The Real World

Last weekend, sometime between my many hours wasted watching For the Love of Ray J, World's Strictest Parents, and MTV Teen Cribs I got to thinking where exactly reality TV has veered off course. We all know it's far cheaper and easier for networks to produce reality shows that actual scripted TV shows with content and purpose, but somewhere along the way the phenomenon has spun out of control. While now we're now looking for the greatest American dog and giving Brett Michael's most curious female cast-offs their own half hour of television, in the 90s reality TV was still a burgeoning idea. It may shock and amaze you now, but the modifier "reality" once preceded the noun "TV" without even a trace of irony.

The Real World is still on of course, but we can all agree it's gotten a whole lot less real over its 22 seasons-to-date run. Now at open casting calls I imagine they have check boxes with labels like "Drunken Frat Boy Likely to Pick an Ignorant and Poorly Thought-Out Fight" or "Frustrated Psuedo-Intellectual Racial or Sexual Preference Minority Prototype", but in 1992 when the show premiered the show was a fresh concept.

Producers (and now reality show moguls) Jonathan Murray and Mary Ellis-Bunim initially considered making The Real World a semi-scripted soap opera, giving the preselected cast members a blueprint of their character development and storylines. You know, like they do nowadays on reality TV. If this idea had come to fruition with the quickly dissembled so-called "Season 0" cast, we could have seen Tracy Grandstaff (the then-future voice of MTV's Daria) play out as a character on The Real World. The pilot was soon dropped and exchanged for an actual set of seven strangers, forming the 1992 premiere season of The Real World.

In 1992, we first heard of MTV's grand social experiment, as the New York season premiered with these now-familiar words:

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


For your viewing pleasure, a montage of Real World Intros. I couldn't find them any other way. The first one on there is New York, my favorite part of which has got to be when they intone "...and start getting real," after which we hear a cast member yell, "Can you get the phone?" This was them not being polite/being real in 1992. Amazing.

So, what exactly happened when people stopped being polite and started being real? In 1992, this was actually a provocative and novel question. MTV brought in Becky, Norman, Heather, Julie, Kevin, Eric, and Andre to help us find out. I'm going to go out on a limb here and side with pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman in declaring the first season to be the only season of TRW that was actually "real" by any definition of the world. There was no meta self awareness going on, nor was there shameless self promotion in pursuit of low-tier fame. The first cast was the only one with no idea what was in store, what would get them screen time, or how the show would look as a finished product.

This was a short-lived phenomenon, of course, and soon the show was riddled with the kind of drama producers and sponsors salivate over. Here are just a few of the many, many ratings-skyrocketing dramatic moments that characterized the show in the 90s:



Puck vs. Everyone, Especially Pedro (San Francisco)


Sometimes good heartedness and good TV just don't mix. David "Puck" Rainey was a prime example of this phenomenon. No one could deny that watching his puzzling, over-the-top, and frequently unhygienic antics was entertaining. His worldview, however, was not quite as appealing to viewers as his penchant for picking his nose and eating peanut butter from the jar with his fingers. Puck was a notorious attention hog who represented the brazen new class of wannabe fame-seekers who made up the rising underclass of reality TV. He came to blows with pretty much everyone in the house, but the most memorable and shameful was his confrontation with Pedro Zamora.

Zamora had been diagnosed with AIDS, and his kind spirit and desire to battle ignorance against his disease made him the ideal target for Puck. Essentially, Puck became incensed that Pedro was a far more interesting character than him and thus was receiving far more attention. The only logical solution in his deluded mind was to attack Pedro constantly, instigating unnecessary confrontations. Pedro, in all his goodness, was ready to leave the house under the siege of torment until the other cast members decided to evict Puck. Sadly, Pedro died almost immediately after the airing of the San Francisco season finale, but his triumph over an asshat like Puck was a well-deserved minor victory.



Melissa and Dan Fight Over Postal Rights (Miami, 1996)



I don't know about you, but I take the US Postal Service's code to honor the privacy of my mail very seriously. Which is why it came as no surprise to me when Dan exploded upon finding that Melissa opened his letter containing pricey materials for his work. He goes so far as to call her a stupid bitch, which seems a little harsh for some innocent housemate mail-tampering. Things escalate quickly, as they tend to do on The Real World. In retaliation, Melissa flung some anti-gay slurs at him, which in retrospect was probably not a wise move. The drama just oozes from this clip. It's ridiculous TRW at its finest.



The Slap Heard Round the World (Seattle, 1998)

Stephen slaps Irene
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Possibly the most infamous of Real World moments was what MTV dubbed "The Slap Heard Round the World". Even this early in the game, MTV realized the value of branding and packaging TRW's drama and making it seem like news. I suppose it's a testament to the show's resonance that people still remember this moment, though to its credit it is absolutely crazy.

