) with his ridiculous, hateful, magic-book religion. Or maybe that's just how he wants it to seem. He's also cold and calculating and, by his own admission, trying to get a job at MTV. The more conflicted his character, he may figure, the better his chances of sticking out.

I'm rambling and this isn't funny, I know. But it was just a really shitty parade of dumbassedness and gay panic and all of that wicked stuff last night. Chet kept blabbing about it to everyone (Scott, admirably, took him to task for talking about people behind their back) and then Ryan and Chet, in ludicrous fashion, took JD aside—who had kindly, if a bit self-importantly, invited Katelynn to dinner with him in Manhattan so they could have the queer convo—and acted dumb and dumber, culminating with Ryan referring to Katelynn as "It." JD came across looking a bit like a self-righteous shit in that scene too, mostly because all three of these yutzes were talking about Katelynn like she was a child. Sigh.

So I dunno. Poor Katelynn is in the glass case right now, while the two monkey idiots dance around her and hoot and throw banana peels. I think there's hope for Ryan. But Chet is a gross little shitbrick who needs a good lesson in comeuppance.

There was surprisingly little shitfacery, only Ryan at a fist-pumpy concert venue. Maybe this season really will be different. Also Devyn has a crush on Scott, Sarah is sweet but a bit too let's-have-an-important-convo-for-the-cameras, and Baya didn't really do much. She'll probably sleep with Ryan.

Oh and the house is yet another gorgeous/tacky display, this one perched swooningly on a rocky pier overlooking the New York Harbor, accommodating Brooklyn-themed bedrooms, a large, Crunch-sponsored gym, and basically completely see-through showers. It's fancy and ridiculous and I'm sure it would get annoying to live in after about a week.

Hopefully unlike the show itself. I hate to admit it, but I'm guiltily intrigued so far.

BKLYN, out!

What will happen in the thundering and lumbering first hour of the haggard reality show's new season? Well, based on what we've seen over the show's two-decade history, it's sort of easy to guess. There's a pretty simple plot structure, usually arranged by cast member. So!

Baya Apparently this strangely-named (but not for this show, Baya on the Real World is like Meghan anywhere else—a weird name for the RW would be like Aquatopeka or Ninjizza) girl is from Utah, is a hip-hop hippie, wants to dance professionally, and has panic attacks. So, we're guessing that Aquatopeka will—tasting the sweet grimy air that exists out from under Mormonism's thumb for the first time—get spectacularly drunk and hit on the cutest of the straight boys. We hope she falls down the stairs, hurts her good dancin' leg, and hurls herself into the briny Atlantic.

Chet We already kind of know a lot about him. His name is Joe Pitt Chet Cannon and he is also from Utah and is a crazy Mormon who is probably gay (look how trendy he dresses!) and MTV really wanted to get him laid. So let's see. We suspect he'll spend time refraining from alcohol and not talking about sex, for which the rest of the cast members—at this point soaked in booze (one has already been reduced to a little flaming heap in the corner) and sticking their genitals in/on whatever they can—will give him the hairy eyeball and judge judge judge. But he'll defend himself amiably and then excuse him self to furtively masturbate in the confessional while thinking about the buttery golden loins of Brigham Young.

Devyn It'll be a cold day in July before I recognize Missouri, so let's just say that this beauty queen (Miss America Teen winner!) is from a land west of Illinois and east of Kansas. She has really big boobs and is also a black person. So she might spend her time talking about black/white issues in a producer-prodded finger snapping way, or she may play it cool and just kind of eye everyone suspiciously while sitting in a corner with the other person of some sort of color. (I say this not because this is how she should act, so don't comment-frag me. It's just how that shit goes down on this show.)

JD That other person of color I was talking about. The second horrible, othering thing about JD is that he is a gay person who does gay things like having gay sex with gay men. Gay men like Anderson Cooper! So that is going to be a problem for the cutest straight guy (who is probably entangled with Kumbaya somewhere at this point) but he'll act like, aw it's no thang. Chet the blonde Mormon secret geigh will nod and smile politely then, in confessional (post-wank), will say "it's just... just not OK in my beliefs." And then we'll all groan and throw something at the TV and I'll shriek "get me something more to drink, this is so bad" and then I'll realize that I'm all alone at 25 still watching this show. Thanks, JD. He'll probably also cry. Because apparently his father did some bad things to him and that's baggage worth rummaging through, tossing things onto the floor willynilly as if his life were a hotel room.

Katelynn You thought that ethnic homo had problems. Katelynn is a transgendered person who doesn't know how to spell Caitlin. Her roommates will probably act really awkward and jittery and kind of look at her weird and some will be more jovial than others (Chet will be weeping) and JD will say it's fabulous but mostly, in the secret confessionals, everyone will say what lurks in the deepest, judgiest sub-basements of their booze-splattered hearts: "Why doesn't she know how to spell Caitlin?"

