| Welcome! It was the week when New York prepared to reopen movie theaters, and a good number of New Yorkers said ... yikes. It was the week when the cater-waiters of Party Down got a reprieve. And it was the week when Alec Baldwin decided on a little break from Twitter. Let's get to it. |
Opening Argument: Seven Strangers, Picked To Live In A Loft, And Me |
I was fascinated by the first season of The Real World in 1992. I was right around the age of the participants, and they were having all these spirited arguments and displaying all kinds of interpersonal dynamics that I just couldn’t stop staring at, when they were happy and when they were miserable. This presaged not only my general curiosity about (mostly non-trainwreck) reality shows, but my fondnesses for true crime, documentaries that observe individual people closely, and even narrative podcasting.
It’s hard to explain now, if you were not tuned in then -- before The Bachelor, before Survivor, before so much else -- that this was not the Real World of later years, with the hot tubs and the extravagantly reckless and raucous behavior and so forth. It was a very earnest show then, even though the motivations behind its creation were obviously savvy and mercenary. The cast cared conspicuously (to varying degrees) about politics and racism and war and abortion rights and homelessness, and they argued in ways that were interesting and clueless, insightful and awful.
They’ve now been brought back together almost 30 years later for a reunion series called The Real World: Homecoming on Paramount+, which is essentially CBS All Access with a new coat of paint. Taped during pandemic times (which cost them the physical presence of then-model, now-wellness-spiritual-journey-guy Eric Nies, who joins them virtually), the show follows them through a few days spent together and finds them all ... well, 30 years older. Some have kids, some have had professional success in the fields they were pursuing back then, some have changed direction entirely. It appears that they’ve gotten together in certain combinations over the years, and they’ve stayed connected to each other in some ways, but that some of them fell out of touch with each other on an individual level for a couple of decades. (In case you need a refresher, they were at the time: Julie, the dancer; Kevin, the writer; Becky, the singer; Andre, the rocker; Norman, the artist; Heather, the rapper. Plus Eric, the ... well, as previously mentioned.) That they were seven creative types sometimes doesn't even make it into the descriptions of that first season, so quickly did the idea that the show was specifically about young artists fall away in future seasons.
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Previews suggest that the conversation during the reunion will turn back to race, which drove some of the most remembered arguments back then. Kevin Powell, a writer both then and now, found himself discussed and dismissed in some of the coverage of the show at the time as — in the words of the cast — the “angry black man,” and he clearly brought to this reunion a (very reasonable) desire to ask the rest of the cast to reconsider, among other things, their frequent insistence in 1992 that he was overstating the importance of race to the interpersonal goings-on in the loft. How people who are 50-ish now will reckon with the things they said and did when they were 20-ish ... it's not clear that's going to go well based on what we’ve seen so far. Even in the best of circumstances (which these aren't), it's a tall order for people to attain true and mature distance from their old behavior when they've gotten to watch it on television and have everyone bring it up to them -- both what they did and what was done to them -- regularly for three decades.
It’s interesting, as somebody who found this all so intriguing 30 years ago, to see that it’s still intriguing to me in a very different way. I was so into it then, the idea that they were all figuring stuff out and getting to know a variety of people and chasing various dreams and being stuck together whether they wanted to be or not. (One feature of early Real World seasons that I now find very amusing is that they frequently had a participant or two whose presence kind of nope-d out of the whole thing for much of the season, whether because they weren’t dramatic enough to show or, perhaps, because they decided to stay as far away from the madness as possible.)
Now, I see in it my own efforts to reckon with the choices I’ve made for 30 years, and the things I have done and haven’t done for people, and what I have learned and am still trying to learn. If you’d asked me in 1992 what I thought it would mean to be 50, I’d have realized it was roughly my parents’ age, and I’d have said that by then, I’d be a pretty fully formed person, the human being I would be forever. I’d have expected to have learned most of my big lessons and gotten my relationships to calm down and stop shifting, and I’d expect to have many fewer feelings about everything, because I would have achieved my final form, whatever it was. Of all the things I thought in 1992, that might have been the goofiest, and I can assure you that I thought some goofy things.
Now, looking at these people, I’m not remotely surprised that they’re different but the same, still with some of the same limitations in their perspectives that they had in 1992, even though they’ve learned a lot and experienced a lot. They do find new things to connect over — their kids, their shifting dreams, and especially their memories of a shared experience that’s impossible to really explain to anybody else. They can't even truly explain it to people who were on this show or shows like this later. Those people knew, in a way that they did not, what to expect. But they’re still all works in progress, quite obviously, and that’s maybe the most relatable thing of all. |
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| If you're looking for a psychological thriller to read with some publishing-world intrigue, you might try Alexandra Andrews' Who Is Maud Dixon? It's about a young woman who blows up her career and stumbles into a job as the assistant to a mysterious author who writes under a pseudonym. The story takes them to a lot of places, both geographical and psychological, and it's quite a ride.
I didn't take the time for a review of the Netflix documentary series Murder Among The Mormons, but while that title makes it sound extremely salacious, it's actually about documents and document forgery, as well as the importance of documents within the Mormon church. I found it quite fascinating, even if I wanted to know perhaps a little more about some things and less about other things.
On our Minari episode, E. Alex Jung talked about his profile of the actress Youn Yuh-jung. It's live in Vulture -- don't miss it.
I also liked the Netflix documentary Made You Look, which is about art fraud. Basically, lots of fraud in my viewing habits right now. I love schemers. |
Andrew H. Walker/BEI/Shutterstock |
First, a request: We are doing a show about the best Muppets, and we need you to vote for which Muppet you think is best. (You can vote for up to three.) Find the poll at npr.org/muppets. (Obviously.)
It was the great Aisha Harris who got the honor of writing up the Golden Globes on Sunday night, and Glen and I were delighted to join her for a late-night conversation about them. Thanks as always to our editor and our producer, Jessica Reedy and Candice Lim, for helping make the late-night show happen.
On Tuesday's show, Aisha chatted with Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times about The United States v. Billie Holiday and the legacy of law enforcement.
On Wednesday's show, Stephen and I talked about three great documentaries -- none of which are devastatingly traumatic -- that you can stream right now.
On Thursday's show, Aisha and I were joined by Odie Henderson to kick off a series we're calling Essentials: a look at some of our favorite performances by some of our favorite performers. First up, Odie and Aisha and I talk about Regina King.
Aisha wrote about the movie Coming 2 America, and she also sat down with our pals Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings to discuss it on our Friday show.
I wrote about the Netflix movie Moxie, which is based on the YA novel and was directed by Amy Poehler.
Glen wrote about the new Netflix series (I know, it's a Netflix-y week; they're very dominant right now) Pacific Rim: The Black.
Glen also covered the Disney movie Raya and the Last Dragon, which he enjoyed (and about which he recommends checking out a variety of critics).
I wrote some quick thoughts about WandaVision from my not-that-much-a-Marvel-person perspective; watch for some thoughts from actual Marvel person and NPR TV critic Eric Deggans later on Friday.
Stephen also appeared this week on New Music Friday over at NPR Music, and who doesn't like new music? |
| Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: |
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