‘Real World Homecoming New Orleans’ Episode 5 Recap: “There’s Something About Jamie”

Let’s talk about sex, babies.

Things have been tense in the Real World Homecoming: New Orleans house for the last four episodes, as wounds have reopened and heads have hit concrete and folding hand fans have been deployed. We have seen swamps, we have seen shots, we have seen saltines, but we have not yet seen seen anything we would call sexy. But the general good energy left behind by Melissa’s parents’ visit has left our mansionmates more relaxed, and relaxation leads to sex, and we’re going to be talking about Julie’s first orgasm whether we are ready or not. Don’t be coy, avoid, or make void the topic, because that ain’t gonna stop it.

NOW: this episode opens with a delivery to the house, which turns out to be some kind of party box and balloons that spell out “Y2K.” Turns out the New Orleans Real World season began shooting in January of 2000, and for those who do not remember, there was a general societal freakout around that New Year’s Eve. See, all the world’s computers had a 2-digit space for the year in their calendar apps or whatever, and the fear was that as 99 became 00, all the world’s computers would get confused and all the airplanes would crash and all the grids would go down and we’d be foraging for berries and elk meat in our Abercrombie and Fitch relaxed-fit henleys. It didn’t happen; the end of the world would end up being much tackier and more drawn-out than we imagined.

Let me tell you my Y2K story. I was at MTV at the time, and we were doing our usual New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square. I think No Doubt did a cover of “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” but I’m not sure, because I was outside with the crowd trying to make the heat from two tiny in-glove hand warmers spread through my whole body. NYPD had briefed us on escape routes, should the night descend into Y2Kaos, but assured us that everything would be fine, which I had chosen to believe. But still, knowing the size and the blood-alcohol level and the general mental instability of the thousands of people who willingly stuff themselves into Times Square to watch a ball drop, I thought: if one of these thousand neon signs goes out, this mob will panic. If that Cup O Noodles cup loses power, there will be looting. I was relaxed, but on my guard. So anyway, the countdown starts, and I’m out there with Green Day and Winona Ryder and I’m not questioning it. 10! 9! Breathe. 5! 4! Computer people are smart, this is all under control. 1! HAPPY NEW YEAR! The lights stayed on, the crowd rejoiced, see, it’s all good. And then: BOOOOOOOM. A series of explosions. A series of explosions was not on my list of worries, but in the moment, I thought, maybe that’s what a building’s security system does when it’s confused about what year it is, it just blows up the building. My heart rate spiked, and then I saw it: fireworks. There were fireworks. NYPD did not warn us there would be fireworks. Terror, right into a good new-millennium laugh at my own expense. And then Billie Joe Armstrong grabbed me, dipped me like the nurse in that famous V-J Day photograph, and French kissed me, and it all happened so fast I did not have the presence of mind to fully kiss back the way I had wanted to since I saw the “Longview” video for the first time. My DMs are open, Billie Joe.

Truly where was I? Oh. So it’s a Y2K dance party fashion prom in the living room, because the big box contains props like CD Walkmans and Polaroid cameras and Y2Klothes. The housemates revisit their original-season aesthetic, which means we see Julie’s navel and we get Jamie into adult footie pajamas for reasons I cannot comprehend but will not question. But surely the season’s greatest glow-up award goes to Melissa, who grabs a mom wig, a scarf and some Foster-Grants and takes us back 22 years to the much-less-glamorous old her. The housemates pop in what has to be a Now That’s What I Call Music CD to listen to Juvenile’s “Back That Ass Up,” which is the one song the producers have licensed for this episode, and they back their asses up into the center of the outdoor table, and you a little bit wish they wouldn’t, but they have earned some good clean ass-focused fun.

But anyway, let’s talk about sex for now, for the people at home or in the crowd. The next morning, Julie and Jamie do some jump-rope in the side yard, and this has to be deceptive editing, but they sure do make it look like they’re staring right into each other’s eyes as they do it, and the overall effect is very this:

Julie says the two of them have fallen out of touch, but he is still in her life because she feels him, and then they cut to her telling Jamie, “There is a universe for two people to have a deep connection and a sexual relationship and not be in love,” and I am excited for the concept of non-monogamy to be explored on this show, but I am not excited for Julie to be the one to be leading the conversation, because if she handles adult topics like she handles adult beverages, we’re all in trouble.

Jamie stays kind of aloof. He hears her, and is like, “Cool confessional,” in a way that’s distant and elusive but does not shut the conversation down entirely, so that if you’re flirting with him, as Julie may be, you can imagine that he’s kind of playing along, but also he might just have no idea what’s going on and his absolute deepest thought in the moment is “Cool confessional.” I’m going to put my cards on the table here and say that Jamie is the inspiration for Pete Davidson’s “Chad.”