Ryan Ryan is the seemingly regular straight guy who has lots and lots and lots of sublimated rage. So in the first episode, expect him to assess the assets of asses and cheerily greet the gay dudes Morm and Colored, and then kind of give the stink eye to that tall, husky-voiced, big-handed lady who apparently doesn't know how to spell. At some point in the first hour he'll probably have a drunkish heart-to-heart with one of the pretty girls about his buried, sorrowful past (he's an Iraq war vet who was, like, in the shit) but then he'll brush it off and say "whoo, we're here to party! Hello Brooklyn!!!" to which Brooklyn will respond "clean up after yourself, why don't you. For heaven's sake."

Sarah This is the tatooed lesbo chick who's now dating a dude and who isn't really that rebellious after all, she was just molested when she was younger. Hard to say yet whether she'll be a condescending, secularly pious teetotaler or if she'll be a drunken, horrifying mess like that poor sad girl from the San Diego season who ended up dying. Let's hope it's the former. She might be the one to have the lookin'-at-the-view deep dish with Ryan, or she might run screeching to the gay people so she can talk about herself. Prove me wrong, Sarah. Prove me wrong.

Scott Scott is my best friend with whom I ride buses all the time. So I know exactly what he's going to do. He's going to: be dopily friendly like some sort of pesky golden retriever, shake everyone's hand like the good Masshole boy he is, talk a lot about his hardscrabble past but in noble "what doesn't kill me..." Good Will Hunting isms, then take off his shirt, then act uncomfortable around the 'mos and the people who can't spell. He won't be featured much because he's featureless. A scandal-free workout machine. And my best friend. OK. I think I can come out with it. (Don't kill me Scotty!) We're dating.

Or I'm totally wrong, because MTV is previewing this season like it's more thoughtful and less about drinking and fucking, but I kind of doubt it because people love the drinking and the fucking and who cares if it's Brooklyn, Bangladesh, or Biloxi, people just like watching strapping idiot youngsters drinking and fucking. No matter what. That is last true currency in this bankrupt world. To paraphrase Lester Bangs. Sort of.

See you at 10.

Welcome Back!

Big Love, Jan. 18th
Excellent show with beautiful acting from everyone, especially Jeanne Tripplehorn as the put-upon first wife of a Utah polygamist family. Watch the first two seasons in the next two weeks and become a bleary-eyed addict.

Lost, Jan. 21st
What can I really say? The most engaging, mysterious, and stirring show network television has put out in a looong time. You've four seasons to whiz through if you're going to catch up, or you can do like some and try desperately to avoid the spoilers for two more seasons and watch the whole thing when the eventual DVD box set is released. That would be an amazing few weeks. You'd probably get fired.

Flight of the Conchords, Jan. 18th
You can already watch the first episode of the gonzo Kiwi musical comedy. Jemaine and Brett are in top form as usual.

The Real World: Brooklyn, this Wednesday
ZOMG, this probably should not be filed under "good," because it will be terrible. But admit it. You're sort of curious. God knows we are. For the first episode at least. Then we'll forget it and let it molder.

Battlestar Galactica, Jan. 16th
The last 10 episodes ever! The show has become a bit too byzantine—we'd be lying if we said we really have any idea what the hell is going on at this point. But, we still want to know who the last Cylon is.

Please Go Away (Again)

Trust Me, Jan. 26th
This is that TNT show that you've seen laboriously advertised if you've been to a movie in the last few weeks and been forced to watch one of those irksome "First Look" things before the previews. It's about the insanely smug team of Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh doing advertising or something. Ick.

American Idol: Season 342, a week from today
It's basically just going to be terrible, what with its new judge and just tired everything and oh God we're going to watch the whole miserable thing until we get bored with it by the final four and just stay til the end so we can punch our time cards and go home.

The United States of Tara, Jan. 18th
We were sort of curious to hop over to Showtime after Big Love to see this Toni Colette series about a woman with highly pronounced multiple personalities. But then there was the Diablo "Juno" Cody factor, and our Los Angeles cousin hated it and now we just think it's going to be bad news.

Heroes, Feb. 2nd
There's a new "volume" or something called "Fugitives." Whatever. Worst-written show ever.

The Last Templar, Jan. 25th
Remember when Mira Sorvino won an Oscar? Now she's an archaeologist solving low-budge mysteries on network television.

So that's that! The New York Times has a full list in their TV section, so you can sift through what else is coming up and decide if it's going to be awful or annoying or both. Happy watching. We guess.

The bus was late and it was cold, so people were crammed inside the bus line’s storefront. After about five minutes, I heard behind me the familiar, whispery cadences of a just-outside-Boston accent. There was this Scott character, seeming painfully normal in that earnest, doofy way boys from that neck of the woods can be. But then he started chatting up some young lady (a fashion business student) and the Real, ridiculous story unfolded.

