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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 26, 1993
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Real World, “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” (Season 2, Episode 1)
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: It sounds crazy to say from this perch, nearly 25 years later, but The Real World really was as much a social experiment as it was a TV show back when MTV first put it on the air. It’s not just that the pace of reality TV back then allowed for more leisurely, lived-in storytelling, but the casting, the stories, the fact that these people had jobs and ambitions and thoughts and opinions that extended beyond the walls of the house — it all combined to make the first season of The Real World far closer to a documentary than anything in the genre that would follow it.
So when it came time to come back for a second season — and given the response to the first season, there HAD to be a second one — the direction of the series was at stake. The Real World: Los Angeles was a flashier show, for sure. For one thing, setting the show in the permanent summer of Venice Beach instead of the cold months of Manhattan gave things a more TV-friendly disposition. It was also a step towards a more produced, engineered-for-conflict direction. This is obvious given the way that both The Real World and reality television moved in the decades since, but it’s interesting to see the baby steps that were present in The Real World: LA. The season started with a proto-Road Rules road trip where Dominic and Tami picked up John in his Kentucky hometown and travelled all the way to California. So by the time they arrived at the house, they’d already gone through like six arguments, including the big “Jon is a racist” fight.
If the first season of The Real World was a pioneer of docu-drama television, The Real World: Los Angeles was the first great reality TV season. Arguments, actual fights, David getting kicked out of the house after the great “IT WASN’T NOT FUNNY” dustup, another cast-member leaving to get married in a pre-approved departure (which might be the most insane thing about the season from a production perspective), Beth A. being an unapologetic lesbian, and that’s all without even getting into Tami Roman, a first-ballot selection for the Reality TV Hall of Fame. Tami fought with everyone, appeared on the dating game show STUDS, had her jaw wired shut so she could lose weight, quit her job at an AIDS hospice because it got too hard watching people die, got pregnant and had an abortion, and recorded an album with her R&B group Reality. Tami alone makes The Real World: Los Angeles one of the most indispensable seasons of television in history.