And then there’s an INCOMING MASSAGE and the incoming message is “Hey, wasn’t Jamie kind of hot, and isn’t he still?” The montage is all about how the ladies in the house found themselves attracted to him, and how it at least seemed like they were competing for his attention. Melissa famously drunkenly and maybe facetiously professed her love to him, Kelley got over whatever interest she may have had and then took up with that handsome doctor I’d forgotten about, but it was Julie who eventually got him to back that ass up. There was apparently some smooching during the season, and Kelley asks whether the two of them had feelings for one another, and Jamie is all “NO.” Truly, there are moments when I am certain a piano is just going to fall on Julie’s head.

So, okay, it was just some innocent lip action during the initial season, but what about during the Challenges they did together? Jamie says it’s time to let the cat out of the bag, and Kelley says, “I was not aware there was a cat or a bag,” and neither was I. Julie says “He was the first guy that I did more than kiss.” There was apparently a night in a hotel room in South Padre Island or whatever coastal hell-hole they used to send those poor kids to, and they hooked up, and Julie says it was great and Jamie says he doesn’t remember any of it ever happening, and you really feel that in your stomach. Matt asks Julie what it was about Jamie, and she says “It was just that purity culture I was coming from,” and she says it through tears that are either tears of regret or humiliation. Julie really wanted to explore her sexuality, and she didn’t want an emotional attachment, and so whatever happened happened. Kelley says that since Julie and Jamie both knew that this would come up, she hopes they’ve talked it over with each other and their respective families so that everyone is comfortable with what is now being discussed on camera, and you, and I, and she, and Scott Wolf, and the rest of the cast of Party of Five know that they did not. Paula Devicq is like, “Yeah, Jamie did not lay any groundwork here at all.” Michael Goorjian says, “Absolutely not.”

Obviously, Matt is horrified through this entire scene, because he is still all about that sweet, sweet purity culture. “I am a devout Catholic,” he says. “I do not recognize this version of Catholicism,” I say. In the kind I was raised with, you were told all sorts of rules, and then you felt all sorts of shame when you broke those rules, but you didn’t really talk about any of it openly, and that’s if you weren’t queer, which I was (and still am; didn’t get better), because then you dealt with countless more strands of rules and shame and isolation getting all knotted up in your psyche until you began to address it all in therapy decades later if you were lucky. None of my version of Catholicism had a space for dressing like Yo Gabba Gabba and spending your day talking about not having sex. This is some Opus Dei For Kids my man is on. This is some Amy Coney Bullshit.

Danny makes a very good observation: “What you were really looking for was the real human intimacy that you’d been cut off from, and that’s something that we all need. You’d been made to feel ashamed about that, and that’s toxic. You showed up seeking something truly pure, and you’re not giving yourself credit for that.” Danny has done his work. Cheers to Danny.

Obviously, Julie and Jamie need to debrief after that fairly intense conversation, so they step outside, and just as you can see Jamie winding up to ask, “Like, how many times did we hook up, and are you sure,” Julie comes in scorching hot: “You gave me my first orgasm.” If Jamie’s reaction to being told he gave someone their first orgasm is not what you would expect, reflect briefly on this being the last time, place and context you would want to be told you’d given someone their first orgasm. “I started masturbating,” Julie continues, “and that’s like a huge no-no in the Mormon Church, but it was really healthy for me, and it really benefitted my life, and is this awkward for you?” Jamie says no and means yes and then says, “we were 22,” which has nothing to do with anything, but we must forgive him for being inarticulate in the moment, because he is mentally drafting a “hey, honey, quick heads-up” text to his wife.

One very interesting thing about this is that it doesn’t come off creepy or non-consensual. It seems like a pretty healthy thing: she was exploring her sexuality as a young adult, and he is hot. She thought, “I bet hooking up with him would be fun,” and he thought, “I bet hooking up with me is fun,” and they hooked up, and it set her life on a different and more fulfilling path, and now it’s 20 years later and she’s happy, and he’s like, “Jill, was it?” There is beauty in this. This has Sally Rooney qualities.

Kelley makes a fruit/yogurt/granola bowl for the house, because Kelley continues to be the person you are trying to be. (Did you know her book Flow: Finding Love Over Worry: A Recipe For Living Joyfully is available now? Did you know I just bought the hell out of it? Did you know that when you search “Kelley Wolf” on Amazon, a real, real lot of werewolf erotica written by women named Kelley comes up? All three of these things are true.) Melissa horns in on Matt’s FaceTime with his wife, because she wants to know what a refrigerator for a family with six kids looks like. What it looks like, apparently, is pallets of eggs. Matt says he never really thought about fatherhood, which feels odd for someone whose whole thing was “I am saving sex for marriage.” In a package about his home life, we meet his lovely wife Candyce and his six kids who range from 13 years old to 18 months, and he openly prays for them and her and all the housemates right out loud, which again I don’t recognize because my Catholicism is all about mumbling through your Hail Mary and leaving Mass after communion.

