‘Real World Homecoming New Orleans’ Episode 6 Recap: “Spiritual Bypassings”

The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans Episode 6 is strange and slow and deceptively-edited and either nothing happens or two marriages explode and between two and four castmembers condemn themselves to Hell. As with so many of my own New Orleans experiences, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, or even whether I’m enjoying myself, but I don’t want it to end.

A quick recap reminds us that Julie and Jamie are either in a flirty place or Julie is trying to create a storyline for herself and Jamie is just kind of down for whatever. Julie says “There’s this inexplicable chemistry between Jamie and I,” and she’s wrong on two counts: first of all, it’s “Jamie and me,” and second, all chemistry between anyone and Jamie is extremely explicable. I started this series thinking Jamie looked good, and now I would take a bullet for him, and I’m not sure whether it’s the show’s editors weaving a spell on me or if it’s just a scary time to be alive and there are few more reliable comforts than a destructive crush on an oblivious guy. Whatever, would hit it. Julie concludes, in a quote that is clearly doctored, “I’ve got my family, I’ve got my husband, and then there’s Jamie.”

And then there’s Matt, who practices some archaic kind of Catholicism that will allow him to be on television but not to get his Tarot cards read. We rejoin the gang as they’re re-litigating a bygone conversation between Matt and Danny in which the former said to the latter, “Hey, I love you, but also God wants you to deny your true self forever, I’m just telling you what I heard.” That’s a yikes, and so is this: my friend Sean O’Connor just pointed out that Matt looks like a grown-up Bart Simpson. Can you see anything else now? Me neither. 2022 Matt apologizes to Danny for the words of 2000 Matt, and he ends that apology like this: “I’ll never understand how God created you.” A rare double-yikes from Matt right out of the gate. An ay caramba, even.

Danny calls this kind of religious passive-aggression “spiritual bypassings”: loving the sinner, but hating the sin, and never quite explaining how you can love someone and hate their life. It’s where a lot of Danny’s family still sits after all these years. I can actually back this up: when Danny was on Homophilia a couple of weeks ago, his mother was at the park with his daughter, and he confided that he and she just don’t ever talk about homosexuality at all. I can also second this: I just visited my hometown with my partner of 17 years, and my mother introduced him as my “friend” the whole time.

So let’s have a quick philosophical discussion right now, you want to? Here is a thing I have never, ever understood: since nobody knows anything about anything when it comes to God, why can’t we consider that God made queer people for a purpose? We keep hearing that more and more young people identify as LGBTQ+, and this is always presented as evidence that our culture has become more and more depraved and sinful, but what if it’s evidence of just the opposite? Since we know this planet is overpopulated, and we know we’re depleting Mother Earth’s resources, and we see her in one climate event after another trying to shake us off of her like a wet dog, what if there’s a God up there making more queer people to slow down population growth and maybe even provide loving homes for the millions of orphaned children around the world? How come we only say things like “God works in mysterious ways” when we’re trying to understand why there was an earthquake in Haiti or why your sister’s leukemia came back, and never why there are gay people? What if queerness is a gift and a responsibility, and to reject it is depraved and sinful?

Is that really any weirder an idea than “God doesn’t want me to get my fortune told?”

Anyway, that’s my sermon, Venmo me ten percent of your income whenever you get a chance.

So apparently Matt is still very torn up about all of this, and we know that because he keeps telling us that: “I’m writhing inside right now, because I don’t know what to do,” he says, “I’m a very broken man right now, and I’m really sorry.” Tokyo tells Danny, “I need you to see how hard Matt is fighting,” and Danny replies, “It’s not my responsibility to take that hurt off Matt.” Truth! And that’s that on that, for now. Everyone goes their separate ways, and Matt asks Danny, “Is there any grace coming my way,” and he is met with silence that may be real or may be a trick of editing.

Julie remembers having a similar conversation about queerness with Danny long ago, and him not needing her apology when she eventually came to her senses. “He doesn’t need an apology,” she says, making sense, for once. “He just needs it to change.” He goes outside with a producer to say that he feels like he’s being ganged up on as “the church kid.” “Privacy and intimacy have no place in this house,” he says, which, like, YEAH. This house is full of cameras and microphones.

Matt has a very youth pastor mien, a very sound-bitey affect that may mask a swirling inner chaos, and I hope he can find peace. Matt, to you I say this: Don’t have a cow, man.

Anyway, Julie’s husband Spencer is coming to town for some kind of sex conference, and that is a lie, he’s just coming for some kind of regular conference, but you believed me, and that’s all that matters. Julie says he’s nervous about jumping into the whole reality-show situation, and I cannot imagine anyone not being that way. Even Scott Wolf would have reservations.

Speaking of the family Wolf, Kelley is having doubts about being in the house. She’s not into all of the hookup conversations, since she has a husband and kids and friends and nobody wants their 22-year-old New Orleans hookup history to be televised. The question she is asking herself is “Can I stay in my body, and not just run,” and the answer I am giving her is “Please stay, you are my link to serenity.”

So, okay, Spencer shows up, and he seems very nice, and he also seems very nervous, and Julie gets him into the confessional where it is probably a trick of editing that it seems like she starts talking about Jamie right away, but it also might not be. She tells Spencer, “Jamie has great games, and a great meditation app, and he’s also got good porn.” So…this is a conversation that Julie and Jamie have had, and it is a conversation they had off-camera because you know the producers would air the shit out of it if they had it, and also, what kind of porn? Links, please?

