‘Real World Homecoming: New Orleans’ Episode 8 Recap: “Get To The Finish Line”

We have reached the final episode of The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans, a series that has been more fascinating and frustrating and sociologically significant than I could have possibly imagined. This has been a ride. It hasn’t just been a voyage back to the last time we were wearing bucket hats, it’s been a study of what we can now recognize as a new species. These seven people are important, and their relationships with knowing they’re important are important, even if their relationships with each other sometimes seem shaky.

Les bon temps did not always roulent this season, and no trip to New Orleans is complete without some regrettable behavior, but man it was never dull.

When we left off in Episode 7, Kelley was in the middle of her Done Day, trying to figure out a way to duck out of Homecoming and do some home-going. And when we rejoin her, any hope that she will reconsider is tossed away like so many handfuls of beads. There is not only a surprise party waiting for the gang, there is a surprise Mardi Gras parade, replete with floats and a brass band. Kelley is not on board: “Part of me is like: why can’t I just relax and have fun with it? But it’s fun on demand, and I suck at that.” You may think she’s overreacting, but put yourself in her shoes: you’re tired, you’re away from your family, you’re surrounded by people with whom you shared a life-changing-and-maybe-not-for-the-better experience 22 years ago and one of those people seems determined to stir drama, you’re living all the least comfortable parts of a college reunion, and you’re doing it on camera, and you’re not going to have any say on what gets shown to the world, and then you come back to the place where you’re staying and there’s a surprise Mardi Gras parade between you and your own front door?

I am on Team Kelley here. I am a firm “No Thanks!” on this. Parades are barely endurable when you go to them, and that’s before we consider that we’re all still negotiating our relationships with crowds. I feel this very strongly right now, because it is Pride Month, and my partner and I went to a big street fair last weekend. It was manageable enough at first, but before we knew it we were shoulder-to-shoulder with Silverlake’s sweatiest like it was 2019, and if you were wondering whether people have gotten back to their regular practice of just straight-up sneezing into your mouth, I can exclusively reveal that they totally have. So we stood there, dazed, trapped in a crowd, $13 Espolon and sodas in our hands and fresh sneeze mist in our faces, and we said, “We will give this one more hour.”

Anyway, Kelley packs, Danny and Melissa wonder where she is, Matt dances badly, and Julie corners each member of the brass band individually to tell them about the time she bought a vibrator. (Not really.) (But maybe.)

The crowd at this parade includes some Real World New Orleans super-fans, and Melissa autographs one of her old paintings and is charming to a guy who says she and Danny ignited his fire, an exchange I would imagine is not uncommon in her life. She is overall extremely gracious with the maximum fame and minimum fortune The Real World gives a real person. “The reality is, I belong to people in a weird way,” she says. “This person has a memory of me that he loves and cherishes, and I would like to honor that.” It’s a good attitude, and I would imagine that it is one that has evolved over time with thought and therapy.

When they return, Kelley tells the gang she’s going home, and Matt says “Aw, sweet girl,” in a way that is probably supposed to be supportive but comes off super condescending. Julie asks whether she made her want to leave, and Kelley says “No, you woke me up,” and I feel like there’s more to Julie’s behavior that we weren’t shown, so much so that I almost want a Real Housewives-style reunion episode of this reunion show, with myself in the Andy Cohen role, but there’s no way we’re getting one of those out of this gang. Jamie says he didn’t sense anything about Kelley’s Homecoming experience that seemed too hard on her, but as we have learned, that’s Kelley’s thing: appear calm and poised, and push the negative emotions down. By contrast, Jamie’s thing is that he’s always wearing his Bluetooth workout headphones. A HIIT session is always just around the corner for our Jamie, and not even he knows when it’s going to happen. Jamie stays ready for roping so that he does not have to get ready for roping.

So that’s it for Kelley, seemingly only one day early. I’ll miss her, because I like her, but there’s about 60% of one episode left to go, the lesson to trust your gut is always a good one to learn, and whatever the truth of the Spencer pic and the Julie situation turns out to have been is not important. There’s a full-grown Bailey Salinger at home, and that’s all I need to know. Get your life.

