Favorite Moment: Dan and Melissa's Fight on the Real World Miami

Here's a blast from the past, The Real World: Miami. In 1996, Cynthia, Dan, Flora, Joe, Melissa, Mike, and Sarah lived in a million-dollar mansion on the Florida coast. 

"Was it fucking yours to open up, you stupid bitch?!"

One of the stand-out moments from the season was Dan and Melissa's fight on the stairs. After Melissa had irritated the housemates by going through other people's things, Dan confronted Melissa. Apparently, Melissa had found projection slides in an envelope. The envelope was unmarked, but they were two slides from the Birdcage, the Robin Williams/Nathan Lane movie. Supposedly, they were hundred-dollar slides from Dan's job.

Dan found the slides conspicuously lying around, outside the envelope. He waited the entire day for Melissa to come home, stewing in his juices, ready to confront her. What resulted was one of the shortest, yet most epic Real World fights.

In 2007, Jezebel covered the fight. The fight erupted into a grotesque confrontation, with both Melissa and Dan lobbing horrible insults toward the other in less than two minutes. Jezebel has the full video, complete with uncensored language and commentary from Dan, Flora, and Nathan (Seattle).

Plenty has changed since Miami aired 16 years ago. The Miami house actually had a television, which producers found created hours of footage with the roommates sitting on the couch. Melissa was also a Miami native. Producers would later avoid casting locals in the cities they would film. Melissa would often escape the house to find refuge with family and friends, and moved out before the season wrapped.

However, even with the sensationalized nature of recent seasons, this fight stands out as one of the best Real World fights in the 20-year history of the series.

The Real World: San Diego (2011)

As of today, the only official production of any of the three shows is the 26th season of The Real World. Road Rules has not been renewed since the ill-conceived Viewers' Revenge and MTV has not yet announced whether or not they will renew The Challenge series after the currently airing Rivals.

So, appropriately, the first blog post would be about the The Real World: San Diego (2011). After the last two seasons revisited old locales, producers are heading toward a mansion in the ritzy La Jolla neighborhoods of San Diego:

The 6,845 square foot, five bedroom, six bathroom house is only minutes away from the popular Mission Beach neighborhood and is currently filming (Real World Houses). And what would be a spoiler post be without some hint of the cast? Vevmo has one of the best rundowns of the seven strangers:

Alexandra Govere, 21 - Los Angeles, CA

Ashley Kelsey, 24 - Winstead, CT

Frank Sweeney, 22 - Canasota, NY

Nate Stodghill, 22 - Grain Valley, MO

Priscilla Mendez, 19 - San Diego, CA

Samantha McGinn, 21 - Chesapeake, VA

Zach Nichols, 23 - Brighton, MI

Two interesting tidbits about the cast pop out immediately. First, most of the cast is over the age of 21. This actually has been the norm in the later seasons of Real World, especially since the focus on the cast has shifted more toward a partying atmosphere. Although 18 to 24-year-olds are eligible to be cast in the show, the cast has heavily featured 21 to 24-year-olds in the past few seasons. In fact, in the last five seasons, Emily (Washington DC), Jonna (Cancun), and Devyn (Brooklyn) were the only castmembers under age during filming. Second, Priscilla (San Diego) is actually from San Diego. In the past, producers have maintained a requirement for filming was that the castmembers could not reside in the town in which the show was being filmed. Melissa (Miami) and Ruthie (Hawaii) resided in Miami and Honolulu, respectively. From the producers' point of view, this created problems as this allowed these castmembers to escape the house and seek the solace of friends and family when times got tough. It comes as a surprise that after more than a decade of production, the producers have lifted this requirement.

Hopefully there is more to come from the new San Diego house. As always, hit me up with news if you have it: newrwroad@hotmail.com.