Julie introduces Spencer around, and gets him into the living room, where Jamie bounds in, all charm and firm handshakes, and it’s probably not as tense as the editors are making it seem, but it’s definitely not not tense. Spencer sticks around for the INCOMING MESSAGE, which is a Julie-centric one, focusing on her relationship with the Mormon Church, which I keep mis-typing as the Mornin’ Church, and I think that’s going to be the name of my queer-affirming, brunch-focused faith community.

Julie and Spencer talk about meeting in the Mormon Church as members of the Singles Ward, in a Church program called Institute. They were considered elderly in this context, as unmarried people in their mid-twenties. This all really bums me out, as does this: a friend of mine went out with a Mormon woman for a few years, and he said anytime they visited her hometown, her friends— who were in their mid-thirties at this time— ate tons of candy. They couldn’t have alcohol or caffeine, so they had Skittles. Religion is weird (except for the Mornin’ Church, which will have a make-your-own Bloody Mary bar replete with crisp, fresh bacon).

So Julie and Spencer left the Church in 2008, but they never really talked about it openly until now, and doing so is apparently the Gravest Sin within the Church, so talking about it as they are right now will get them excommunicated and cut off from their families. This is a major difference between Mormons and Catholics: for us, it’s talking about orgasms on camera that will make things weird between us and our moms. Anyway, they’re risking eternal damnation, and Kelley wonders whether this is a thing they’ve thought through, and since we know Julie is committed to making good television, we know that she both has and has not considered all of the ramifications. All I can think is: Julie, this is Paramount Plus. I’m not giving up MY soul for anything less than linear cable.

Julie also says that the reason she moved to Los Angeles after The Real World is that she didn’t really have a home to go back to. She got kicked out of Brigham Young, her parents wouldn’t take her back in, so she had to do what she had to do. This makes sense, and also I think I have a fuller understanding of why she seemed to break with reality and try to kill Veronica on that one Challenge. It was a difficult time.

Kelley asks Matt for some clarity on the Catholic Church and gay people, and whether there is any body within the Church to change the policy and build a bridge. Matt says, “I don’t have all the answers, I’m a simple man in a complicated situation,” and it’s like, “WHAT IF TAROT LADY HAD THE ANSWERS FOR YOU?” Come on, Matt. Come on, my special little guy.

Julie and Spencer have a moment in the hot tub, which is an inflatable hot tub, which is somehow more disgusting than a regular hot tub, and Jamie hangs out just outside of it, and for just a little too long. Julie says how happy she is that Jamie and Spencer got to meet, and that he should come visit them or they should come visit him, and you really expect her to say something like “Spencer and I really like your vibe,” because it is a very swingy moment. Jamie leaves, Julie and Spencer build a Sex Fort outside so that they can have sex, which appears to me much more Julie’s idea than Spencer’s, because he finally says something like, “I have touched you enough times now.” Julie is so sex-positive it has swung around past sex-negative but not quite all the way back to sex-positive. It is sex-neutral. It is making me sex-ambivalent. Get back on my screen, Jamie, you’re my only hope.

Some very nice scenes follow: Danny, Melissa and Kelley have a picnic in the park, and bring one of those games where you draw a card and tell the truth about something, like everyone does on a lovely spring day, and Kelley’s card is like “Do you want to leave the house” or something, and she kind of does, and Danny urges her to stay. Later, Danny and Matt take a walk, and Danny talks about having sold his belongings online to help rebuild a church in Georgia, and this sale even included The Sweater, so I hope this is church is within the Mornin’ Church denomination.

Back to Julie/Jamie/Spencer. Julie gets an urgent text from Spencer, and I swear everything I’m about to tell you is true: Spencer took a look at a playlist on their shared Spotify, and it’s one that Jamie is also following, and the playlist is called “Roping,” and the playlist has songs with suggestive titles, so Spencer is convinced that Julie and Jamie are having an affair. Julie insists that the title of the playlist refers to JUMPING ROPE, which we have seen them both do. I have never once heard of jumping rope referred to as “roping,” and I spent a few years doing exercises like jumping rope in a CrossFit gym, where literally all you ever do is exercise and then talk about all the exercises you have done in a CrossFit gym. So I do not believe Julie here, but I also do not believe she and Jamie are roping, in any sense. (But if you think I didn’t go right to Spotify to find this playlist, you are out of your goddamn mind.)

We then cut to a new scene, on a new night, which seems to be an earlier night, because Julie and Jamie are in clothes we’ve seen them wear before, and they’re drunk and having a ball, and you know the producers are trying to make it look like they’re about to hook up, and Julie’s phone keeps ringing and it keeps being Spencer but it is definitely all happening before the roping argument. What I think I am seeing here is a woman who may or may not want to do some swinging but who definitely wants to make some memorable television, and a man whose deepest thought is, “I normally can’t get this drunk anymore, and everyone else is in bed, let’s you and I play magnet darts.”

It’s not good, but it’s not as bad as they’re making it look. I officially do not believe anyone or anything anymore. I have even lost faith in the Mornin’ Church. To quote a great philosopher: D’oh.

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.