What if you came up with a premise to try and save your reality show franchise -- a last-ditch effort to try and preserve a legacy -- and it crashed and burned? This, gentle reader, is what we are witnessing with The Real World San Francisco right now. The "Ex-Plosion" is nothing but a sad whimper, and a coda to this once-great reality show.
In episode five all the exes showed up. We have Jay's equally as dull GF Jenna, Tom's ex Hailey (who, coincidentally is a knockout in real life but looks sort of like a muppet on TV); and Jenny's ex Brian, whose strange curly-cue hair is worthy of its own blog. The only real meat and "explosive" tension is between Jenny, Cody, and his ex, the rather homely Lauren. Cody and Lauren hit the showers together almost immediately, leaving the petulant boxom blond Jenny staring at their intertwined feet like a woman scorned. At the end of episode six we learn that Lauren is preggers, which is just sort of thrown out there and lands on the viewer like a spoogy kleenex. This show is so full of sex that a pregnancy just seems like another ho-hum vignette.
MTV's mistake was going for the lowest common denominator yet again. We know absolutely nothing about these people outside of their sex drives and sexual histories. Sorry, but that's not enough to hold even the dumbest of viewers. At least on The Jersey Shore we got to know the goombahs a bit better. Snooki was vulnerable on that first episode and we sympathized with her.
Pauly D wanted to be a DJ and was a lothario but not a dickhead. The Situation was the dickhead, but an entertaining idiot nonetheless. The show had heart. The Ex-Plosion has nothing but genitals.
