‘Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles’ Episode 1 Recap: “It’s Still Not Funny”

Paramount+ celebrated Thanksgiving 2021 with a time-honored American tradition: absolutely relentless bickering. The somewhat-less-iconic-than-their-predecessors cast of The Real World: Los Angeles has reunited — in the I-guess-kind-of-familiar original Venice Beach house — for a second season of The Real World: Homecoming. As with the last go-round, old scores will be re-litigated, old wounds will be torn back open, cameras will be played to. But this time, like the turkey fryer your cousin set up in the driveway last week, everybody is coming in hot and possibly unstable.

Tami is the first one to arrive, with a Fendi bag and a wig on a styrofoam wig head. And that’s it. Tami packs light, or has figured out how to change clothes by spinning around very fast like Wonder Woman. Either way, she looks great and seems happy and has had decades of training in how to speak in entertaining sound bites, so it is good to see her.

As in the first season of Homecoming, there are a billion then-and-now shots of the Real World house, and it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this house is way less memorable. “Remember this living room???”, the producers seem to say, and you kind of say sure, “Yeah, I guess?” Anyway, it’s pretty much the same room 28 years later. New chairs, possibly a fresh paint job, not much personal development. You know how rooms are.

Jon arrives next, hugs Tami, and pretty much goes right to the fridge, as though the pitcher of red-flavor Kool-Aid he left there in 1993 will be waiting for him. Now, some readers did take umbrage with my assessment of Jon as someone who had no interest in broadening his horizons in his Real World experience. “The housemates said he was the one who changed the most,” some claimed. Okay. I hear you. But given the dynamic of that season, I would argue that one can simultaneously not change at all and be the cast member who has changed the most. And I will concede Jon has evolved in one way since 1993: he now has completely different taste in hideous shirts. His first interview look is one I call “Hee-Haw Kimono.”

Beth S. rolls up next via pedi-cab, to the sounds of “Never Said” by Liz Phair, who should sue. Tami has a read all loaded up: “She’s a person who does not have her own clear point of view,” she tells us. “She’ll straddle the fence for every occasion. She should have pussy burns, she’s riding that fence so hard.” In fairness, Beth didn’t come off as two-faced in 1993 has much as desperate for attention and unable to stop creating drama, but what do I know, I wasn’t there. But Beth’s introductory monologue feels just as workshopped in front of a mirror as Tami’s. “I just really don’t get why people didn’t like me,” she says, unconvincingly. Beth and Tami have both done hard reality-tv time in the intervening years, and I expect some savage, succinct and well-lit arguments from the two of them. I may not have to wait long: Beth says she’s DM’d Tami and never gotten a reply, and Tami replies to the effect of: “Oh, if I’m not following you, your DMs just get thrown in with all the rest that I never read.” Which, honestly, Hall of Fame-level ouch.

Irene arrives with a guy who may or may not be the guy she left the show to marry, I guess we’ll find out. She tells us how hard it was to be a policewoman during the Rodney King era the show depicts, and I bet that’s true, and I wish we’d spent some time on that in the original season. Anyway, she’s back, and she looks great, and she and Beth cry, and Jon immediately complains about it, because he is boy, and boy must express discomfort with all emotions other than anger. It’s God’s law!

Everyone talks about how they want to see Dominic come back (which, I mean, I’ve never met him and I know he won’t participate in this production, how have they not figured this out?). Beth does reveal that Dom met her and Jon for dinner when our country boy visited LA a couple of years back, and frankly I’m stunned he even did that. Jon says he spoke to Aaron a month ago and Aaron was firm in his decision to sit this one out. “He didn’t want to be the guy on the show,” Jon explains. Okay. But has he heard of The Streisand Effect? The paradox wherein a person tries to cover something up, thereby bringing more attention to the thing? A week ago I’d have been moderately interested in knowing what he’s up to, but now I HAVE TO KNOW. (He’s on LinkedIn. You’ll find him if you want to.)

The tableau as David arrives is simply gorgeous. He pushes his suitcase through the patio area, while Tami smokes a cigarette and the other three look on in giddy surprise. Tami embraces him: “I wasn’t going to hug you, but seeing you…it’s not that deep.” Very subtle shade, 8 out of 10. David talks about what he’s been up to, and what I did not realize is that he’s found meme fame as the BOO THIS MAN man from Half Baked. So that’s good!

But of course he’s still best-known for what went down in that hallway, and the incident comes up the second he visits it again. He says the whole thing stalled his career and followed him for years, and while he says he knows his actions were wrong, he still wants an explanation for why everyone reacted the way they did.

Beth A. continues to communicate important personal information to the world through the medium of Spencer Gifts t-shirt. Where she announced her sexuality in season two by way of a shirt that said I’M NOT GAY BUT MY GIRLFRIEND IS, today she’s sporting one that says I’M NOT STR8 BUT MY HUSBAND IS. “One thing about Beth, she’s gonna have a t-shirt,” Tami explains. There’s a story here, and I don’t understand it, but here’s what I know: Beth still identifies as a lesbian — or would if she self-identified — but she was “given a God shot that I was going to meet my husband within 72 hours,” and then she met this guy and now she lives in Hawaii and Irvine where she has been “blessed to be a parent to several children,” and that “when God speaks, you listen, so when I was told I was going to marry this man, I said show me the way.” Tami replies “I receive that.”

Glenn and Beth S have mutually neglected to friend-request each other on Facebook, and their exchange reinforces my opinion of Glenn and Beth S as “adults who keep track of who hasn’t friend-requested them on Facebook.”

Like they did in the first Homecoming, the producers stir the pot remotely, replaying the hallway comforter scene for the assembled castmates to watch. David reminds everyone that they were all laughing through the whole thing. Tami says “Laughter often covers up uncomfortableness or awkwardness when you don’t know what to do, and that’s what was happening in the moment to me.” Tami reveals that her discomfort stemmed from body dysmorphia, and — since we remember her as a person with a low body-mass index who still chose to have hew jaw wired shut while she was participating in a reality television show so that she could not eat solid food — that story checks out. “Y’all did not see me popping laxatives, y’all did not see me throwing up.” She says she’s willing to give David a pass on it. David passes on the pass: “I don’t want it, and this is why,” David says. “Everyone is laughing, including you.” He has the producers cue up the video, so he can watch it again and laugh along. He’s been told how complex the human response to trauma can be, and…he does not receive that.

So we are back in the shit. The full-season supercut promises a cast trip, a cameo by Eric Nies and a Jon-on-Beth A hot tub baptism. It’s fairly obvious, no matter what Tami says, it is going to get that deep.

Dave Holmes is an editor-at-large for Esquire.com, host of the Earwolf podcast Homophilia, and his memoir Party of One is in stores now. He also hosts the Real World podcast Truu Stowray, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch The Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles Episode 1 on Paramount+