Every week, Sharon Steel watches the Real World Brooklyn so nobody else has to.
Last week, Chet . This week, GIRLS VS. BOYS ZOMG! Transgender “pioneer” Katelynn hits the stripper pole in Pennsylvania When you have cameras shoved everywhere but up your butt, and roommates who like to walk around half naked, things on the Real World: Brooklyn can get a little bit, how shall we say, full of the dramz. And since the roommates continue to refuse to cut the King’s County tension with a polite, ratings-friendly romp in the sack, there is only one other way to vent their chromosomal friction: GIRLS VS. BOYS ZOMG! This week’s Real World was a classic Battle of the Sexes. So pick your team, set aside your dog-eared gender studies text that you studied “on a collegiate level,” as dear Devyn would say, and let us guide you in a step-by-step analysis of the differences between fem-bots and cavemen. It won’t hurt a bit! Devyn, Sarah, and Katelynn in the kitchen For the most part, the Girlz R00l Boys Drool saga revolved around Katelynn coming out about being transgendered to the rest of the roommates. As of the beginning of the episode, only Sarah, Baya, and J.D. know, and by the end, the cat is out of the bag and Chet is finally, um, petting it. Not literally. And I didn’t make that analogy up–he did. But we’ll get to that. So, it opens with Katelynn roaming through the Red Hook Castle in her cutest pair of boy-shorts and hawtest tank-top, because she wasn’t a girl, but she is now a woman, and she damn well wants to enjoy feeling like one! Except, even Sarah, ever her defender, chastises her for doing so, and the straight boys just sort of cringe and look away. Then Katelynn proceeds to set up what appears to be a portable stripper pole (did the producers provide it, or did she buy it at ) in the gym area and starts doing her thang in her thong. She’s feeling super sex-say, ya’ll, and she wants you to know it! Seriously, why hasn’t Judy Blume written a book about this There is a very uncomfortable gap between the lessons learned in Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, and what Katelynn needs right now. Katelynn unpacks a stripper pole While Judy heeds to my call to come out of semi-retirement, J.D., Sarah, and Katelynn visit their local GLBT center, and decide to volunteer for an event called Breaking the Cycle that raises money for HIV/AIDs victims and their families. The race begins in the hometown of our Idiot King Ryan! Back there, he’s still just a regular guy’s guy, a commoner! He decides to bring the entire house on a tour of the ‘burg. Not Williamsburg, silly! Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where future Idiot Kings are born and raised and imported to Brooklyn! But first, Duplicitous J.D., which now stands for J. Dingus, Esquire, does another stupid thing. We have come to realize that he is not as charming as the clip of him making dolphins sing and dance in the first episode have led us to believe. CUZ HE IS A BOY AND JUST LIKE THE REST. Sorry. But it’s true. Anyway, he confirmed to the dudes, basically, that Katelynn got her pee-stick cut off in Thailand, and then insisted that they didn’t “hear that from him.” Lying Dingus. What do you think the cameras are for, Dingus Insta-replay! The MTV Overlords loooooove using insta-replay on J. Dingus, Esq. They did it when he told a falsehood about calling that drag queen a more quality crooner than Devyn, and they did it again, here. They like to amuse themselves, and us, in the process, and we salute them for their labor!
With the strain about Katelynn’s status fully in place–now, everyone knows, but she doesn’t know they know, and she hasn’t told them all herself, yet, get it–the roommates get up at an insanely early hour to drive to Gettysburg. Idiot King is such a delight, and he is going to make a fantastic father some day. I am not being sarcastic. He already is a 40-year-old Dad. Wide awake at the first ping of his alarm clock, and wandering around the Castle banging on pots and pans to make sure everyone is up and at ’em and on time, dammit, we have a bus tour of historical sites to see that we cannot be late for, you uncultured bastards! Oh, that Ryan. Katelynn throws his alarm clock out the window and stomps around in her underwear again, and everyone gets into cars and leaves. But wait. Important: the girls drive in a Barbie Corvette and the boys take a souped-up Big Wheel and everyone fucking guns it down the highway! The boys win, of course, because they have secret cyborg senses of direction, and girls always get lost, all the time, because, as Scott Zach Morris helpfully explains, “They went to get their vagina hair trimmed.” Zach is so dreamy.