‘Real World Homecoming’ Episode 5 Recap: The Big No Chill

There’s a moment from the first season of The Real World that is so important to me, so etched in my brain and on my heart, that I now resent Becky being a part of it. It’s the wee small hours of a just-debauched-enough 1992 Soho morning – maybe it’s the night they had a party and Heather got hauled off in a police car for hitting a guest, or maybe it’s just after Becky played her song at Fez, who can say – and everyone’s boozily debriefing on the tufted sofa. “I didn’t even meet any cute guys tonight,” Becky moans, and without missing a beat, Norman counters, “I didn’t either.” That’s it. That’s all of it. And for some of us, that’s HUGE.

What you have to understand is that at any time before this, the moment would have been played for laughs. They’d have cut away to a straight guy whose eyes would have bugged out of his head with a boi-oi-oing. It would be funny, and the joke would not be on Norman, the joke would be Norman. The Real World didn’t do that, not this time. They just let the moment play out, and those of us who were figuring out our own sexual identity took note. The idea of a gay person just living, just low-key cattin’ around like everyone else, not having to stop and explain it to anyone, was startling. It gave some of us a window into a better world that might be waiting for us somewhere. Quick, subtle, but significant. Queer people on television are so rarely left alone to live their lives, so seldom allowed to just exist without being viewed through a heterosexual’s eyes, so almost never able to look for love without being made out as a creep or a clown or a concern that now that I think about it, the boi-oi-oing would probably still happen about forty percent of the time today.

Norman is a significant cultural figure, is what I’m saying, and we need to start treating him like one.

As we begin episode five of The Real World: Homecoming, Norman is still let down by Becky, which, in this day and age, who isn’t? He’s bent out of shape that he’s getting the silent treatment from her, whom he considers a good friend, while she’s made plans to meet up and talk things out with Julie, with whom she doesn’t have much of a relationship. But it makes sense that it’s Julie she’s reached out to; there’s less for her to lose, plus Julie has let on that she’s a bit of a control freak who just wants to deliver the whole cast through the whole reunion in one piece. We learn that even back in 1992, Julie was savvy enough to know the producers would need to stir up drama, so she’d root through the trash for notes on what they might be planning. I am now 2.5 times the age Julie was back then, I’ve worked in television for 23 years, the reality tv train has been chugging down the tracks for about as long, and if I got cast on a reality show right now today, I wouldn’t be that savvy about it.

Eric is still recovering from Covid in a nearby hotel room, eating a yellow pepper like an apple, because that is what natural healers do. He’s eager to stop talking about Becky, as is Andre, who puts it nicely: “She removed herself from the situation, so we should remove her from the conversation.” But nobody is readier to turn the corner than our Heather, who does not need to do confessionals because she will tell you what she needs to tell you right to your face. She also has one rule when it comes to serious conversation: don’t ruin happy hour. Seriously: all of these people are icons. Kennedy Center Honors, you better recognize.

But it’s not until Norman goes a little deeper into his personal story that I really start plotting to put his face on American money. He really was the first from-the-jump out queer person on television, period, and as if to underscore this point, they show footage of him roller skating and singing along to CeCe Peniston’s “Finally,” the song that scored — and, in some cases, caused — homosexuality in 1992. And while his choice to live openly was liberating for many of us, we forget that it meant opening himself up to rejection. In a 1992 flashback, Heather says Norman “doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him,” but in the present day, we learn that it’s a little more complicated. Friends from home turned their backs on him after the show aired, and because he had initially self-identified as bisexual, he says he didn’t get much support from the gay community either. And, as I recall, he’s right. We’re great with our straight allies, but — especially back then — if our out queers weren’t perfect, if we didn’t relate to their stories one hundred percent, we didn’t stand by them. If you were out and in the public eye, you hadn’t had the luxury of learning from any role models, and if you behaved like a real and flawed human being, you didn’t get the popular or media support to be a role model either. We failed Norman, and I need us all to buy two A-Stands for penance.

Kevin is apparently smarting from a fairly recent divorce, finalized just before lockdown. He’s determined to marry again, and to have children, and it’s a very honest, vulnerable, introspective moment that is set to Tony Toni Toné’s “Feels Good.” Listen, I understand how easy it would have been to go with “Everybody Hurts,” and I appreciate a zig where I expect a zag. And anyway the seriousness is broken up by a water gun fight (just like the old days), and you know: it feels good.

