It’s a little hard to believe, but back in 2002, when The Real World: Las Vegas debuted on MTV, setting a reality show in Las Vegas was a novelty, and the music channel’s veteran seven-strangers-picked-to-live-in-a-house franchise had not yet been reduced to the clubs-and-hot-tub-hookups formula it’s now known for. Thus the show’s Vegas season can be held at least partially responsible for two unfortunate trends in reality TV, and opinions on it tend to be rather strong.
It was also one of the highest-rated editions of The Real World and continues to garner strong ratings whenever it’s repeated, so MTV has made it the first season to have an extended encore, as all seven original cast members returned to the Palms last month to live in the same suite for three weeks, resulting in the six-episode Reunited: The Real World Las Vegas (MTV, Wednesdays, 10 p.m., repeated ad nauseam). Whether you loved or hated the original Vegas Real World (or, most likely, loved/hated it), you’ll find something in the reunion about which to feel the same way.
There’s an interesting tension in the way the roommates are portrayed this time out; many of them have become minor celebrities, most notably Trishelle, who’s appeared on numerous subsequent reality shows and in a handful of B-movies, but the show seems to hope that viewers will ignore that and see the experiment as the untainted reunion of seven old friends who haven’t gone on to participate (sometimes together) in various iterations of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. “It’s good being famous,” Frank says offhandedly as he and Steven walk through the Palms in the first episode, but in typical fashion the show’s producers have scrupulously blocked out any evidence that passersby regard the participants as anything other than normal people engaging in normal activities.
Exploring the effect of fickle reality-TV fame five years after its genesis would have been a bold and interestingly self-reflective direction for the show to take, but its recycling of interpersonal issues is trashily entertaining enough to suffice. Somehow the standard Real World drama-starter of choosing rooms still manages to create conflict, and by the end of the first episode Alton and Arissa are in each other’s faces yelling about a misinterpreted incident in a bathroom years before. With all the emotional baggage the group now bring to the show, Reunited is to the original season a little like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset is to its predecessor, Before Sunrise; whereas five years ago we saw these young people brimming with promise and ambition, we now see them settled down, certain hopes dashed, living in denial of the goals they stated on-camera for millions of people but have yet to achieve.
In conjunction with Reunited’s premiere, MTV re-aired the entire original Las Vegas season, and all of the episodes are available for viewing on the channel’s website. The episode with the infamous fork-throwing incident demonstrates just how much these people have changed (whether it’s for the better remains up for debate): Steven, so goofy and playful on Reunited, self-importantly demands that Brynn, the fork-thrower, be booted from the show, while Brynn tearfully laments that this was to be her one opportunity to do something more than get married and have babies (she ended up sticking around). Five years later, she enters the suite at the Palms quiet and demure, with a wedding ring on her finger and trailed by her husband and youngest son.
Reunited: The Real World Las Vegas***