Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 30, 1994                   TAG: 9407020006
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Medium

`WORLD' HAS A REALISTIC CHANCE THIS TIME

The latest version, airing Wednesday nights, gives a person hope not only for MTV and its viewers but also for the great American twentysomethings often dismissed under the label of Generation X.

``Real World,'' produced by Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jon Murray, is TV's first non-fiction soap opera. MTV gets a bunch of seemingly telegenic kids together, rents a place for them to stay and spends a few months videotaping their lives. Then it's all edited down to, in this case, 20 semieventful little half-hours.

Of course it isn't real reality but manufactured reality and in previous editions many of the kids came off as preening brats, thus making the whole exercise of dubious worth.

But a few stars emerge quickly from the new batch, installed in a funky and airy San Francisco house with cameras hounding them at every turn. Much of the footage is gimmicky and trite, but there's seemingly more going on than there was before.

The member of the group most likely to be called by a Hollywood casting agent is Puck, 25, a free-spirited Lord of the Flies, an updated version of the immortal slob Bluto played by John Belushi in ``Animal House'' 16 years ago. ``He's a pig, he smells, he's disgusting,'' moans Rachel, 23, a conservative Republican from Phoenix.

``I'm pushing the envelope,'' Puck says as he shovels rice into his mouth with his fingers. He also likes to pick things: his nose, or scabs he has acquired as a bicycle messenger. Food shopping on Valentine's Day with the others, he demonstrates what he calls ``blowing a snot rocket,'' and one can hope the kids of America won't feel obliged to pick up the habit.

Beneath the Neanderthal exterior, however, Puck is a font of wry irony, a larger-than-life character to whom the camera inevitably gravitates. Unfortunately for the show, Puck is thrown out of the house by his six roommates in the eleventh episode, which will air later this summer.

The most instantly enigmatic of the new tribe is Pedro, 22, a gay Cuban whose parents emigrated to Miami in 1980 and who announced to everyone early on that he is not just HIV-positive but that he has AIDS, albeit with no visible symptoms. In his own community Pedro has become something of a spokesman for people with AIDS, and he has a scrapbook full of clippings to prove it.

Cory, 20, is an achingly sensitive young lady from San Diego. She appears to be the resident innocent of the new group, and she is terribly endearing. In one episode, she worries that she's ``boring'' compared with others in the group. And when a young African American woman misunderstands a question Cory asks her, and interprets it as racially offensive, Cory weeps tears of shame.

Everyone in the group seems comfortable living with Pedro (they were informed ahead of time that he has AIDS) with the exception of Rachel, who repeatedly expresses concerns. She's a coldhearted creature, or so it seems; obviously, the communal experience could be a consciousness expander for her, or at least teach her some old-fashioned compassion.

And in truth, Pedro does come across like a self-styled saint sometimes, as if the disease itself has made him noble. Diseases don't ennoble people; what counts is how one responds. For the most part, Pedro responds in ways that are admirable and even inspiring.

Others in the group include Judd, 24 (``I consider myself a real bed-wetting liberal''), Pam, 26, a self-reliant Asian American nurse (``I have not failed at anything in my life''), and Mohammed, 24, who calls himself a ``musician'' but is just a rapper. Mohammed takes the gang down to a coffeehouse to listen to poetry and, back in the loft, insists they all write ``statements'' about themselves and their goals.

Memo to Mohammed: GET A JOB. That goes for all of them, of course, or at least the ones who don't have jobs. But heck, they're young, they're free, they're on MTV. They can get a job next year.

Washington Post Writers Group