Real World Days

Happy Endings, S03E04

While everyone was having dinner at Alex and Dave's place, Max played the unaired season of The Real World that Brad and Max were cast in.  The episode where the others visited Max revealed a lot of truths that caused tension among their group.  Dave also went looking for clams and got subjected to a lot of unpleasant events that made him feel like he was experiencing the Native American struggle.

I was once again hoping that Max would salvage this episode and he did by bringing out the DVD of their gang's appearance on reality TV.  I was a little excited to see them as their younger selves, particularly Penny as Max's girlfriend.  We haven't really seen any flashbacks or the sort when Max wasn't being completely true with himself.  Besides that, I just liked seeing Jane in her pink hair and punk-like style.  Everyone else looked a bit of a mess (except Max who never wasn't a mess), but it was still interesting to see a glimpse of how they were.

I liked that the stuff they saw caused trouble between Brad and Jane and that both of them were guilty of something bad during the filming of the show.  The best thing they showed, though, was that Max's historical coming out was a fizzle because with the food in his mouth it sounded like he had said, "I'm Greg."  That wasn't funny enough to laugh out loud, but I liked that Max's moment was diminished because he was busy stuffing his face at the time.  Classic Max.  The worst thing that was revealed was Penny's long-time crush on Dave.  Ugh.  Can't we just let that go?  I mean, I can't imagine Penny and Dave being a worse couple than he and Alex, but still.  I couldn't care less about how she feels about the V-necked fool.

Speaking of that fool, his little journey to get clams was so stupid.  The only decent moment was when he actually got the clams and tried to barter for them because some couple dressed as Pilgrims had stolen his car and money.  The guy's response to Dave's offer of a non-monetary trade made me laugh:

This is a real store.

 In the end, Dave's clams didn't even turn out to be worthy of eating, so his whole ordeal was really a waste of a side-story.  It also showed once again how much of an idiot Dave is, but not in any humorous kind of way.

There was one other thing that was a little funny.  I liked when Jane and Brad were inspecting Alex's dubiously cooked turkey.  Jane mentioned that it was poorly seasoned and most likely dry, while Brad commented:

 She's clearly been making it dance.

Either those two know their turkeys too well or they know Alex too well because that's incredible that Brad could tell that.  It was cute that they swapped out her turkey for the perfect one Jane had made and no one even noticed (really?  who would believe that Alex could cook anything?).

I wish this episode had been nothing but a complete flashback to their Real World days.  Somehow it was the focus of the episode and still seemed like we got to see little of the DVD.  I guess it was because everyone was too busy being angry at someone else.  I wanted to see more of how dumb they were back then and less of how irritating they are now.  And I hope we don't have to see another Dave-only side story any time soon.  He's bad enough paired with someone else--he's a disaster by himself.