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Friday, January 12, 2007

Did The Stranger Run The Real World Out of the Country?

posted by on January 12 at 10:12 AM

That’s what AOL’s TV Squad is suggesting. After mentioning the possible relocation of MTV’s bracingly shameless “reality TV” monolith to Australia for its next season, TV Squad member Julia Ward muses:

Actually, it’s a pretty wise move to beat it for foreign shores. The alternative newsweeklies in American cities, like The Stranger in Seattle, have made it harder and harder for the Real World crew to shoot without interruption and open hostility from the locals.

Granted, it’s been almost 45 years since The Stranger devoted itself to punking The Real World: Seattle, but still, anything we can do to help rid the United States of the booze-and-syphilis-drenched Real World plague is a pleasure…

RSS icon Comments

1

45 years, really?

Posted by me | January 12, 2007 10:22 AM
2

Maybe 47...

Posted by David Schmader | January 12, 2007 10:23 AM
3

It feels like it has been at least 53 years since those first few seasons, before it turned into an all out "Let's see how drunk I can get!"/"How many people can I tongue at a time?" fest.

Posted by london's still my favorite | January 12, 2007 10:51 AM
4

Links to The Stranger coverage of this?

Posted by hyperlinker | January 12, 2007 10:52 AM
5

Re: #3: True, and I feel a little bad about slagging The Real World. Before it became an alcohol-fueled STD swap meet, the show did more for real-life gay visibility than 1,001 pride parades....

Posted by David Schmader | January 12, 2007 10:54 AM
6

Re: 4: Unfortunately, the Stranger/Real World hubbub happened years before the internet was invented, and the coverage isn't included in our current archive database.

Posted by David Schmader | January 12, 2007 10:57 AM
7

I really liked the 1st season in New York and the San Francisco cast because it was about real people with real lives learning about each other and trying to get along.

Ever since then it's been about vapid, shallow and pointless cat fighting as the cast has gotten younger, dumber and hornier. Yick.

Posted by Original Andrew | January 12, 2007 11:01 AM
8

I still have my "SEATTLE SAYS: THE REAL WORLD SUCKS" t-shirt that a friend gave me, though I've never actually worn it.

Posted by Explorer | January 12, 2007 11:03 AM
9

I have mixed emotions about what we did to them.

First, MTV deserved it. But the actual people - who I ran into at some pro-choice events - were not as loathesome as we depicted them.

Bygones.

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 12, 2007 11:19 AM
10

That show completely lost me when they started giving its cast a fake job to all do together rather than having them each do their own thing. Wasn't the Seattle season the first time that they did this?

Posted by Huntress | January 12, 2007 11:26 AM
11


I remember the Real World vitriol. It was a weekly item in the TTS column ("This Town Sucks", if I recall)

Posted by sp | January 12, 2007 11:42 AM
12

This will probably be my stupidest public admission yet, but I got fairly far in the inteview process for what would have been the Hawaii season. On (about) the third telephone interview, the poor person who made the call got me started on our bombing of Serbia. At the end of a long and dense tirade they told me I'd probably be better for the Discovery Channel, and that was that.

In retrospect, I'm *very* happy with the outcome.

Posted by golob | January 12, 2007 11:47 AM
13

@10 I don't know if Seattle was the first season that they all did a job together, but they definitely did all do a job together here - they worked for the End. Heh.

Posted by Callie | January 12, 2007 11:50 AM
14

I think another real indictment of the Real World's most recent seasons has been what's happened to the cast members. In the first, second, and third seasons, the cast members went on to establish real careers. I read montly comics written and drawn by Judd Winick, and they covered real issues, like AIDS, gay rights, race, and abortion.

Now, if you're on the Real World, your future consists of Real World/Road Rules Challenge and people seeing your most petty moments blown up into grand melodrama.

Posted by Gitai | January 12, 2007 11:54 AM
15

forgive me for having not watched MTV since ~1989, and for not being hooked on Slog before '06, but would someone gimme a synopsis of what happened. it sounds interesting...

Posted by Mike in MO | January 12, 2007 12:17 PM
16

Dear Mike in Mo and everyone else: Synopsis coming, along with some dug-from-the-archives old text on the fracas, dug up by Ms. Ari Spool...check back in an hour or so..

Posted by David Schmader | January 12, 2007 12:20 PM
17

Judd Winick is a great comics writer. I heart his Shazam comics.

Posted by Soupytwist | January 12, 2007 12:26 PM
18

the suspense is (not) killing me

Posted by Mike in MO | January 12, 2007 1:57 PM
19

good riddance. don't come back, "real world".

Posted by treacle | January 12, 2007 6:44 PM
20

You can see the production assistant job posting placed in Australia for the Real World in December last year in this Real World Sydney Post.

For years the production has been interrupted by the locals and reporters in the US cities, even had to assign security to the cast after the San Diego season.

Posted by Michael Martin | January 15, 2007 8:56 AM

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