I’m ready to be in the inflatable hot tub with Julie and Jamie, so luckily that’s right where we go. Jamie says “I’m a little out of shape now, but running 20 miles is totally doable,” which sums up the appeal of Jamie perfectly: gorgeous legs and the overall sense that nothing bad will ever happen to him. Jamie’s married now to a woman named Brennan, and they have 3-year-old twins, and his dreams of tech wealth didn’t come true, but he’s happy. He does allude to having spent some time as a truck driver, which I think is Jamie for “I rented a U-Haul to move that couch that one time.”

Melissa has hired a tarot card reader for the day, in an echo of a scene from the original season, and her reasoning is sound: “Hell, we opened ourselves up to these traumatizing wounds in this house, let’s let this lady tell us something.” Matt opts out: “In my faith, you stay away from that,” he says, and here again, I do not remember anyone telling me this in literally 17 years of rigorous and deeply repressive Catholic schooling. And anyway, a tarot card reading is nothing to be worried about. It is not dark-sided, or whatever kind of Wife Swap nonsense Matt is on. It is not a portal to Hell. It is sitting at a table across from someone who has written Buffy fan fiction, as they turn over cards that look like covers of Dungeons & Dragons modules and say things like “Oh! It’s the Three of Swords, this tells me you have faced challenges.” It is not Satanic, unless Satan is really into making things anti-climactic. Relax.

Melissa joins Matt upstairs to let him vent, and he talks about how uncomfortable he is in the house. She says “I don’t understand or maybe even rock with the morality clauses in your faith, but what I respect about you is your commitment to it.” It’s a bummer he’s missing the tarot reading, because it’s actually just kind of nice. Jamie is told he has a mothering energy, and the tarot lady says something I think is pretty wise: “The best new kind of men aren’t sacrificing their role, they’re coordinating with the women around them to co-chair the planet.” That’s a nice thing to hear. The next thing is more troubling: Jamie has pulled a King of Coins card, while Julie has pulled the Queen of Coins, and maybe that doesn’t mean anything, but when they’re building to a possible hookup between two married people, it seems ominous. Plus, I want to hook up with Jamie now, and it feels rude for her to place obstacles in my way.

Tarot Lady tells Melissa it’s time for her to get into politics, which I will officially second. She tells Tokyo it seems like he’s done everything on his own, and I don’t know if she’s getting that from the cards or just being like, “If this guy had collaborators, they’d tell him to get the headband up off the eyebrows.” And she says Kelley is good in bed, so now I’m even more excited to read her book.

Finally, she says Danny continues to carry secrets, and to hold his energy back, and that now he needs to step up with some boss energy and a big sword, which he agrees. He says he got pushed into a role as a gay role model before he was ready. That must have been a lot to handle, plus being in a relationship with a person who had to remain anonymous, plus just navigating regular MTV fame. He doesn’t get into it in this episode, but he does in an interview I did with him for Esquire: he’s found relief in psilocybin therapy, microdosing mushrooms to reduce stress and anxiety. I’m glad he’s found something that works, and I’m also glad everything in the world is great for LGBTQ people now and that we’re not back having the same stupid conversations we were having in 1978 HA JUST KIDDING. (Also, did I get the number for his mushrooms guy and start microdosing myself and have I also gotten benefits from it? MAYBE.)

So okay the gang has to play a game in the living room, in which the gang has to identify who said which quote from The Real World: Unmasked, a quickie book MTV published after the season aired, in which the castmates said some things about one another than they may have immediately regretted. They correctly identify Tokyo as the one who said he was going to be the most successful Real World alum ever, but don’t clock Matt as the guy who called Danny “too negative,” even though, like, how positive are you going to be around someone who’s like: “My religion says you’re going to Hell?”

And then, at last, this tense Matt interview that has been in every promo so far. A producer asks him if his views on homosexuality have changed in the last 22 years, and here’s what Matt says with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes: “I’m not a judge, we’re just here to love each other.” The producer pushes for an actual answer, and Matt gives that “Well, I think we’re done on this topic,” we have seen, and in that scorching passive-aggression, I finally I see Catholicism.

Next week, that conversation continues, plus more possible flirting between Julie and Jamie, who really need to be more Y2Kareful, right, ladies? All the ladies. Louder now. Help me out, all the ladies. See you then.

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.