Living In Reality 5/23

Welcome to Living In Reality! Right now, this reality TV column is mostly focused on the current season of Real World: Portland, but plenty of other shows will come up in due time. Instead of recapping all the previous episodes, I’m going to go ahead and start on the latest one and mix in some of the previous developments if necessary.

Heartbreak Hotel

Up to this point, Anastasia hadn’t had much in the way of storylines, only finding herself in the middle of spats between the other roommates. Well, she was in luck this episode, as the majority of the show focused on her and the arrival of her boyfriend Mark.

One aspect of Ana’s personality played a key role throughout the episode; the fact that she has high expectations for people. That attitude led her to become extremely disappointed in her roommates and her boyfriend when they let her down.

Another important thing about Ana was that she talked about being very attached to Mark, mentioning that she didn’t have a father growing up. I’ll leave the armchair psychology to everyone else, but it certainly appears like her past had an impact on her actions later in the show.

Per usual, the roommates took the guest of honor out for a night on the town. Mark had himself quite the good time, having plenty of drinks and even challenging someone to a break dancing contest at one point (as for his “skills”, well, at least he had fun). Unfortunately, Ana seemed to think that Mark was having too good of a time, as she became irritated by his excessive drinking.

Ana conveyed that irritation to Mark when they returned to the house and berated him about his drunkenness. Quite frankly, I feel like she overreacted, which led to Mark blowing up in her face. After some unpleasantries were exchanged, Ana trashed the room and gave Mark the ol’ heave-ho. Eventually, Mark got the hint and took his suitcase back to his hotel.

Of course, only minutes later, Ana became hysterical and searched for Mark to try and straighten out the situation. She took Nia and went around town, eventually catching up with Mark at the hotel. From there, Ana went into full meltdown-mode, loudly arguing, begging and pleading with Mark to hear her out. It got to the point where the hotel staff had to kick her out for causing too much racket.

Afterwards, Ana decided to follow in Joi’s footsteps and go home, citing the constant turmoil in the house coupled with the long distance negatively affecting her relationship with Mark. Earlier, she became upset with Marlon and Jessica for not paying much attention to her, so perhaps she felt unappreciated in the house as well. The roommates were upset with this news, especially Averey, who was now going to lose her only real female companion.

Towards the end of the episode, Ana had a heart-to-heart with Jordan (who was conspicuously absent up until this point). Jordan warned her that she was making a mistake by leaving. After some reflection, Ana realized that she was a person who used to not follow through on things and that she didn’t want to make that same mistake again.

Ultimately, Ana chose to remain in the house. During that time, Jessica and Nia resolved their beefs with Avery and Johnny, which helped restore some faith in Ana that the roommates could get along.

However, the episode ended ominously, with Ana questioning whether she wanted to be with Mark during a phone conversation.

Odds and Ends

Not much else of note happened on The Real World. Nia fed Daisy (Averey’s dog, for those not in the know) a very healthy diet of lunch-meat, shredded cheese and ranch dressing. This is actually a precursor to a larger conflict between Nia and Averey that will occur at some point.

The amusing moment of the night was when Nia tried to apologize to Johnny and Averey while the two were having sex. Nia reacted in bewilderment once she realized what was going on.

I’m still playing around with the format, so stay tuned for for more reality TV coverage!

Photo credit: MTV