A New Direction

Before I begin, I wanted to make a quick but important announcement. When I began this blog, I had many goals in mind. Obviously, the major one was use this blog as a forum to put all my wonderfully witty and insightful thoughts about an institutional show, the Real World, in written form. But another equally important goal, but for most selfish reasons, is to pursue a hobby of mine; writing. I’ve always enjoyed creative writing and seemed to be successful at it whenever the opportunity arose in school. Unfortunately, the older I got, the less I got to write about whatever I wanted. It was either write a research paper on the “unitary executive theory,” (don’t worry, I’ll do a nice blog post on what that is soon!! Am I kidding?) or interpret a novel on poor Southern farm hands and their oppressive capitalist owners. My teachers never appreciated when my interpretation inevitably came across as: After reading “classic American novel,” my interpretation is this book sucked.

But my desire to write never really subsided. It just hadn’t had an opportunity to explode. I toyed with the idea of blogging but could never really find my voice, and more importantly, a central topic of discussion. The decision to blog about the Real World honestly came from my friend and I having many discussions on instant messenger about the show. That, and my hero Bill Simmons frequently talking about it. But what is the point of all this, you might ask. Well, this all is leading to a fairly inconsequential announcement.

While the blog will still primarily focus on the genius that is the Real World and the Challenge, from time to time I will discuss other topics or just write some random thoughts that pop into my head. I’ve given myself many a chuckle over some of the weird crap I think of. So let’s see if that translates to the blog. Often times, it might get a little crude. And some readers might have no interest in what I’m writing at the time. I fully understand that almost everyone who reads this blog does so because they share a common interest in the shows I discuss. But there is inevitably only so much one can say about the Real World before it gets repetitive. So who knows what will become of this little experiment. But I feel now is an appropriate time to test some news ideas out and see what happens. Just to reassure everyone that I won’t be abandoning the Real World, I will now do a post about….the 1961 Yankees and how they redefined the modern game of baseball in the….just kidding, let’s talk about Camilla!!!

We are now one episode away from the return of C.T.!!!! For me, this is like the return of Conan to television or the return of Charlie Sheen to cocaine and hookers. You know it’s coming but the anticipation is killing you!! For now, we had to suffer through another episode of Cutthroat where you want to strangle some of the competitors. This week, it’s Laurel and Camilla, but for different reasons.

I assume everyone has seen last night’s episode, but very quickly, here’s what you need to know for reference. Laurel was flabbergasted and furious that her team decided to send her into the Gulag instead of Cara Maria. Her rationale is that she is Laurel, the greatest female competitor in the history of the show and Cara Maria sucks at the show and Abram.

Clearly, I have an issue with people who are all about promoting themselves, despite being able to back it up. For that reason, Laurel truly grinds my gears. This is only her second challenge, and technically she hasn’t won a single thing. Sure she is very tall, athletic, and strong. And yes, with Kenny last year, she did very well overall. But you know what? That’s not enough to earn you complete immunity from going into an elimination challenge. In fact, no one really deserves that.

I like to go based on how the person on that season has been performing ON THAT SEASON!! I don’t care if you dominated the last challenge. Unless you are so obviously valuable to your team to send into an elimination challenge, you need to earn your way to the finals. And sometimes, that means going into the Gulag. For the record, while I do not deny for a second that Abram simply wanted to keep his booty call in Prague, I actually agree that Cara Maria’s performance thus far is on par with Laurel’s. Since she has gone into a Gulag, the fair play is to have Laurel go in and more than likely send one of the other team’s good players home.

If this was the second episode of the season, I would agree with Laurel. She is an asset to the team overall and there are significantly weaker players who need to be removed to give the team the best chance in the in. However, by this point, both Laurel and Cara Maria have proven themselves strong enough for the final challenge. In fact, Cara Maria has more so demonstrated this by taking out another team’s player in the Gulag. Honestly, I’m just sick of this predictable attitude from some of these players. They feel that they are entitled to a free ride when no one should be, and then have the gall to get mad when others disagree. Laurel’s reaction to be sent in tells me a couple of things:

1. That the only way she wouldn’t have wanted to kill the rest of her team is if they kept her safe. Basically, she was fully ready to blackmail her teammates if she didn’t get her way.

2. Even though almost every Challenge is team-oriented, Laurel’s lack of teamwork shows how much of a liability she is. Even though this game is built on teamwork and team unity, Laurel’s eagerness to turn on her team for telling her she needs to take one for the team shows that she will always be a hindrance to team unity and cohesiveness. Just like in any other sport, the teams that win Challenges are unified. So far, the only team that is a cohesive unit is the blue team. I thought the grey team was that way too, but Laurel is the one rotten apple on the group. If she doesn’t get her way, it’s bye bye victory. Despite her physical edge to other girl competitors, is she really that much of a upgrade from someone like Cara Maria?

I think I’m going to make this a two parter. Look for Part 2 tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be less angry. Seriously, why am I so pissed? Damn you Laurel!!!