Tokyo understands Kelley’s decision to leave, because he himself is an introvert who doesn’t live with roommates, and he doesn’t want to reveal too much of himself. So of course, the producers have determined that now is time for the gang to play a game where they answer personal questions out of a fishbowl. Tokyo is asked what he’ll do with the exposure he’ll get from Homecoming, and he says “Oh, absolutely nothing” almost too quickly. To the question “Would you do another one of those Challenges,” Julie just as reflexively says “I’LL GO!!! SIGN ME UP!!!” and all at once we understand the motivation for every single thing she’s done this season. It’s like that moment at the end of The Usual Suspects when Chazz Palmintieri puts it together that Kevin Spacey was Kaiser Permanente or whatever. Of course she wants to win money in some extreme dunk tank situation in Borneo with Mark Long and that unpleasant ginger guy. Of course this whole season has been a DM to TJ Lavin, and of course she’s going to put her intentions on front street while she still can. I don’t even think the original question was for her. Good luck with those Challenges, Julie! And don’t quit; Lavin hates that.

Throughout this, Tokyo keeps his cards close to his vest. He demurs on all questions, so we remain in the dark as to whether he’s married or seeing anyone or whether he has any kids or what his job is or just generally any kind of ballpark figure on the number of terrycloth headbands a guy like him packs for a two-week trip. Melissa eavesdrops on a conversation he has with Jamie, looking for a way to dive in and ask some questions, which she eventually does, but it is to no avail. We are going to stay on the outskirts of Tokyo. We are never going to find a parking spot in Tokyo’s business district.

He says, “Going through a Real World 22 years ago, and even now, there is an amount of energy that you store up, and the club incident took up so much energy.” We flash back to Julie and the Vomiting of the Three Saltines, an event that is months old for us but only one week ago in the actual chronology, and knowing how hung over I would still be one week after a night like that while she bounced up and did yoga the next morning is another reason not to trust Julie but also to admit that she’d probably hold her own on one of those Challenges.

But this isn’t about her. Throughout the Homecoming experience, Tokyo has seemed traumatized from the original Real World experience. Pretty much everyone in each Homecoming season so far has come off at least a little shell-shocked by the show, but Tokyo is a unique case. I think it has something to do with having put such a sincere piece of himself forward with “Come On Be My Baby Tonight,” and having that piece of himself be received in the special and disorienting way that young media-savvy people appreciate things, a way that is part reverence and part ridicule. The fact is that some of the time he was for sure being laughed at, and I know that’s true because I watched Dave Chappelle put him in front of an audience that laughed at him. I worry about how that affects a person. As the Real World experience dies down, and life goes back to normal, and whatever continuing fame you may have been expecting doesn’t materialize but people still sing your song back into your face for 22 years, your self-talk might lead you to believe that everyone is laughing at you, always. You might start to be more cautious with human connection. The whole experience might, if you’ll pardon the psychological jargon, fuck you up a little. He seems to admit as much: “When I share something that’s really important, it takes a lot out of me.”

But some of the time, I’d even say most of the time, Tokyo wasn’t being laughed at. I think a lot of people liked him then, and I think a lot of people have grown to like him now. I hope he can let his guard down a little once the cameras are off. Melissa seems to hope so too; she says to Tokyo, “It was hard back then and it’s hard today, and if you ever want to talk about it, there’s literally only six people in the world who can get it. But of those, I really do, because there is this,” by which she means race, “and there is this,” by which she means the production, “and I don’t want you to feel lonely in that.” “Bless,” he says, and I think that’s his version of “I receive that.” I hope so.

And then they go paint a mural together with Lionel, the guy that Melissa and Matt hung out with in the original season, the guy who got Melissa painting in the first place, which got her selling those paintings through an early online merch site, which got her connected to her husband, so everything has come full circle in a way that’s so beautiful you actively choose not to dwell on the fact that Lionel’s old art gallery seems to have been turned into a Warby Parker. A Real World season, it seems, is a critical first step down the path of gentrification.

