The Real World: Austin (Episode: Return of the Angry Virgin)

Cut to inside a bar where the cast is shooting footage of a band called Halifax. Wes is really feeling his inner-Scorsese as he gets low-angle footage of Halifax rocking out. Wes states that shooting the band with the lead singer’s sweat and beer dripping on the lens was awesome and that, “it doesn’t get any more real than that.” We’re not sure if Wes meant to be clever with his choice of the word “real” (see, he’s on the Real World and all) or if he does not remembers seeing his buddy get his face shattered in the middle of the street. Of course, in a precursor of alienation to come, Lacy stands in the crowd with her arms crossed, grimacing at the band. She holds them in utter contempt, apparently, because her hipster boyfriend in Florida once taught her to never like bands that enjoy themselves on stage.

But where in the world are those other sluts? Ah, yes, cut to Rachel, back at the crib with a kitchen full of sweaty band boys. As the kids take shots with Halifax, Rachel sheepishly admits that she “never becomes friends with musicians.” Unbelievable? How is that possible? You mean to tell us that a chubby, dimwitted, self-loathing woman from the military does not have struggling musicians gravitate towards her? That is just unimaginable. But apparently Rachel is making some headway, maybe it’s because they are a struggling band which will go to almost any lengths to get some prime-time cable television exposure.

Jump to the ‘confessional room’ where Rachel is preening with Mike, with whom she says she has a lot in common (such as breathing oxygen and emitting carbon dioxide); then just for clarification and a little back-story, Rachel calls Mike her “NEW JEWISH FRIEND!” I think we have a candidate for most ridiculous line of the season. For a nanosecond you can see a look of pure terror flash across Mike’s face. The he thinks to himself, “sip your cocktail from the oversized blue wine glass, act bemused, and hope that your aloofness comes off as a good foil to this fat, drunk hillbilly slut’s ignorance and vacuousness.”

After their foray into the confessional, Rachel tries to impress Mike, the way a male chimp may try to woo a female chimp at the zoo, by flailing around and eventually “whale-diving” – thanks for that one, Lacy – onto the Pop-a-Shot machine, breaking the boys’ favorite toy. Nehemiah and the others castigate her for her sloppy inconsideration and her feeble flirting skills. Nehemiah, in front of the entire house and band: “Is that cute, Rachel? Is that gonna make Mike like you?” Oh no he didn’t! Then Nehemiah acts a little strange, but this is what happens when boys lose their favorite toys we assume, and tells Mike he doesn’t like him and that it’s time for him to go. There is a bit of an odd exchange where Nehemiah assures the house and camera that all was done in jest, so we cut to…

Rachel…crying…in a bathroom stall….surrounded by other girls. OK, it seems we now have a contender for most emotionally retarded cast member in Real World history. And we don’t have to tell you about the Pantheon of greats in which that puts Rachel. Lacy, accurately, yet rudely and in her fairly passive-aggressive nature that says “I hate you but I kinda laughed after I said it so maybe I was just joking and hopefully you are too dumb and spineless to respond” says that the whole episode is stupid. And somewhere out by the Balcones Fault a storm’s a-brewin. Oh, MTV, you tease.

The next morning, after waking up late and being lightly chastised for her actions of the previous night, Rachel pleads with everyone to leave her alone because she “acted stupid last night and could not hate herself anymore.” Oh, come now, sweetheart, we think you may be selling yourself a tad bit short. Give it time. Lacy in the meantime has gotten on the blower to give a call to the one man who understands her; the one man who loves her; the one man who relentlessly taps that ass when they're together…oops, got ahead of ourselves; anyway, yes, she’s talking to her boyfriend, telling him about Rachel’s whale-dive of a night before. Just so we fully understand what a holier-than-thou judgmental bitch she is, we get flashbacks of her dogging other cast members over the previous weeks. Of Wes, “Wes thinks he’s the ugly guy in the house.” Of all her roommates, “They’re not super-stupid, just not at the prime of their intelligence.” Well, excuuuse us, Susan Sontag. Look, Lacy’s reads on these folks may be somewhat accurate, but they may not be. You never know what’s inside someone; of course we do know exactly what is NOT inside Lacy, and that may be a HUGE part of the problem. But you just can’t sell people out like that, not on tv, not after such a short period of time. I mean, had she ever seen the show before? Did she not realize that she was going to be cast as the miserable, sexually frustrated hipster hairstylist that everyone loathes and thus the perfect MTV villain-archetype or did she just not care? Why did she even come on this show? But, we digress.

Commercial Break: There is something called “The Reality Show” on MTV. Looks to be a reality show about reality shows. We open our upstairs window, peer out and ponder the possibilities.

Although Rachel woke up very late and very hung-over, she and her team of Danny and Wes decide to sally forth into the Texas Hill Country to find Hello, Goodbye to do an interview and get some more footage. Unfortunately, the campsite is an hour away and they have no way to contact the band. Nice. When they finally arrive, Rachel approaches the camp site attendant and tells her she is with the Austin Film Society. (Worst moment in the history of the Austin Film Society. Caught. On. Film. And everyone cringes.) The trio decides their search is futile. They can not seem to come up with a plan of execution and Rachel stands in her military hat dumbfounded. Um, Rachel, “you can’t be my wingman anytime.”

