Although we have done an admirable job of drinking away most of our memories from the nineties, we can still (fuzzily) recall most of the major plot points that occurred during the third season of MTV’s Real World franchise. Not surprising, considering most of the country spent the summer of 1994 obsessed with the antics of Puck and Pedro (and, to a lesser extent, Pam and Judd and the rest of them). And while we still find ourselves wishing from time to time that we lived in an alternate universe in which Bunim & Murray chose Dave Eggers to replace Puck instead of that English hosebeast Jo, everyone recognizes that the moment that came to symbolize that season was when Pedro Zamora passed away due to AIDS-related medical complications on the day after the show’s season finale aired. There is no denying that Pedro’s tireless activism and generally positive outlook did a lot to educate the American public about AIDS, which is why, in theory, we support MTV’s decision to pay tribute to his life nearly fifteen years after he passed. We just wish they would’ve done something a little classier than create a seemingly by-the-numbers TV movie in his honor.
If you aren’t already familiar with this project, here’s the trailer:
Uh, wow. Maybe it’s just us, but wouldn’t a documentary have sufficed to help remind everyone of why Pedro was such an important figure? After all, they must have thousands of hours of footage from the season sitting around somewhere, right? We’ have our DVRs set for tomorrow night’s April Fools’ Day airing of the show (another instance in which MTV could’ve shown better programming judgment), but we’ll admit that there’s only one moment we’re really looking forward to seeing re-created: That moment, of course, is when Puck sticks his snotty fingers into the jar of peanut butter and eats it.
