Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Real World Homecoming: New York’ On Paramount+, Where The Original Seven Strangers Live Together Again 29 Years Later

In many ways, 1992 seems like a whole lot less than 29 years ago, especially to those of us who were young adults at the time. But in so many other ways, it feels like eons ago. It’s so long ago that reality TV more or less didn’t exist until MTV cast seven strangers to live in a loft and have their lives taped for The Real World’s first season. Unlike the casts of subsequent seasons that had that first season to use as a template, the first cast generally just acted like themselves, and a lot of sparks flew. Now the group, in their late-40s to mid-50s, have all moved back into the same loft together for a reunion series on Paramount+. Will the sparks fly again? 

THE REAL WORLD HOMECOMING: NEW YORK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “New York, NY. January, 2021.” As we see scenes of downtown Manhattan and Soho, we see Kevin Powell walking towards the building where the original Real World loft is.

The Gist: The idea behind The Real World Homecoming: New York is a tantalizing one for GenXers: The seven roommates on the original 1992 season of The Real World are reunited and live in the same loft they spent three months in 29 years ago.

So we see the original “seven strangers, picked to live in a house and have their lives taped” walk into the Soho loft, one at a time; they’re all middle-aged now, mostly with families and their lives have gone in all different directions since they left the loft all those years ago.

But walking into the building brings them right back to those days; they’re all blown away by the fact that they’re in the same exact loft, albeit updated a bit to 2021 standards. Well, six of the seven — Powell, Heather B. Gardner, Andre Comeau, Julie Gentry, Rebecca (aka Becky) Blasband and Norman Korpi — move into the loft for a six-day reunion stay. After they all give each other the requisite hugs, the last one to show up is Eric Nies, and they all want to know where he is. He shows up on the TV on the wall with some bad news; he’s being quarantined in a nearby hotel due to a positive COVID test.

The roommates spend their first day back in the loft reliving memories, but mostly talking about how they were reality TV pioneers. An American Family notwithstanding, the first season of The Real World was the kickoff of reality TV as we know it. But, as the group states over and over in this first episode, they had no idea what the show was about, what they were getting into, and how they should conduct themselves. There was no internet, no smartphones, no social media. The only thing they could do was be themselves.

Much of what people remember from that first season is what’s brought up the most by the roommates: The arguments about race, mostly pushed along by Kevin. Then, as now, he’s an activist and community organizer, and many of the incendiary arguments that he pushed about institutionalized racism in the U.S. that he talked about in 1992 is still there now, and what the BLM protests of last summer were all about.

We also get glimpses of a few of the roommates lives now; Julie’s activist teenage daughter meets Kevin via FaceTime, and people get to meet Andre’s four-year-old cutie. Oh, and Heather brings a rolling bag full of booze, because Heather can’t help but being the life of the party.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Real World Season 1 — which is also available to stream on Paramount+ — except grayer with a softer midsection.

Our Take: We’ve aged right along with the first cast of The Real World, whose ages range from 48 (Julie) to almost 55 (Kevin). So seeing the grey hair, wrinkles and more robust bodies walk through that loft door only reemphasized how time brings all of us down. Becky (ahem, we mean Rebecca) is actually been through the most striking change, transforming from a vintage dress-wearing, bohemian NYU grad with a bob to a look more akin to “Cool Midwestern Mom”. Even Heather barely recognized her.

But what he hoped to see was a group of people who have gone through changes over the past three decades, gaining maturity and perspective through all of their life experiences. We saw glimpses of that in the first episode, but it’s mostly a nostalgia trip. Not a bad one, mind you, but we were left hoping for more.

We wanted to know what the roommates have been doing since the series ended, and how they dealt with the sudden and unanticipated fame that came with being on the show, one that none of them thought would be so popular. We got updates on Eric, Kevin, Andre and Julie, but not the rest. We’re assuming that those updates will come in subsequent episodes (Paramount+ only released the first episode with the service’s debut), but there was more than enough time to give vignettes about the other three roomies.

While we’re not rooting for the same kind of tension that we saw on the first season in ’92, we do know by the coming attractions that there will be some tension. After all, even though these seven people have known each other for so long, and are bonded by the shared experience of being the first cast of the show, they haven’t all kept in touch with each other over the past few decades. Their personalities may have mellowed with age, but what we’re hoping to see is how their viewpoints have evolved and — maybe even more interestingly — stayed exactly the same as they did 29 years ago.

There are more than enough flashbacks to remind us of who everyone was, but we’re more interested in seeing them in the here and now. Let’s hope we get more of that as the season goes along.

Sex and Skin: Nothing except 29-year-old pictures of Eric with his shirt off.

Parting Shot: Kevin rubs his eyes while we hear him reflect on his lack of emotional maturity back then, even though everything he said in ’92 was completely right. We also see never-before-seen footage of the infamous argument he and Julie had in front of the building back then; she calls him an “asshole” and he calls her a “racist.” “You gotta accept people for where they’re at before they can accept you for where you’re at,” says 2021 Kevin. Then we see a blurry copy of the “Created by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray” graphic that tagged so many episodes of The Real World over the years.

Sleeper Star: Heather B, always and forever. While we loved that the show is likely TV-MA because of her — when Eric asked why he looked so red on the screen in the selfie they were doing, Heather tells her, “Because you’ve got COVID, motherfucker!” — she was also very real about how everything Kevin said back then was right and she just didn’t see it because all she wanted to was hang out.

Most Pilot-y Line: None that we could see. In fact, compared to more recent Real World seasons, this Homecoming season scales back on the visual fidgetiness.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While The Real World Homecoming: New York may be a nostalgia trip for people who started their adult years in the grunge era [raises hand], the perspectives of the now middle-aged first cast are so much more welcomed than what we’ve seen from younger, very hyper-aware casts of late.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Real World Homecoming: New York On Paramount+