As we wind this season down, we answer the question posed by its first episode: what’s the deal with Julie and Melissa? Well, we see them talking, and it doesn’t seem forced, and Melissa says she has forgiven Julie, but it also doesn’t really seem like their friendship is going to survive the final edit of this show. If you follow Danny on social media, he posted a semi-cryptic thing about how everyone came to New Orleans to heal and reconnect except for “that woman” who came to manipulate and make television, and Melissa and Kelley were tagged on it, and we may learn more about all of it on Thursday when the three of them do one of their Bright Live talks, or that may be that on that.

One of the hallmarks of this new Homecoming format is the final group confessional which contains deep, personal attacks on other seasons. Original Julie really brought the heat in the New York season by telling every other city to fuck off, and I don’t really remember what Los Angeles did besides appear uncomfortable in the same space. But the New Orleans cast keeps it largely positive, focusing on how well they’ve aged, and we cannot deny it. It’s hard to say which season will come next, but I’d say this season proves that the whole format has legs, and I’m pulling hard for Seattle.

This New Orleans cast is special. They represent an important step in the evolution of the reality star. They had seen enough of The Real World to know a little about what to expect, but they could not have known what was coming, and neither could we. Survivor would premiere right around the time they checked out of the Belfort, and a whole new wave of reality stars would be born. Now your Instagram is choked with Bachelor castoffs and Big Brother sociopaths, each with their own moisturizer or tomato sauce to sell. Now “reality star” is a viable career path. Now when you wrap up one of these shows, you’re expected to have an agent and a hustle. The cast of The Real World New Orleans were just kind of…kids. Maybe the last of their kind.

Their immediate post-Real World experience would be unlike the New York and Los Angeles cast, and unlike Hawaii or Las Vegas. A Becky or an Aaron might have been recognized on the street, but neither would be shamed for not capitalizing on their fame like Survivor’s Gervase or Colleen. Those college speaking engagements that New Orleans Julie kept for herself would soon enough become Trishelle-style club hosting engagements for a lot more money. A Danny in an alternate universe could have made a fortune doing personal appearances at gay bars if he hadn’t had a boyfriend who couldn’t show his face. These kids were the last to get famous without also achieving the fortune that can make that fame bearable.

So it makes sense how they would all approach this. It makes sense that Jamie would project an aggressive kind of chill; it probably insulates him. It makes sense that Melissa would give this whole thing a second try as an older, wiser woman with a much better set of one-liners; I bet it gives her a feeling of control. It makes sense that Danny would come back, just to get a real accounting of what he’s had to shoulder, just to prove to himself and to us that it was real. It makes sense that Kelley and Matt and Tokyo would prioritize self-care. It even makes sense that Julie would jeopardize everyone else’s personal lives for a chance to go on The Challenge. (It is not defensible, mind you, it just makes sense.)

These people contain elements of their ancestors and their descendants. Seeing them now is like discovering a transitional fossil, and that is not shade about their ages, because I have about five years on them myself. This season was a straight-up find.

Anyway, there is a Last Breakfast, and Tokyo goes around the table to ask whether everyone would do The Real World again, and everyone says yes except for Danny who still says yes but more tentatively. Julie decides to play a game of hide-and-seek which ends up just being her dressed like a shrub and nobody looking for her, and she says “that’s indicative of my whole experience here,” and you’re like: “yes, maybe go home now and do some thinking about that.”

So that’s the end. Tokyo says they didn’t stay in touch the first time, which again speaks to their place in history because they were the last cast not to have fixed email addresses or cell phones. Well, now there is such a thing as a group text, and I’m assuming this cast has one with Julie and one without, so I’m hoping they stay tight this time around. This cast was going through this experience just as I was dealing with my version of the MTV experience, so even though I haven’t met most of them, they’ve felt like cousins to me, and I’m glad to see they’re mostly okay.

I hope they got what they needed out of this. One thing I know for sure is that they’re finished with it once and for all. Good for them.

Take care of yourselves, ba-bo-bwaybees.

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.