Kids These Days

Throw seven twentysomethings and a camera crew into a San Francisco house and you've got the third season of MTV's The Real World, a vérité soap opera unrivaled for its endless aimless talk and annoying action. How to capture the enormous cultlike devotion it inspires? Throw seven twentysomethings at this magazine into a room, and listen to what you get ...

Jessica: Real World Two sucked. Two was, like, all over the place.
Heather: Everyone [in it] thought it was a career move.
Ethan: Cuz they were in L.A.
Jessica: L.A. sucks.
Christopher: One or Three then?
Erin: Three was better.
Heather: One.
Ethan: One.
Jessica: You guys only feel that way cuz you've seen them 35 million times cuz MTV reruns them every five seconds.
Heather: No, no, no. One was, like, the experiment.
Erin: I think, actually, One, on the marathon level, is much more rewatchable. Three is only fun up until Puck leaves.
Christopher: Puck. He was the baddest.
Jessica: See, I'm totally over Puck.
Christopher: Totally not. And Rachel seemed to like him just fine for a while.
Erin: And so did Cory.
Heather: What are you trying to say?
Christopher: I'm trying to say they were hot for Puck.
Michele: But Cory was pathologically stupid.
Christopher (imitating Cory): ''I hate my race. I hate being white.''
Ethan: ''I'm so boring.''
Beth: My favorite scene was when Puck stuck his finger in Pedro's peanut butter. I hated Puck, but I loved that everybody hated Puck. He was the whole show.
Jessica: I'll remember Judd for the rest of my life in my nightmares.
Christopher: How great was it when, like, they went to Hawaii and Jo and Rachel got hit on, and Judd was, like, ''Oh, I'm jealous.''
Jessica: He was, like, ''They felt the need to flirt with the scuba instructors.''
Christopher: And then he totally turned into the fascist ringleader when they were kicking out Puck. He, like, brainwashed them all.
Michele: Can we talk about the confessional room?
Jessica: Why was Rachel always in the chair while Mohammed was outside?
Erin: In a chair in the forest.
Michele: Yeah, it's so contrived. ''I'm gonna confess now.'' That's so unreal.
Christopher: It's not real. But then why do we watch?
Michele: Since there's nothing else on?
Beth: That's why we watch Melrose.
Michele: Cuz you were sort of always waiting for something to happen and it never quite did, but you have to watch it over again to make sure you didn't miss it.
Ethan: So it's like Waiting for Godot.
Michele: Yeah, it's Waiting for Pedro.
Heather: That would be Pedrrrro.
Erin: I liked Sean.
Jessica: Loved Sean.
Christopher: The wedding was cool.
Michele: Wait, who was Sean?
Jessica: Pedro's boyfriend, his husband.
Erin: It was just nice to see them handle it — it was no big deal to see them kiss or anything, where on Melrose Place they can only hug.
Michele: Were you sad when he died?
Jessica: I was really sad.
Heather: Definitely. You see we keep calling them characters —
Christopher: They are.
Erin: But they're them.
Heather: Yeah, they're them.
Ethan: But they're edited and stuff. *