Welcome to Retro Recaps, where we revisit your favorite old shows and give them the modern recap treatment that they always deserved. We've done Buffy's silent episode, Friends' 18-page letter, Sex and the City's Fleet Week episode, Gossip Girl's Snowflake Ball episode, The O.C.'s Chrismukkah episode, Lost's "The Constant," Gilmore Girls' dance marathon episode, that bonkers One Tree Hill episode where a dog ate a heart, and 90210's "U4EA." (Check out all our Retro Recaps here.) Today, we dive into the original Real World. Caution: snark ahead.

I will never forget May 20, 1992, just five days after my 14th birthday. Thanks to a huge spread in my favorite magazine, Entertainment Weekly, I was ready for the hotly-anticipated premiere of a show on my favorite channel, MTV. Yes, The Real World leaped into my life and it has never been the same.

I don’t know if that is what started my preoccupation and eventual career in the reality television arts and sciences, but I still remember sitting on the flat, plaid-pattered carpeting in my parents' finished basement watching this episode, as I watched all the others, on a giant console TV, which was sort of like a cabinet with a screen in it that sat on the floor and swiveled so you could get the best possible view.