After a week of watching that trailer for the Real World trip to Thailand, I was expecting certain roommates -- namely, Colie -- to be much less well-behaved than she actually was. They get to Thailand with apparently no drama on the plane, although Brooke (predictably) doesn't seem to be able to wrap her head around the time change.
"This is an amazing place. It's the middle of the night and there are what feels like a million people on the street," gushes Stephen. Clearly he's never been to New York. Or Vegas, for that matter.
Brooke calls her mom. "I've never been out of the country in my life," she tells her, "much less a place like this. I just wanna stay safe, that's all I care about." I hope Brooke's parents are building her a compound outside of which she will never have to venture for the rest of her life -- that seems to be the only way to keep her from being constantly afraid of nothing.
Twelve hours later, Colie is filmed with a giant snake draped around her. She's squealing and screaming. "It's probably a Burmese python," my watching companion tells me. Yet another reason to feel disgust for Colie -- is she nervous? Probably. Is she really scared? Hell no. I won't lie -- I would be terrified in her situation, but then again, I had a rather traumatic encounter with a sixteen-foot anaconda when I was five years old. Snakes and me don't mix. And I wouldn't be standing there screaming and squealing -- I would be running away.
Meanwhile, Stephen and Jenn have been getting, how shall we put this ... closer than usual. "Steve's, like, my new friend now," Jenn says. She didn't think they'd ever be close -- but apparently wonders will never cease.
The roommates are going to a famous full moon party in Thailand. Brooke is practically having an orgasm over the hotel. It's one of the most amazing sights she's ever seen, apparently. The boys are also seeing amazing sights, namely, Colie and Jenn swimming topless in the hotel pool. Alex has this to say about Colie's nudity: "I'd rather she cover it up. Yeech." Stephen is more appreciative: "I think Jenn is attractive. She's got nice boobs, I can say that."
I can say that I think any man over the age of fifteen who uses the word "boobs" should never, ever be allow to touch a woman's chest until he learns to expand his vocabulary a little.
Swimming on the beach, Brooke is whining about the water clarity. "I don't like the idea of getting stung by a jellyfish," she cries. "That never happens," Davis tells her.
"What about sharks?" Brooke wonders. Honey, if a shark did take a bite out of you, he'd spit you out and swim away as fast as his fins could carry him.
All of a sudden, Brooke has a sharp pain in her toe and starts squealing. And it's a commercial break -- will she die?
We should be so lucky.
Jenn's laughing at Brooke when the commercials are over. "Brooke worries about every bad possible thing happening to her and then it does." Apparently Brooke hasn't seen What the Bleep do We Know?! or read The Secret.
Every single one of Brooke's roommates is making fun of her. "There's no mark on her foot and she's all freaking out," Alex hoots -- which, by the way, is rich coming from him. He's got a pair of Speedos on that are so tight, his crack is trying to escape out the top. It probably can't breathe.
Alex pees on Brooke's foot -- what, don't you remember that Friends episode? My watching companion makes some crack about Brooke being into watersports and fabricating the jellyfish "sting" so she can indulge some of her grosser fantasies. "You can't pee more?" Brooke demands of Alex.
Colie is thinking along the same lines as I was. "The plus side of Brooke thinking that she's stung is that we all get to pee on her," she gloats. And lo and behold, Colie does, indeed, pee on Brooke. Ew.
Colie is the scapegoat on this particular episode, though. She has some kind of altercation with a waiter that the editors didn't include. Colie's version is, she asked the waiter when the food was coming, and Alex told her she couldn't speak to people that way. Alex's version is, Colie was being obnoxious. I'm going with Alex's version myself.
"Just give up," Brooke counsels Colie. "Don't kiss his ass, don't try to get him to like you, because he’s never going to."
Beach party time! There's a fire walk, and Brooke at first is too scared -- don't act so surprised -- then she says she was in Outward Bound, so she can do anything. Too bad she runs along the edge of the coals and not in between them whatsoever -- but I guess she can pretend she did the fire walk if it makes her feel better about herself. Whatever it takes.