The gang takes a walk up to the West Village, makes a stop at the Stonewall, where Norman had taken himself on arriving to New York way back when. At the moment, it’s a staging area for a Black Trans Lives Matter march, which they cheer on. Heather tells the crowd “We love you,” and Julie proves how much of the work she’s done by saying “We HEAR you.” There’s a moment when we look back to the night she spent under the bridge with sweet Darlene, the homeless girl who didn’t make it to sing at Easter Mass later that week, and I do worry about what happened to her, but Heather picks the mood up: Julie made these choices, she says, because she knew the cameras would follow her, and whatever she paid attention to, they would have to. Again, give this cast the awards, respect, and financial security they deserve. I want these people treated like retired five-star generals, or Betty White. Even if it means Becky gets it, too. That’s how strongly I feel.

So, okay, Becky. She has decided to meet with Julie for a little walk-and-talk, wherein she shows for about the fifteenth time in a row that she has not done any of her work: she says Julie was the only one who supported her during the conversation with Kevin (overlooking the tough love Norman was trying to show her), she says she didn’t expect to relive old conflicts (even though that’s the entire point of reality television reunions), and she concludes that “some people have grown, and some people not so much,” (not noticing it’s her who hasn’t grown, nor that nobody says “not so much” anymore). She says she doesn’t want to be the “poster girl for white privilege,” then goes on to say that she likes to travel and she works hard, though I can’t imagine even the most grueling work studying under a Russian theoretical physicist and healer can fund that much world travel unless you’ve got some good family connections. She just doesn’t get it. Julie continues to learn and grow: she says these things don’t have to get fixed, and maybe this is a change for herself to learn how to let go and be comfortable with the imperfect.

But still, Julie puts it to the group back in the loft: Becky would like to talk to everyone again, but only via screen from a remote location, as Eric has done, because she is literally so privileged she needs to be quarantined. Julie says Becky “thought it would be more of a Big Chill kind of vibe and that we wouldn’t revisit old things,” and I’m certain that’s a direct quote from Becky because who else would fail to check whether The Big Chill was in fact a drama about revisiting old things. The rest of the gang is sort of tepidly in support of the idea, though they don’t get why she can’t just show up in person. But nobody is more hilariously unfussed than Heather, who is actually just sitting at the roundtable in the middle of the discussion, chopping onions. She says she doesn’t have time for old drama, and won’t stand for any more “time-thieving,” which is now a term that is going into my vernacular in heavy rotation. But the most important issue for the moment is: Did Heather mean to evoke this Chappelle’s Show sketch? Will I ever believe that she didn’t?

Kevin agrees to have a private chat with Becky over FaceTime, and it’s unclear whether she understands that the cameras will still capture this conversation, because it’s unclear whether she understands anything. And in this conversation, Becky finds the strength to admit that she’s been defensive and unaware of her blind spots and she vows to do better and to listen instead of speak ha just kidding she keeps digging and now she’s so racially problematic The Bachelor won’t even hire her.

“I have a great bond with my Black friends, my Latino friends,” she says, as Kevin shuts his eyes in exhaustion. “And it’s not a problem with us.” Of course, this attitude is not only a problem, it’s the problem: being nice to your friends is universally accepted as a good thing, but it does nothing to fix the issues that they face and you don’t, from which they suffer and you benefit, that they have to examine and you walk blithely past. I am fine is not the same as it is fine. Becky repeats that she doesn’t want to be the poster girl for white privilege, and Kevin calmly, succinctly fixes that for her: “Then don’t be.” And when she replies “Well, all of that is coming from you,” Kevin and I both fully disassociate. He tells her she says some things that come close to racism and classism, she says “I don’t function in -isms,” and then there’s some more interrupting and defensiveness and white fragility but I’ve checked out and so has Kevin and so, on a sailboat in the Mediterranean sometime in the late 1980s, did Becky.

Kevin is approached by producers who emerge from behind walls, who ask him whether he wants to talk about it, and he says he just wants to leave, which is why I’m relieved this appears to be the last night in the loft. “Black people are tired of teaching white people about racism,” he sums up. I truly cannot imagine.

Next week, a surprise guest visits the loft on the final day of shooting, and while I want it to be Eric, or even Becky revealing that Ashton Kutcher and Ibram X. Kendi are in a van out front and the whole thing has been a hilarious prank, neither one seems especially likely. I bet it’s Tony Toni Toné.

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 5 on Paramount+