Irene was looking for an out, so she cried Lyme Disease and asked to leave the show. To be fair, she did actually have Lyme Disease, but her claims of its debilitating impact may have been just a bit exaggerated. In what must have been a Lyme Disease-induced bout of insanity, she outs Stephen as a homosexual. Smooth move, Irene. To retaliate, Stephen does what any normal guy would do. That is to say, he throws her prized stuffed animal into the watery abyss and then stops her moving car to slap her in the face.

If he was working to quell those murmurings about his sexuality, this may not have been his best move. All in all, Irene may have had the last laugh, or at least a validation of her character over Stephen's. In the early 2000s he was arrested for prostitution and then for stealing a 1988 Toyota Camry. Smooth move, Stephen. We can only imagine his indisposed clients asking to reenact that fateful slapping scene. Though to be honest, I'd prefer not to.


As many of you well know, these moments are just the tip of the iceberg. The crazy seemed to snowball with each new season, turning the show into a free-for-all frenzy of threesomes, stereotyped character molds, and general drunken debauchery. In the early years, though, it was more of a legitimate social experiment to see what happened what people stopped being polite, and started getting real. Okay, so that reality may have included a verbal pillaging for semi-innocent mail tampering, but it still beats watching The Real World: Cancun.

The Magic of Science: 90s Shows that Made it Fun to be a Nerd

Considering educational science-themed kids shows of today have names like Dude, What Would Happen?, you have to wonder how far this type of programming is going to backslide. In our day, these shows didn't need cheesy gimmicks to pull in our attention. Except science-themed music video parodies on Bill Nye. Oh, and the penguin puppets on Beakman's World. And the swashbuckling sword fights on Mr. Wizard's World. Okay, so I made that last one up, but the underlying point was that no matter what the decade, you usually need a little more than straight educational segments to sell science to kids.

These shows must have had something special, though, to get us to voluntarily subject ourselves to learning in our precious free time. I'm sure some parental coaxing or even in-class watching sessions may have been in order, but no matter the means, we were watching. These shows found a magical point of compromise between education and entertainment and served it to us in a bubbling beaker of science learning. The producers and writers knew that kids are inherently inattentive, so they were sure to throw a fair amount of explosions in the mix.

The straightforwardness of these show's educational value was remarkable. Unlike some of its edutaining contemporaries (I'm looking at you, Ghostwriter), kid's science shows weren't tricking us into learning while we thought we were simply enjoying some mindless show. With science programs, it was all out in the open. Sure, they took pains to make learning fun and interesting, but they never once tried to hide the fact that we were doing what amounted to extracurricular science homework. Whatever the impetus for our spontaneous bouts of learning, our teachers and parents weren't complaining.



Bill Nye the Science Guy



Catchy theme song, right? It's all I can do to not start chanting Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! alone in the comfort of my living room. The folks behind Bill Nye definitely achieved their goal of making science seem fun and exciting, at least in the opening credits. They take all the vaguely science-y sounding words and use them as mere background noise for the the snappy theme. The things floating across our screens seem vaguely educational, yes, but when they're flashing in a maniacal strobe-light manner, they seem just a tad more exciting than they do in our Earth Science textbooks.

Bill Nye was a fast-paced, engaging show aimed at the learning resistant tween demographic. The show utilized humor and sight gags while constantly cutting from one experiment to the next. It didn't give us time to get bored and change the channel. If we were nearing that boredom threshold, though, Bill knew just what to do to keep us hooked.

Two words: song parodies. Yes, you heard (er, read) right. Nye offered us Weird Al-esque song parody musical videos with scientific themes. The "Soundtrack of Science" segment was truly ridiculous, but it demonstrated the show's good sense to not take itself to seriously. For your enjoyment, I offer my very favorite Bill Nye parody, the truly absurd "Bill's Got Boat" a parody of "Baby Got Back" sung by fictitious musical act (wait for it) Sure-Floats-A-Lot.

Can't you see she just wants to be buoyant?

To read the full post on Bill Nye the Science Guy, click here



3-2-1 Contact



The visuals in that intro really make you nostalgic for a simpler time. When I see that bar graph on that black screen computer, I just light up. It's kind of cute and kitschy-looking now, don't you think?

The show also made a version especially for in-class use, further blurring the line between formal and voluntary learning. You may have enjoyed watching it in school, but you were still essentially shackled to your desk by law. It's a fine line, don't you think?

3-2-1 Contact had a variety of segments including features on such exciting scientific topics as volcanoes and robots. My favorite recurring segment was The Bloodhound Gang, which back in the day meant cool scientifically-minded child detectives, but now brings to mind the images of humping music video stars dressed as monkeys. Thanks a lot, musical group Bloodhound Gang. You've tainted the innocence of my intellectually curious youth.