Colie meets a group of Australian dudes. "You just got here so you don't know who the sluttiest guy is," she slurs at them. She runs off with one of the Aussies and makes out with him; the way the editors are cutting together this shot, he seems to be wearing a wedding ring, but who knows? They go back to the girls' bungalow to fuck. Jenn and Brooke are irritated because they both want to sleep and Colie is having sex with the random Aussie. "Typical of Colie, and kind of sad," Brooke sighs.
"I like those Australian guys. They were so awesome," Colie says the next morning. "They were so cool. I had so much fun last night."
"I know, we could hear it," Alex tells her.
"Hear what?"
"The fun." Oooh, snap!
"I don't appreciate Alex constantly butting into my life," Colie sniffs to the camera "While he may be an attractive person on the outside, he's an ugly person on the inside."
Earth to Colie: When you choose to have sex with someone in a common area, and when you choose to express your pleasure with loud moans that cannot be drowned out, don't get all upset when someone happens to hear you. That's not called "butting into your life" -- that's called "being unable to shut you out."
Now it's time to see what else Brooke is afraid of -- snorkeling! "My parents brought me up to accept being so fearful," she explains, "and they didn't really push me to just feel the fear and do it anyway." Is she the world's biggest, oldest baby? I think so.
Finally, finally, she gets in the water. "I cannot believe I'm doing this!" she crows. Um, that's because you're not. To successfully snorkel, you need to put your face in the water. Which she finally does and she sees the bottom of the ocean.
"I'm amazed and really happy that I was able to do it." I wish I were so easily amazed. Life would be a lot more interesting. Or maybe not.
"Has anybody here gotten ass in Thailand?" Colie asks her beer bottle, back on land. "Is this thing on?" She's being -- guess what? -- drunk and obnoxious. They get on some elephants to ride; in Tyrie's opinion, the elephants are "like an old-school Buick."
"I'm in a bikini, riding an elephant, drunk, so I think this is one of the rare opportunities I've had in my life," Colie says.
They head over to a "swimming pool" -- a waterfall area. Colie falls down and her toe starts bleeding; no one else seems to care, except Alex takes a picture of it. Then Brooke eats shit and falls on her tailbone, she starts sobbing. "The pain is more pain that I've ever felt in my life and I'm feeling like I'm gonna vomit from how severe the pain is," Brooke says. She sobs and curls up into a little ball.
"My fall, where there's actual blood and it's actually bleeding, is eclipsed by Brooke's fall," whines Colie. Jenn isn't buying it, though; she thinks Brooke had the worse fall. But Colie is bitching about how no one cares about how she fell to Davis. Alex, for his part, feels more negatively about Colie the more time he spends around her: "She just lives in her own world, and I don't like it."
Back in the car, they start arguing. "Maybe the person I am when I'm sober comes out when I'm drunk," Colie starts.
"Slower and dumber, yeah," Alex agrees. Colie tries to get him to make a friendship pact for the rest of the day with her. Alex tells her he's okay without a pact. "You have entered into a world of hell," Colie tells him. I'd be really scared if I were Alex.
Their last night in Thailand, Colie is trying to talk Alex down. "Alex is just jealous of whoever I ..." she begins, slandering her roommate to her Australian Casanova, Jared. "He's not," Jared responds, "he's been really good." That disagreement doesn't keep Colie from bringing Jared back to the bungalow.
"When we get home," Jenn tells Brooke, "I'm going to walk in the room and I don't give a shit if they're banging or not." Brooke is psychoanalyzing Colie: "Alex is not interested in her and she cannot be happy with herself unless she finds that attention from men."
"I think she makes decisions that she doesn't think through, and it shows," Jenn responds.
Aw, they're packing up and getting ready to leave. Cue the violins; when they get back to Denver, they'll have less than a week with each other.
"If Thailand was our last hurrah, then we definitely accomplished what we set out to do," Stephen weighs in.
"Which was what -- get drunk?" my viewing partner wants to know. Exactly.
Regardless, they all feel like one big happy family right now. Aw. And Baby Brooke is puking in the boat the entire. Ride. Back. -- Amber Taufen
