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Positive:
35
Mixed:
16
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 of MTV's ""The Real World'' has all the signs of
topping the incredibly rich Season 3, which topped Season 2, which
topped Season 1. [25 Jun 1995]
Jun 11, 2013
Season 3 Review:
The first season of Real World had a lot of momentum just because of its sheer novelty. The second season began to drag because the El Lay crew proved generally to be self-absorbed bores. But the current Real World benefits enormously from two ticking time bombs: Puck's outrageously boorish behavior, which is destined to set off explosive fights with his roommates; and, more profoundly, Pedro's HIV-positive status, which adds another layer of self-consciousness to this TV project.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
Despite all the artifice and unreasonable expectations it's selling, "The Real World" is one superb television series. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
A compelling, immensely interesting and thoroughly addicting 30 minutes of television. [21 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 5 Review:
It makes for irresistible, cooler-than-cool TV. [9 Jul 1996]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
"The Real World"--while voyeuristic, stagey and sometimes maddeningly encouraging of fledgling adults' tendencies to navel gaze--is also blistering good drama, TV's most entrancing and rewarding reality show. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
It is better than ever. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
The premiere is inordinately entertaining, and the follow-up episodes previewed equally so. [23 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
Its collection of carefully contrasted types and personalities promises to be the best yet. [22 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Whereas MTV seemed to pick the first cast simply because they were cool and identifiable for young viewers, this time they've turned up the burner by choosing a gang of extroverts as different in style and ideology as humanly possible. [24 Jun 1993]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Not the real thing but a contrived setup that, nonetheless, radiates a mesmerizing draw that keeps you watching. [24 Jun 1993]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 2 Review:
You tell yourself no one can replace the Original Seven in your heart, that you won't get seduced by another bunch of comely young guys and gals thirsting for fame. And by the end of the evening, you helplessly confess that it's happening to you again. [24 Jun 1993]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
We aren't just viewing this "Real World" from an objective point of view - watching people behave - but participating in a fresh way. Sorting through all those first-hand viewpoints, we're coming to understand where these diverse people are coming from and why they act the way they do. [19 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
[The Real World] has been steadily evolving into the year's most riveting television, a compelling portrait of twentysomethings grappling with the 90's. ... Should "The Real World" be kept going much beyond these 13 episodes? I doubt it. There really isn't much happening.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
Entertaining, addicting and curiously familiar. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
A voyeur's delight. [30 Jun 1995]
Jun 11, 2013
Season 4 Review:
The problem with this Real World has less to do with the assembled folks than with the format itself. Rooming with strangers is always new to the participants, but by now, the roommates' progression from wariness to chumminess to stark-raving hostility has become familiar stuff to us. Yet so far, the filmmakers haven't done anything to enliven their formula.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
As if getting to live in a real-life Pee-wee's Playhouse wasn't enough for MTV viewers to covet, now they've got the clubs, sights and inhabitants of jolly old England. It makes for what looks to be the most intriguing "Real World" yet. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
Events in [the premiere] unfold rather briskly, marking an auspicious debut for the fourth season of this voyeur's delight. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Shaped by directors and camera people, given the familiar MTV gloss of breathless pacing and quick edits, "The Real World" is a relentlessly artificial concept. ... Accepting that, viewers can sit back and enjoy the carefully cultivated performances, keeping them in skeptical perspective.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
An intriguing though uneven mixture of "Miami Vice," "Less than Zero" and, most of all, an extended 501 Jeans ad. [21 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Entertaining. [20 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
If not terribly revelatory about the youthful human condition, the series is better, and certainly more addictive, than it sounds. [21 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
So far the characters are intriguing, even while some appear to be dunderheads; everybody is being almost unbelievably upbeat and nice. But, despite the trademark MTV cutting and pop music accompaniment, the action will have to pick up soon, or the show will become mired in the torpor that made "An American Family" tough to sit through. [21 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
'Real World III' seems to have learned from the past. While there is the requisite amount of conflict, this group seems to be able to deal with it without the angst, the anger or the attitude of its predecessors. These roommates seem - hang on to your flannel shirts - mature. [23 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
At least this feels like a culture-clash adventure, not merely an audition for the seven callow cuties sharing yet another fab flat. [27 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's all a lot of fun, if not terribly consequential, but if you've ever moved into a college dorm with a bunch of strangers, you've been there. [21 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 5 Review:
The show's basic appeal is still there. ... But just as the current generation of MTV veejays have adopted the same annoyingly aloof assembly-line attitude, so have the current participants in "The Real World," by watching MTV for years, decided how to present themselves. [9 Jul 1996]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
Except for an insistent music track, this initial portrait of the group is considerably less than sizzling. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
Much of the footage is gimmicky and trite, but there's seemingly more going on than there was before. [30 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The material is all pretty familiar, but the rhythms are new, often surprising. ... But the show isn't completely successful. What makes "The Simpsons" and the other shows work -- a commitment to absolute immersion in the world of TV, and indifference to the distinction between what happens on screen and off -- is ultimately "The Real World"'s higgest stumbling block. [25 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Not only does all this style interfere with and distract from the show's content, but the strain to be unconventional leads viewers to expect the unexpected, robbing it of dramatic impact. And that's too bad, because there does seem to be something interesting going on here. [10 Jun 1992]
Jun 12, 2013
Season 5 Review:
In an effort to perk up the show, Real executive producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jon Murray have decreed that this year's crew will have to start up their own business. Big mistake. Whatever remaining allure The Real World possesses derives from its fantasy aspect — free house, free-floating surrogate family.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 5 Review:
But the problem with "Real World" hasn't been the absence of a goal, mercenary or otherwise. It's been an increasingly obvious self-seriousness and lack of self-awareness, traits the show shares with many of its participants. ... Forcing a business startup will surely force a lot of the series' requisite conflict, but it seems as artificial a notion as much of the Miami Beach architecture. [10 Jul 1996]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
This first episode scores on most accounts ... But as show progresses, the first-meeting euphoria of the racially and morally diverse contingent gives way to the ubiquitous whining and bickering. [23 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 2 Review:
If the other four new regulars are anything like the three shown here, "Real World II" may be hard to watch for anybody who doesn't slow down to linger on car wrecks. [24 Jun 1993]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Real World is entertaining because voyeurism usually is. It's fun to eavesdrop on other people's lives, even if they are living in a fantasy world. Frankly, the conversation in the loft is a bit disappointing, considering the number of aspiring deep thinkers. [31 May 1992]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 3 Review:
Alienation, acceptance, anger, askew camera angles and other such stuff now part and parcel of "R.W.'s" life-as-TV-soap-opera are all here and accounted for. Now if only something truly genuine would occur in MTV's so-called "Real World." [23 Jun 1994]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 5 Review:
This once-sleek vehicle for twentysomething angst has pretty much run out of gas. [10 Jul 1996]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 4 Review:
The form and format are achingly cliched by now, and the show clearly stands or falls on the strength of the assembled characters. ... On first encounter, the new gang appears to be vapid in the extreme. [28 Jun 1995]
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Fails as documentary (too phony) and as entertainment (too dull). ... With its tilted cameras recording stilted reality, this empty vehicle for sound-bite narcissism is 20nothing.
Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Excruciating torture. ... The weekly half-hour is at least intriguing in concept... Unfortunately, much of what these kids did and said turned out to be neither worth recording nor worth watching. [28 May 1992]
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