TV Review: Real World Austin - 9/27/2005

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

The focus on this week's episode of the Real World: Austin remained on Johanna. On last week's episode, she had been arrested for public drunkenness after stealing a flower from a vender. Lacey had informed Leo, the bartender Johanna's been crushing on since moving to the house, and he went to go pick her up. This brought the two closer together.

On this week's episode, we see them start to get even closer. However, we have a problem that develops here. Johanna quickly discovers that she isn't the only girl that Leo is seeing. He has a girlfriend. Something she hadn't been aware of up to this point. This upsets her, and she tells Leo she knows of the other girl, but Leo gets rather aggressive in his pursuit of her. Something that excites her. They get closer and closer over the course of the episode, and by near the end they sleep together. Johanna really likes Leo, and she decides to let her guard down with him.

Following their night together though, Leo stops calling her. When she confronts him, he tells her he is very busy with South by Southwest coming up. Johanna doesn't buy it, and she continues to pressure him about the situation. Then she tells him he can't like two girls because that is so sixth grade. He comes back with "Well, you are so sixth grade." I think my mouth even dropped open with this insult. She ends up leaving him there and returning home with Rachel in tears. Once there she turns to Wes to comfort, crying in his arms over the incident. I actually feel bad for Johanna here. Yes, early on she had played the bartender a bit, but she seemed to be done doing that. She genuinely liked the guy, and for him to say that to her seemed really cruel in my opinion.

Johanna wasn't the only one with things happening on tonight's episode of the Real World. We had a bizarre and confusing scene with Wes. For some unknown reason, he trashes the house. He goes from room to room messing things up. He throws a chair in the pool. He pulls off bed covers, takes items from one place to another. Pulls item after item from the desk. He does this while his other roommates are out of the house, and we just have no idea why.

When they return and discover the house has been trashed, they immediately figure out it was Wes. He was the only one home. I have no idea why he did it, but to get back at him, Melinda, in a surprise move, grabs some of his own clothing and throws it in the pool. Reminded me of scene a la Tonya from one of the past season's of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Wes appeared to be drunk, but it is really unclear what his motive was for trashing the house.

In my opinion, this episode seemed a bit sluggish to me. We had the drama with Leo and Johanna, but other than that this episode felt like filler to me. They needed an episode and they threw this one together. The whole scene with Wes was just odd to me. He acted out, but they don't say why. There was no incident preceding this, and when Johanna came home crying he was there by her side. A scene such as this with no explanation just doesn't fly with me. If they had shown something before hand happening I would understand that. Other than Wes' problems with Johanna and Leo, there was no real reason for him to act in the manner he did on this episode.

I think this week's episode of the Real World really fizzled out. The last couple of weeks have been highly intense and fast paced, and while we had some high emotions here they weren't high enough to carry an entire episode. Next week's episode does look promising. We finally are able to see the roommates work. However, it looks like tensions will once again be high.

What do you think of this week's episode of the Real World: Austin? Do you agree with me or do you think this episode sizzled the screen? Let me know what you think.