Ironically enough, as soon as they drag their asses back to the house, Forrest from Hello, Goodbye calls asking where the cast is and tells them the band had been waiting. He is cool about the mix-up and suggests trying again the next day. Rachel, instead of being relieved that they will still get their shots, is fully exasperated because, as she sees it, she has done her part, which we guess was to get drunk, act like a horny monkey with a mental disorder, cry about it, sleep late, hate herself, fail at her job and misplace blame. Yep, your job is done, Rachel. Please see previous comment about being our wingman. She suggests that maybe it’s Lacy’s job since she has done nothing so far to help. A furious Lacy shoots the idea down and says something derogatory about Rachel’s ineptitude, of course not to her face or anything. Cause that would take BALLS, and we all know how Lacy feels about balls. OK.

The kids make it to Sake on Sixth to shoot Hello, Goodbye and we get to see Nehemiah in his element as he talks about how he visualizes his editing while he shoots. Silly Nehemiah, this isn’t about y’all’s actual job or your experience, it’s about hating on each other. Where’s someone else….ah, yes, Melinda. Hi, darlin. Melinda is hating on Rachel and Lacy for not setting things up appropriately or handling the bands properly. She says, “I wanted to be the producer and take care of those things.” Ah, yes, “those things,” such as the legendary ‘casting couch,’ Melinda, you sly dog? Yes, we are sure you wanted to ‘take care of all the bands,’ Mel. But have you the shortest memory ever, dear? Do you want your boyfriend Danny to get wicked pissed again? Yea, we didn’t think so.

The next morning Danny and Melinda decide to give Rachel a hand, this the night after Danny commended Rachel for all of her hard work, saeriously, bro. Somehow on the ride out to the campsite it becomes time to bash Lacy…and the thunder rolls. Danny says about the pixyish virgin, “I’m sorry, bitch, but what are you doin?” Awww, Snap, bro! Then Rachel, showing her ignorance – I mean, when people are dogging your hated enemy you don’t pile on with some lame rejoinder when you can sit back and let them take care of business, you don’t remind them of your ineptitude – says, “Yea, I mean, I’ll do it two days in a row.” Oh, Rachel, poor poor Rachel. You didn’t DO anything yesterday. Right when we think we’re out of the Rachel hatred pool she “drags us back in!”

Commercial Break: Now Run of Run DMC is having a reality show. For the love of…The name’s McDaniels but the commercials are McDonalds the paycheck is square and it’s signed by Ronald.

The kids finally make it out to the campsite (Pedernales Falls? We could not tell, too busy typing manically with two fingers and checking the score in the baseball game) where they find Hello, Goodbye. They shoot a little bit of Forrest playing their new tune on his banjo as the rest of the band sits in the background wondering at what point along their van trip to Austin did Forrest become the only man in the band. Melinda asks him the name of the tune to which he replies that it is new but probably “Oh, It is Love,” cause that’s the name of all new tunes. Inevitable cut to Danny and Melinda holding hands and frolicking with the tune dubbed over the two love-birds (kudos MTV, the lyrics “holding hands” streaming as Melinda and Danny….HOLD HANDS!) Then, just so we don’t totally forget about the ongoing story-lines of previous weeks, Danny and Melinda go cliff jumping together, a moment Danny recognizes as a true symbol of Melinda’s burgeoning trust in him, and a moment we recognize as an opportunity for Melinda to show the quirky musicians just how kuhrazy she is and just how great her breasts and ass can look in tight wet clothing.

Forrest tells the kids the band may be back for next year’s SXSW (if they aren’t already huge in Japan by that point) and that the “only bad thing about Austin is that it’s surrounded by Texas.” Good one, Forrest, you cad. Then Forrest really takes care of some housekeeping business by doing some pot-stirring, telling the trio from the cast that Lacy has been talking mad shit about them behind their backs. Uh oh, get your umbrellas.

Cut to Lacy predictably trashing her roommates to a stoic Nehemiah who says to her that she should be able to say whatever she needs to their faces, the way he would. Youngest kid on the show, probably most mature. Then Lacy asks why on earth her roommates would ever think she talks behind their backs. MTV then throws in myriad flashbacks of Lacy trashing her roommates. In the meantime, Rachel has spent the morning in the editing room looking at footage. She sees some tape of Lacy asking Mike of Halifax if he was “actually going to cheat on his girlfriend…WITH RACHEL??!!!” Lacy gives Mike the most disgusted look imaginable, and Rachel is mortified. She tells her roommates that her “self esteem is already kinda low.” Really? No. Really? Wait. OK. And there MAY be a few pornographic pictures of Melinda circulating on the web.

Rachel is confused with how to proceed here, but since we have been watching the edited version of this show, we know it should end with some sort of confrontation, I mean, it WAS in the recap of last week’s and the preview for this week’s. Rachel is worried that if she confronts Lacy that Lacy may say more mean stuff to her and make her cry. At this point we are beginning to question the existence of Rachel's spine. She is so intimidated that she won’t even address her enemy. Wes, very presciently, tells Rachel how it will go down. Rachel will ask Lacy, “What up with that, huh?” Lacy will be all, “What? I was just saying, why would he cheat on her with ANYbody?” Then you will say, “Well, why did you make that face?” And Lacy will be like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And you’ll come back with “Well, you can see why it might hurt me.” And Lacy will end the conversation with “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean it to come out that way. (Later, you sad bitch.)”

And…that’s exactly what happened, leaving Rachel so very confused. Rachel still is not quite certain that Lacy has bad intentions. She says, “I mean I don’t have enough evidence to know if she is being honest with me.” Well you might if you pulled your oversized head out of your oversized ass, but since that does not seem to be happening anytime soon, wait till next week. Because as the previews promise, next week Rachel’s “boyfriend” comes to town, whereupon he gets the full rundown on Rachel’s misbehavin from none other than the Virgin Mary of Hipsterdom.

And the thunder rolls…

(OK, so what did we miss?)