I yearned to answer the phone, "Bloodhound Detective Agency: wherever there's trouble we're there on the double!" I'm thinking of starting to pick up at work that way, just for fun.

This intro is pure mid-to-late 80s, and that song is amazing

Mr. Wizard's World




If that intro just doesn't do it for you, check out this 1990 promo. It just screams excitement. Learn to make clouds! Blow up two balloons at once! Run backwards! Golly, Mr. Wizard, is there anything you can't do?



This 80s and 90s version was a revival of Mr Wizard's (nee Don Herbert) show decades earlier. In the 1950s and 60s, Watch Mr Wizard launched thousand of Mr Wizard science clubs. If you're ever feeling a little nerdy for liking the third version of the show (that's the 80s/90s one), just think to yourself, by 1955 100,000 kids had applied to be club members. Now that's nerdy.

We may not have had local watch-along clubs, but we did get our own healthy dose of fun experiments at which to marvel. Mr Wizard would perform some sort of mysterious trick, we'd ooh and ahh, and then we'd be stuck sitting around for the tedious explanation. The show ran in reruns for several years and often played very early in the morning. I distinctly remember irritating my parents with my wide-awakeness at 6 am and being stuck in front of the TV for some good old fashioned science learning. Oh, the memories.




Newton's Apple



If you thought TV scientists from the 1950s were interesting, just look at the winners we got to host Newton's Apple. An NPR broadcaster, a museum director, and even future MTV News correspondent SuChin Pak. Now there's a selection! Of course, this was all over the span of several years, but you get the general idea.

I admit my allegiance to this show stems from a similar place to my fervent devotion to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Being from Minneapolis, these shows were something of hometown heroes, produced in my own backyard. Well, not literally in my own backyard. Though I do think our shed would have been a lovely scenic backdrop for bottle rocket launching.




Beakman's World


Beakman's World was sort of like a modified Bill Nye. It covered many of the same topics and scientific phenomena, only its eccentric host was fictitious. Beakman was played by Paul Zaloom, a lively pupeteer and actor who brought to life the world of science through amusing experiments. Beakman was quite popular with the lab-assisting ladies; he had three comely female scientific companions throughout the course of the show. He also had a guy in a rat suit. Don't ask, just infer that it was funny.

They also had the aforementioned puppet penguins, which were of course adorable. They were sort of crotchety and judgmental, but then again they lived in a place where it was consistently below zero temperature. I'll cut them some slack.




These TV shows prove that adults needed not be sneaky to try to get us to sit down and watch something educational, they just needed to be kid friendly and have a good sense of humor. Oh, and have lots of explosions. Lots of explosions.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the holiday season is upon us. Like it or not, each year stores start pushing their Christmas wares earlier and earlier. In a couple of decades, we'll probably be stringing lights in July. Despite the overcorporatization of Christmas, I always love the holiday season. No matter how cynical you are, it's tough to not feel even the tiniest bit festive. The music, the lights, the trampling of shoppers on Black Friday. It just makes my heart smile.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, however, did not make my heart smile. Or at least not at the ripe young age of 8 upon its theatrical release. It gave me not only the Nightmare before Christmas but also the Nightmare on Christmas and for about three weeks afterward. It's pretty safe to say all my Christmas cheer evaporated the second I saw that stop-motion animated child pull a severed head out of its gift box. I don't even celebrate Christmas, so I can just imagine the impact it had on those who did.

Now, of course, I recognize that the film is brilliant. It's a pretty magical movie, if you're willing to overlook some of the stomach-turning visuals and sight gags. Literally, the sights made me gag. I have a tiny admission to make, but you have to promise not to share this information. It's classified. Can we pinky-swear on this? Great, thanks. The truth of the matter is that I have an unnatural fear of stop-motion animation. Between this movie and James and the Giant Peach, I maybe got four hours of sleep between 1993-1996. Whew, I'm glad I got that one off my chest. Seriously though. If you ever so much as flicked a camera on and off between frames, I was not watching it. Period.

Somewhere around 16 I finally conquered my fear and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas the whole way through. I adored it, but I can certainly see why Disney pushed to release it under the guise of its Touchstone label. The movie is pretty unsettling, overall. It's dark--both visually and thematically--and it's a little heavy for children. Against the backdrop of upbeat Disney films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, Nightmare was definitely the odd one out in their animation offerings. While the other Disney films were touting feel-good just-be-yourself messages, Nightmare had a much darker message on hand.



When I watch the trailer now, I marvel at the wondrous world created through the magical minds of Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, the respective visual and musical geniuses behind the film. When I saw the trailer back in '93, I'm pretty sure my only reaction was "AHHHHHH!" It may also have involved running out of the theater, hysterical crying, and the eventual breathing into a paper bag.

