‘The Real World: St. Thomas’ Recap (Episode 2): “99 Problems But The Beach Ain’t One”

The roommates hook up, get upset about nothing and sit around being smug. It’s like Friends with slightly stronger jokes.

We return to our marooned heroes hours after last week’s rum-soaked commencement, as Marie awakens to find her body penned-upon and surrounded by peanut butter jars, and swears revenge–which consists of later coating a napping Robb with actual peanut butter. After he eats shit while chasing her around the porch, she washes him off in the shower while they flirt using sandwich-related wordplay. At once, I am less annoyed than last time by their conversation, which I interpret as more akin to Stockholm syndrome than empathy on my part.

(In a quick resolution to the first episode’s cliffhanger, Brandon reassures Trey that his doom-laden scrawlings are merely a device to “get in a dark place.” And they thought they had something to worry about!)

Lee the Salty Boat Captain returns to ferry the kids to a different island where they spend a few minutes swimming and then mostly ignore the Eden-like beauty of their surroundings to just clown around for the camera and flirt some more. Trey and Laura’s mutual acknowledgement of each other as sexual objects continues, though he confides in an interview that he usually doesn’t go for the “tomboy.” I wonder what he thinks that word means.

At night, they boat to the mainland and gondola to Paradise Point, where Laura and Trey make out on a Ferris wheel. At a nightclub, the roommates grind on one another except for Brandon, whom Swift earlier failed to imbue with rhythm on the beach. He manages to chat up an attractive girl and gets in some grinding until a local fellow tells him to clear off for obscure reasons. He is understandably upset, although the roommates are put off by his loud frustration—LaToya describes him as being “too hype,” and well said.

Robb and Marie’s stupid courting dance becomes more complex and multilayered: he enters her bed without asking and promptly passes out, and she later lies to him that they made out, which serves no purpose that I can see. At a party where the roommates meet a bunch of people who seem cool and down-to-earth and also want to be on a television show, they each hook up with a civilian. They arrange a double date, but end up canceling it to just go get sushi themselves. After getting their unfunny little routine out of the way, they have an emotionally honest moment. Robb: “I think I love you, I don’t know what’s going on.” Me neither, man.

Real World Island’s other big couple intensifies in more off-putting ways following the Ferris wheel smooch. Trey reveals there is a “girl back home” and expresses that he is comfortable with the concept of being with Laura so long as he can dictate the precise speed and tenor of their every interaction. He doesn’t want Laura to stop, just slow down. Laura assures us that this is “only the beginning.” Despite my certainty that this will all end well, Trey later flips out at Laura because, while sitting on top of him nuzzling his chest (“I’m not gonna turn down a massage, even if it does send the wrong message”), she touches him too much or too quickly or with the wrong expression on her face or something. Trey broods by the window: “The hardest part is that you remind me of the girl I left at home.” In the confessional the next morning, Laura expresses her pained confusion about what she did incorrectly. Failing to perfectly please your controlling, oversexed, borderline-chauvinist crush can be upsetting, and I wish her luck.

Hey, at least Trey says “I’m very comfortable with my sexuality” and illustrates this security by elaborately dressing up as his blonde chick alter ego Big Shirley, you know, for a joke. Later he confronts Robb’s Captain Red Bush, a sort of militant ginger anti-hero who threatens to “plant [his] seed” in everybody, and they grab at each other’s genitals for a while. Earlier, on the phone with his back-home-girl, Trey had expressed his surprise that everyone in the house is straight, but perhaps the producers know something we don’t.

At Swift’s birthday party, Brandon re-encounters the girl from the previous night and assures us that he is going to “bring her back… gonna bang her and you guys are just gonna know I’m the best… I’m using her the same way she’s using me.” Despite his honorable intentions, Swift and the others caution him from embarrassing himself, but he proceeds to anti-game his way out of the promised sex in front of everyone. On the way home, Brandon vents his hurt that the roommates assume he is a naïve misfit who needs to be protected. He assures Trey “my heart is blacker than the fucking sky,” and probably other My Chemical Romance lyrics that were cut in post-production. In the gazebo, a moment of stunning insight emerges amidst the drinking and yelling as Marie assures Brandon that “we’re all very different; we’re all very unique” and intuits that his alternative posture is a mark of insecurity. He responds, “Damn. Like, damn.” Indeed.

Oh yeah, Swift and LaToya also vaguely start a romance here. Toya’s dilemma: both she and Swift are “dominant types of people” and “somebody’s gotta wear the skirt.” I’d bet Trey would like to.

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