Watched the first episode of The Real World: Paris last night. I'm not into most of the reality shows, but I have watched The Real World from the beginning, with the exception of the last one, Las Vegas, mostly due to the fact that I could rarely make it to 10pm in the first months after Hayley was born. Anyway, I was surprised by the amount of trouble stirred up in the first episode, especially after they got off to such a great start by waiting until everyone arrived to choose rooms instead of the usual first-come, first-serve and predictable arguments that follow.

It seems to me that the last few groups have come on the show looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, when it used to be that they were just supposed to be roommates and experiencing living in a different city and meeting/living with people from different backgrounds. In my memory, it dates back to RW: Hawaiiand Amaya and Colin and it's gone downhill from there, but maybe it's been there all along. I felt like the Paris cast spent the whole episode analyzing each others attractiveness, date-ability and chances of establishing a relationship. Adam was madly in love with Mallory after the first day, then angry and resentful to everyone else in the house when her feelings weren't reciprocal. I think this shows great intelligence on Mallory's part - what, she's not in love with him and doesn't want to sleep with him after the first day? What is the Real World coming to?

I was also surprised that the producers decided to stick the lone foreigner in with 6 Americans. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I guess I'll have to see how it plays out. I think it would have been better to have a few Europeans and a few Americans if they really wanted to give it an international flavor.