‘Real World Homecoming’ Episode 3 Recap: Cringe City

Hey, did you know the human body can actually cringe itself into a knot? It’s true: under the right conditions, you can get so embarrassed on someone else’s behalf that it you just keep spinning and flinching and recoiling until you are more macrame than person. I’m not saying this has been my personal experience, but I will say I am hanging from a hook on my ceiling and within me is a lush and healthy Boston fern.

We ended Episode 2 of The Real World: Homecoming in the middle of some low-key drama, as a candid and reflective conversation turned frustrating when Becky said, basically: racism is pernicious and vast in America, and all white people play a role in perpetuating it whether actively or passively, except me, and it’s a personal attack to suggest otherwise. Would you believe me if I told you it gets worse in episode three? Would you believe me if I said it gets worse within ten seconds? You would, right? Well, I lied, it’s more like five seconds.

It gets worse when Becky reveals that she can’t really be racist because she took an Afro-Brazilian dance class. No, really. “This was an immersion into the African diaspora,” she says, “and I lost my skin color when I was there.” Oh, hell no. Eric uses deep-breathing techniques to keep from busting out laughing. Julie’s face contorts into the international symbol for “that’s not it.” Even Heather, patient Heather, buries her face in her hands. It is The Real World: Cringe City.

In a separate interview, Kevin says “You don’t say things like ‘I took an African dance class‘ or ‘I have a Black friend‘ to a person of color in 2021,” and right there on the couch, Norman says to Becky’s face what Kevin would like to have said, which is “Shut up.” Norman is concerned about her, about the way she’ll come off in the final edit of the show, about the privilege she is unwittingly blasting out into the world. He’s trying to protect her. They all are.

But it’s the unwittingly that jumps out. How much have we heard about Becky’s educational background so far this season? NYU. A psychologist father. 20 years of study with a Russian theoretical physicist and healer. Becky’s life of learning has come up in every episode of Homecoming so far, and it is impressive. Isn’t it shocking is that in all of those experiences over all those years, not one person sat her down and said: “Never tell a Black person you’re exempt from racism because you took Advanced Booty Capoeira at Crunch Fitness in 1997, especially if cameras are rolling.” I’m telling you, there is a level of education that comes right back around the other side and is indistinguishable from stupid. (See also: the career of Ben Shapiro.)

Julie, on the other hand, seems to have learned some lessons from watching herself in 1992. She says she showed up back then only knowing that she didn’t feel racist and thinking that good intentions were enough to qualify you as a good person. “It took this many years for me to realize, ‘No, I have to be anti-racist.‘ When I was 19, I didn’t know that.” She’s taught herself about systemic inequities and redlining. She’s told her kids “I’m going to make a ton of mistakes raising you, my job is just not to make the same ones my parents did,” presumably about race in America. She’s the Vice President of a non-profit that helps high-achieving, low-income high school seniors through the college application process. (You know what, let’s link out to the College Choice Foundation.) She’s done the work, and not from a place of defensiveness. She’s a good egg, our Julie.

By contrast, Becky acts pretty rotten. We see a montage of moments in which she talks about her life: the various homes her extended family has around the world, the travel she’s done, the swims in the Mediterranean, the “r” in “Provence” that she really lays into. It seems like a pretty nice life, and in an interview, she acknowledges that it could come off elitist. Does she immediately make it worse for herself, you may ask? Mais oui: “Those elitist things are things I believe everybody has a right to earn. But life isn’t fair, it isn’t meant to be fair, and that’s the fact.” No information about how she earned any of the elitist things by any means other than being from a fancy family, no awareness about how life keeps turning out to be unfair in her favor. She says she doesn’t feel bad about herself for liking nice things, which is pretty cool for her because nobody is asking her to. Just acknowledge privilege when you have it, and try to do right by the people who don’t. That’s it, Becky! That’s it. (I’m having an argument with Becky in my head now, and even the imaginary one won’t listen.)

Eric talks about inherited trauma and coming at a conflict from a place of empathy, from under a massive pile of green smoothie powder and psyllium husk or whatever. Eric is a-okay in the natural remedies department. He is also, we will later learn, fighting Covid-19 with prayers, meditations, communing with his ancestors, and emotional purges. His temperature is down, so apparently that shit works. Good for him. He’s got to be psyched he isn’t physically there, even if we all know he could levitate out the window and float all the way back to Jersey if he concentrated hard enough.

But in the middle of a pandemic and an inflection point for racism, it is Becky who casts herself as the victim. Julie goes to her to comfort her, even authoritatively waving off a camera operator who tries to film the moment. Throughout the episode, Julie makes reference to an agreement the original seven had going into Homecoming: nobody would put anyone on blast, nobody would get ganged up on, and everyone would rally around whoever was having a hard time. Becky feels blindsided by the disagreement, even though the entire thing stems from her interrupting Kevin and protesting too much. She begins to talk about having “outgrown” the process, and our list of walkout suspect narrows to one.

Heather herself admits she wasn’t super there for the structural racism talk in the original season. “I was 21, I didn’t want to talk about politics and forty acres and a mule,” she says, “I just wanted to drink and hang out.” I understand, and I am grateful that all anyone was drinking through the earlier discussion was Fiji water, because my God could it have been worse. Now, she sees how correct Kevin was, and that knowing him has made her a better listener, which she uses in her job at SiriusXM, where again she is on the air about 32 hours a day.

Becky is giving the whole loft the silent treatment, the way an adult does, and as she goes to the roof for a cigarette, Julie and Norman do an adorable quiet “you go after her, no you go after her” which results in neither of them going after her. Julie says Becky got “lit up” in the racism conversation, but then says that if she does leave, then Julie and Heather get the executive suite. Nobody seems to have any real fight in them for Becky.

In the middle of this, Eric is like, “Hey, real quick, I got raped.” He says he had been emotionally fragile during Season 1, and drinking too much, and doing that wonderfully vague catchall of “partying,” because of an abusive brother, an absent father, and an early sexual experience with a woman that qualified as assault. I remember thinking he did seem a little damaged back then, but I didn’t think much of it because — society will have to address this at some point — we all just assume hot people are going to be okay. Looks like his life is on track, via holistic healing and chunky-knit sweaters.

He says he’s looking forward to the conversations the seven of them will continue to have through this reunion, and at that exact moment, Becky hails the checky. She is packed up and headed for the door, because she thinks Kevin used this time in history to manufacture an argument that makes her look like a villain, and she isn’t interested in examining her own behavior. She says she doesn’t want to be involved in a reality show, but is also not savvy enough not to claim exemption from racism because she went to a drum circle. She says that she’s above it, but also that she’s hurt by it. She says “this is bullshit,” and Julie reminds everyone that they all made an agreement to support one another, and Kevin delivers the final blow: “Yeah, but she has to be strong.”

In unused footage from 1992, Kevin says “She’s never going to change,” and, as with just about everything else he said back then, he’s absolutely right. She may not emerge from this experience with any new wisdom, but now I fully understand why people who are really in the fight for equality don’t like people who call themselves liberals. We wish you and the ghost of John Lennon a lifetime of happiness, Becky, and we thank you for reminding us how much more work we all have to do.

There are three more episodes of this somehow. See you next week.

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 Episode 3 on Paramount+