The movie opens on "the holiday worlds of old" with a fairy tale air of mystery and enchantment in the voice-over. It segues quickly the the impaling of pumpkins on spears and monsters lurking under the stairs in the apt setting of Halloween Town. Their Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, leads them in the Halloween festivities during which the residents of Halloween Town rejoice in their scaring antics. We soon learn that Jack's grown tired of his lot in fright-inducing life in "Jack's Lament":



While wandering Halloween Town's forests, Jack accidentally slips through the conveniently local space/time continuum into a mysteriously cheerful place called Christmas Town. The whole place is aglow with twinkly little lights, ice skaters frolic around a giant pine, elves sing cheerfully from their racing sleds. Jack is confused by the warmth and feeling of Christmas Town and its contrast to the horrifying head-throwing pastimes of Halloween Town.



Though he does not completely understand what exactly he's seen, Jack presents his discovery to his fellow Halloween Town residents. Halloween Town is, on the whole, not impressed. They point out everything awesome about their own beloved holiday and have complete tunnel vision against the happiness and joy of Christmas Town. Tough Luck, Jackie.



Despite their disinterest, Jack becomes completely obsessed with Christmas and hatches a plan to kidnap Santa and take his place. Sounds pretty foolproof, right? I really can't imagine any way this plan could possibly go awry.



Because it's a Tim Burton movie, we're to believe a crazed scientist (awesomely named Dr. Finklestein) cobbled together and then brought to life a rag doll who begins to develop romantic stirrings for Jack. Then again, we're in a magical Halloween-themed town teeming with spooky bats and roaming mummies, so that's probably the most realistic of our plot points. The movie allows you the luxury of complete suspension of disbelief, as you find yourself wanting to believe that it might just be the right thing to kidnap "Sandy Claws" and replace him with a blood-chilling skeletor. In the context of Halloween Town, it almost makes sense. This rag doll chick, Sally, has a vision that Jack's plan will end disastrously and attempts to warn him of the dangers of his Christmas-stealing mission.

Ignoring his fellow townspeople's ambivalence, Jack eagerly assigns new and exciting Christmas roles to his neighbors. They still don't totally get it, so you've got to admire their stick-to-itness.



Jack thinks crazy kids Lock, Shock, and Barrel (voiced by Paul Rebeuns, aka PeeWee Herman) would make excellent accomplices and enlists them to kidnap Mr. Sandy Claws:



Again, they're not totally on board with the real spirit of Christmas Jack is so adamant they find. Instead of bringing him back, they bring Santa to the even crazier Oogie Boogey. Oogie's a bit of a gambling man, and he's not against implicating our buddy Santa into his irresponsible debauchery.



Jack is one of those misguided good-intentioned saps that just won't quit. He boards his coffin sleigh and rounds up his skeletal reindeer, eager to do Santa's good work. He doesn't quite know what the children of the world will want, so he's pretty sure shrunken heads and poisonous reptiles will do the trick. Done and done. Sally, on the other hand, is not so pleased with the way things are turning out, especially regarding the increasing levels of dementia enacted by her would-be beau. Catherine O'Hara does not disappoint as Sally, though it's no A Mighty Wind.



The people of the world realize that there's an impostor Santa polluting their skies and filling their stockings with terrifying trinkets. The army shoots down his sleigh, after which Jack is presumed dead (or deader, I guess, considering he's already just a skeleton). Jack quickly realizes he needs to set things right, free the real Santa, and enjoy his own lot in life as the Pumpkin King. A quick revelation, sure, but this is a Disney film so it's all par for the animated course.



On their way to set things straight, Sally is captured by the vile Oogie. In an oddly chivalrous act, Jack acts even viler and breaks apart Oogie's outer shell to reveal the revolting insects inside. Excuse me, I'm going to go vomit. Be right back. Okay, still here? Anyway, Santa gives them a harsh talking-to before going on his gift mission, but gives them some happy snow to show that he's not holding a grudge. All seems to be as it was again, with the added bonus of a brewing Sally and Jack romance. I never thought I'd say a fictitious romantic affair between a skeleton and living rag doll would be adorable, but the movie really sells it.



Nightmare manages to be all sorts of contradictory things at once, both sweet and vile, sentimental and cruel, cute and frightening. It's Tim Burton's unbridled imagination at its best, giving us a well-developed fantasy world to scare and delight us. His signature style and attention to detail makes it almost like a real world all unto its own. Which is probably why I was so scared of it in the first place. I hope the ensuing nightmares are enough to tide you over until his version of Alice in Wonderland debuts next year. Then you'll get a whole slew of new things to fear. Until then, though, just enjoy the Nightmare.