‘Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles’ Episode 6 Recap: “Ain’t Done Singin’ Yet”

Well, it was bound to happen. We know that the producers of The Real World saw season one’s big fights, noticed how they became the show’s water cooler moments, and went on to carefully hand-select a season two cast who were destined only to fight. With that precedent in mind, it is not surprising that the producers of The Real World Homecoming: New York would take note of Rebecca’s unforgettable and still unbelievable moment of white fragility, and do what they could to replicate it. It is therefore inevitable — but no less frustrating — that they would take the cast of The Real World Homecoming: Los Angeles, tire them out, then force them into a middle-of-the-night Q&A game that would maximize the chances of one of them saying the N word.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Venice house…it’s The Real World Homecoming 2: The Rebeccening.

We ended the Episode 5 with everybody in a pretty decent place. Glen had begun to move forward from the grief of losing the love of his life, Tami had had a night in a hotel to reboot, even Beth S seemed halfway relaxed. The hot, healing spirit of Eric Nies had spread over the cast. And as we begin this episode, things are calm. Like, early-in-a-horror-movie calm. Beth A has migraines, Beth S suggests Botox to relax the muscles, and Beth A replies that she’s had two heart attacks and won’t even think about Botox because “it lives around the heart when it’s finished with your face.” I don’t know whether that statement is true, but if it is, it is still a less horrifying one than “we have normalized fighting wrinkles by injecting cow botulism bacteria into our heads to paralyze our face muscles.”

Today’s INCOMING MESSAGE is all about sweet ol’ bumpkin Jon, who came straight from his ol’ Kentucky home right into the Real World house about 45 minutes after he graduated high school. Can you imagine putting yourself on camera— and letting someone else edit, remix and then air the results on national television— when you were 18? I was a nightmare when I was 18. Like, I don’t even want to remember that time in my life too hard, for fear someone will hear what’s going on in my head. (To my credit, I did ensure I wouldn’t remember much of that year of my life, thanks to my drink of choice at the time: Southern Comfort and Hi-C’s limited-run, Ghostbusters 2-branded Ecto Cooler.) (I called it an Ecto Collins.) (I wish I was joking.)

Anyway, the producers have combed through the footage of Jon’s time in the house, the aired and the never-before-seen, to try and find something terribly problematic. And they mostly come up empty. The kid was naive and sheltered, but wasn’t malicious. He handled himself so well back then, in fact, that his one sketchy moment turns out not to have happened at all: David admits that his “Jon asked if he could hang a confederate flag in our bedroom” accusation wasn’t true. David was joking, you see. Taking the reality of Jon’s Southern-ness and exaggerating it for comic effect. Jon is relieved that he never actually said those words. Such is the power of television; it can make you doubt your own memory. I’d probably be angrier than Jon is in this moment.

Tami gets the gang together to volunteer at Project Angel Food, a charity that delivers meals to people who are home-bound due to illness, particularly HIV and AIDS. They drop a meal off at the house of a big Real World fan, who doesn’t really remember season two all that well, but does tell them about the significance of Pedro Zamora, whose season hit the air right when this guy was getting out of the hospital after an HIV diagnosis. It is hard to overstate a) how important a figure Pedro was at that moment in history, and b) how completely Jan Brady the season two Real World cast is. You can actually see them simultaneously thinking “Thank God this guy is alive and doing well,” and “Pedro, Pedro, Pedro!”

Our next INCOMING MESSAGE is all about the cast and their artistic aspirations back in 1993. Tami was an aspiring girl-group singer, Glen of course had Perch, Beth S something something entertainment. It’s an element I wish this show had held onto: all of season one’s cast were artists in one way or another, which made the concept make sense for MTV, but right away, the key casting question seemed to shift from “what artistic impact would you like to make on the world” to “are you hot and will you bother people?”

Nobody’s big Hollywood dreams were bigger than Jon’s. He was a big fish in a li’l pond back in Kentucky, a local country-music sensation with a wide collection of color-blocked button-down shirts to prove it. At the time, it was easy to believe — with his charisma, the shouting through the nose vocal stylings that were popular in the genre at the time, and the big leg up The Real World gave him — that he would succeed. But he says he finished the show, got signed to Capitol Records, wrote a few songs and waited for his moment. And a year or so later, the label said they were turning their attention to another young artist, and — perhaps worse — his manager “cussed him out.” Capitol dropped him, he went back home, accepted a job at a friend’s church, took a moment to regroup, and…now it’s 2021. He admits he abandoned his dream to play the Grand Ole Opry. He’d wanted to play there so that his father could see it, but he gave up, and now his father has passed. It’s a tough moment to watch, a rare look at Jon being vulnerable, and a reminder that you have to be tough as fucking nails to survive in the music industry, even a segment of it as aw shucks and down home and lookit them boots as country.

But it’s also possible that 2022 can be a year of second chances. I mean, look no further than Sudden Impact, the boy band who made a three-second cameo in Boyz II Men’s “MotownPhilly” video and then had a decades-long run of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and never released any music. I did a ten-episode podcast about this group — Waiting For Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project, all ten episodes out now! — and…as for whether they finally will release some music, all I will say is that you can never say never. Country is a bit less afraid of artists over 40, and a bit more receptive to a good ol’ boy with a sad ol’ story, so who knows? I would like to see him make it. (I would also like you to listen to my podcast.)

So, okay, the whole gang goes to Borderlands Dancehall and Saloon, the place where Jon won that local-music competition back in 1993, to watch Jon do a gig. He’s borrowed a backing band from his friend Shooter Jennings, and I still don’t know how to react to Jon Brennan being friends with SHOOTER JENNINGS, and I am trying not to spin out about it. (But what do they talk about?) (Has Jon hung out with Drea de Matteo?) (What did they talk about?)

Anyway, the show is fine, and maybe Jon has a future in country music after all, and everyone’s beginning to get along and maybe even help each other through this frustrating, beautiful, much too short ride called life, better get everyone home and make them talk about Black Lives Matter.

So here’s how it goes. They get home, it’s late, Jon would like to go to bed, but they are all apparently contractually obligated to play a game called “fishbowl” in which there is a fishbowl full of questions that will for sure make them all start yelling at each other. And sure enough, almost right away, Jon picks one that he doesn’t even want to say out loud, because he knows how this is going to go, and it’s for Irene, and it’s about whether she supports Black Lives Matter. She gives a pretty even-handed answer, something to the effect of “I saw things when I was in the force that I can’t forgive, and I’ve marched for Black lives, but also I support the good cops I worked with, because it’s a hard job that the bad cops are making harder.” It is a move with a high degree of difficulty, but she sticks the landing. Phew, let’s go to bed, wait, no, Glen needs to get huffy about how he “doesn’t see race.”

Tami takes issue with this, and she has a right to. “You better see race,” she says, “because otherwise how can you understand my journey as a Black woman?” David sits this argument out: “This is what the political system wants, to divide us up and conquer.” They’re both right.

And then Glen tells everyone about the time that he was in a pizza place with a friend of his and someone called the friend the N word, and he says it, and it’s the kind with the R at the end, and, like, Glen: you don’t do that. You just don’t! Irene agrees, and gets in his face and says “You have no idea what it is to be a…” and then she says it! With the R! Oh my God!

Listen, I don’t know if Ecto Collinses were on special at Borderlands or what, but this is bad.

Tami is annoyed, David is over it, Jon just wants some sleep, and Puck is somewhere watching this and saying, “That’s disrespectful behavior.” We will pick it up next week, and I am looking forward to it the way one does oral surgery. Eric Nies, please send some positive energy.

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 Los Angeles Episode 6 on Paramount+