This is the True Story of the Aging MTV Generation
In the early ’00s, while lazing around in the un-airconditioned apartment I shared with my college-aged sister, I made a boastful proclamation. “I bet I can name every single cast member of The Real World seasons 1–13, including people who got kicked out and their replacements, in less than 10 minutes.” It was a bold decree, born of heat delusion, hangover, and Gen X hubris.
Though my sister Lauren is 3.5 years younger than me and a technical Millennial, we grew up in the same basic cable environs and she rose to the challenge. “I think I can too!” We grabbed a spiral bound notebook and numbered the page, leaving spaces for 7 or more names under each season’s column header. Over the next ten minutes, we filled the page, probing the dustiest, most PBR-rotted corners of our early twenty-something-year-old brains, like SAT Day all over again. Within our self-imposed time frame, we succeeded in recalling every single cast member — nearly 100 ragey bros, sheltered naifs, alcoholic sorority girls, aspiring rock stars, and all of the other archetypes that had graced basic cable since 1992. I could have utilized all that brainpower to retain a second language or at least the quadratic formula, but alas, Real World trivia was the path I chose.
When the first season of The Real World aired in May 1992, I was in seventh grade. I watched the reruns on a constant loop over summer break, lazy days spent horizontal on my daybed, eyes locked on the 16” box TV on my dresser. My young pliable mind absorbed each frame, etching phrases like “Can you get the phone?!” into my memory for life. The first season was groundbreaking, arguably the first reality television show. The conversations filmed in the NYC loft between the original cast were the first time I’d heard young adults address topics like systemic racism, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and other social issues. As seasons went on, The Real World became less about deep conversation and more about being outrageous on television. The casting veered towards young, thin, able-bodied, and conventionally attractive, if not outright hot. Debates about race were less photogenic than hot tub threesomes, and the party vibe took over the main thread of the show. In conjunction, Road Rules, which always felt like The Real World’s younger brattier sibling, surged in popularity as the format changed to cross-cast Challenges set in tropical locations (hence, way more opportunity for the cast to go shirtless/bikinied).
I loved the Challenges, especially as cast members from The Real World began competing alongside the more athletically inclined Road Rules alumni. But I also started feeling like I could no longer identify with the cast. They showed up pumped on spray tan fumes and the high of basic cable fame, ready to knock skulls around for the chance at a big cash prize while getting trashed in the party house and maybe hooking up with another competitor. I couldn’t relate to an MTV that had narrowed its representation of twenty-somethings to the point that they’d never again have a dorky yet sensitive Judd Winnick type around. Around season 14 (San Diego), I finally tapped out. I had aged out of the show at 25, roughly around the maximum age of MTV casting calls at that time.
17 years have passed since I’ve been invested in an MTV reality show. I don’t know if it’s my age, the pandemic, or both, but my thirst for nostalgia feels overwhelming. In perfect timing, the original cast of The Real World Homecoming: New York for a 6-episode series to launch a new streaming platform, Paramount+. Never have I subscribed to yet another platform with so little hesitancy (though we have a one-in-one-out house rule, so smell you later, Starz). After one episode, I was hooked — hello again Julie, Heather, Kevin, Andre, Norm, Becky, and Eric! Watching the original cast reboot is like attending a high school reunion; everyone’s older, a little softer and relatably wrinkled, but their original essence is the same. I love seeing where everyone ended up in their careers, who started families, and who found their higher spiritual selves through sobriety or ayahuasca. I, with my meandering career and my creative dreams shifted to evenings and weekends, feel seen. Even the conversations feel familiar — the roommates’ talks about race in the aftermath of 2020’s BLM protests echo the earlier version from 1992 right after the officers who brutally beat Rodney King were acquitted. A split screen shows young Becky and current Becky storm away from the same heated discussion with Kevin, 29 years apart. The more things change, the more they stay the same indeed.
I tore through The Real World Homecoming, sad that it was only 6 episodes long, but let me express my immediate joy when The Challenge: All-Stars popped up in the Paramount+ app and I realized it was yet another reunion show. I hadn’t realized that The Challenge is STILL going, and this most recent iteration brings back classic competitors like Mark, Beth, Syrus, Teck, Ruthie, Trishelle, and more. Multiple competitors haven’t been on a Challenge in over a decade, though Mark is still flexing at 49 and calling himself the Godfather — ain’t it hard keepin’ it so hardcore?
In the first episode, Katie cheerfully talks about the time that had passed since she last competed, saying “I’m wife and a mom!” as production cuts to a flashback of her in early twenties drunkenly smearing a toilet plunger across a nemesis’ bedsheets. Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time” plays as the soundtrack to multiple contestants in their forties strutting through the intro in slow motion. During a water challenge, multiple competitors are pulled from the water by lifeguards due to muscle cramps or lack of stamina. “Welcome to the Challenge, the senior edition. Today looks like recess at the old folks home. We’ve got the medics out here, we’ve got the walkers out, we’ve got the wheelchairs out. A lot of old people goin’ down today, y’all, myself included,” says Teck from The Real World: Hawaii (1999) in a voiceover.
I can relate to this cast of legends. We of the MTV Generation are not in our prime anymore. Gone are the days my friends and I created competitions like couples case races and citywide scavengers hunts. I miss many things about those days, like my once-nimble mind that could retain the first names of dozens of reality TV chodes. I miss the way that I felt invincible enough to join a roller derby league or play a softball double-header through a raging hangover. I miss my friends who have moved to the suburbs or out of state, raising children or building their lives in new cities. While we still keep in touch via social media and get together every so often, it’s a world away from our youth during which we’d gather together on short notice to kill a keg next to an illegal front yard campfire beneath the Blue Line.
Which is absolutely why I understand what drew longtime competitors like Mark and Syrus at 49 years old, or Beth at 52, back to the Challenge. Given the opportunity to revisit one of the greatest parties of my youth, hell yeah, I’d jump at that chance, no matter how much glucosamine my knees would need from doing so. The most recent last few years have taken their toll on us all, and who doesn’t yearn for a chance to revisit a more carefree past? I’d pay Kanye money to be turned into a younger hologram version of me that doesn’t need recurring occupational therapy appointments for the repetitive stress injuries in my typing fingers.
Watching these seasons feel like rubbernecking at all the popular kids during a high school reunion. Some of the reunion members have been vindicated; in Real World Reunited, Heather B. says to Kevin “You were right,” as the national conversation had finally caught up to the activism work he’d been doing since 1992. Others are just as messy now as they were in their early twenties. I hope I’ve reached a place of peace and gratitude in my 40s like Eric, and have done a better job of listening than Becky, who centers her white lady feelings while revisiting a conversation about race. Mostly, I can’t get enough of watching how other members of the MTV generation have fared while easing into adulthood during the same world events as me, from 9/11 to Trump to covid. I hope that we get more of these cast reunions. I’m all about the representation of the beautiful relatable chaotic mess of aging as portrayed by the same people who took up all my brain space during a decade of my youth.