He was an actor! And a model! And, uh, yeah… He’d, y’know, just finished shooting his season of the Real World. Never mind that the show is a useless husk at this point, only slightly interesting now because this season happens to take place in the borough of increasingly ill repute. No, that doesn’t matter. This was this lad’s moment! And damned if he wasn’t going to let this young chippy know about it. Repeatedly. At length.

He kept offering info in this faux-tentative way. “You know... this season's just been so hyped,” he informed her—after she had expressed how lame the show had gotten. “It’s crazy” [with mock amazement barely covering thrilled-with-himself awe] “Like, on the 'net. 30 web agencies just interviewed us.” And, you know, he was “trying to get some work done,” which meant tinkering around on some site where he could “talk to fans.” You know, all those fans. Of the show that hasn't aired yet.

He went on to explain that, because he was one day going to be in movies, the on-camera training was really valuable. But the show isn’t for everyone, he warned. No, you have to be in the proper mental and physical shape to endure it. Luckily he was well built for the endeavor. “The promos seem good," he added when nobody asked him. "They make me seem just like I work out. It’s a lot of me shirtless. But that’s OK,” he said chuckling, oh so dismissively. Yeah, that’s OK! I’m sure they’ll round out your character! (For the record, MTV's website currently describes his character as such: "Often perceived to be a 'musclehead,' it is hard to believe that this muscular personal trainer used to be a 90-pound weakling.")

He doesn’t drink—maybe five or six drinks the whole time, he told the girl. And living in Red Hook was a drag. It could take 2 hours just to get to Manhattan! (I don’t know if I believe that. Maybe I do.) Most importantly though, young Scott vaguely knows CT, the lunking, equally-accented broheim from the Paris iteration. The world is small.

These days, now that the show is over, he lives in an apartment, with two of the other girls from the show. He’s doin’ the acting thing and just did press week for the show and his phone is just brrrringin’ off the hook. At one point there was a slight, awkward pause in their conversation. So he decided to reiterate just HOW MUCH his phone rings. “Yeah, I just got all these calls and, uh, one of them was the Boston Globe. They want to interview me tomorrow.” This was the second time he’d mentioned this impressive Globe get. The girl seemed nonplussed.

But, I dunno, can we really blame him for his “guess what? Guess what??” braggy attitude? All of this must be so new for a boy who's “worked in a mill” his whole life. And now here he is answering his always-blowin'-up BlackBerry for interviews. And advising some fashion student on where to live cheaply in New York City (“live in the outskirts,” he said several times. I pictured the girl finally setting her bags down in some tattered corner of Yonkers, her heart swelling. “I did it!”) It’s an entirely different life he has now, so suddenly. How quickly we can become whole different people! Just like that.

Sadly we sat too far away on the bus for me to overhear anymore. But a tipster, who was on the same bus!, tells us:

Real world red hook cast member scott was here conducting phone interviews and talking very loudly to a "fan" saying things like "I don't think im better than anyone but...." I was sitting right behind him and was trying to do work. He was talking so loud and wouldn't stop. He didn't even have the decency to turn the sound off his phone while gchatting or whatever. On top of that he kept crawling under my seat looking for the back to his phone!

When we finally got to South Station, I wanted to catch one more snippet from this Scott of The Real World: Brooklyn, formerly of New Hampshire. You know, before he bumbles onto the TV. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of him then, when that happens. (Aside from the upcoming Real World premiere, he wants to do one of those Challenge series, he oh-so-casually told the girl). But by the time I’d grabbed my suitcase from the bus’s metal gut, he was way ahead of me. He became, like the rest of us, just another face in the crowd. Unrecognizable! Wholly unremarkable. Maybe for one last time before the show premieres. Here in the bus station just before Christmas. Here in cold, old Boston.

Out here in the real world.

But with the sure-to-be-howlingly-awful reality show about to air, it was time for some official whorin' to various media outlets, like Time Out New York. What will their puff-piece say they've planned for New Year's Eve—also known as nightlife's amateur night?

Well, the token not-gay but totally-virgin Mormon, Chet, mumbles something about the Rockettes and adds, "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Word. J.D. the gay dolphin trainer continues to deny his Anderson Cooper love affair, adding without irony, "When you work at SeaWorld you meet a lot of celebrities... Being an animal trainer, I’m a public figure, just like he is." (What?)

As for the girls, including the not-genetically-born-as-a-female, LiveJournaling-and-media-hating Katelynn, she spins us with something about "I figured if I could destigmatize the word transgender, if I could normalize it, that’s my goal. It’s an education opportunity." Sure, honey.

Devyn asks, "Do we have stupid stamped on our foreheads?" Yes, but only figuratively. And Baya copped to the bar owners of Red Hook being all "fuck no" when it came to filming there. Good for them.

The scariest part is, some of them loved NYC so much they decided to stay behind permanently.

[Time Out New York]

[Photo: Ben Goldstein for TONY]