'Real World': Where the fighting never, ever ends

The answer to both of those questions: everyone, and a lot. It's The Real World: Ex-Plosion, people! The cast members are basically, as we outline last week, a police lineup of STIs! To expect anything less than 42 minutes of alcohol-fueled fighting (in varieties both physical and emotional) would be to forget what show it is you're watching. Not that it would be the worst idea in the world to forget what show it is you're watching, even if that meant that you yourself were as trashed as our favorite (read: least favorite) houseguests. Some things you just want to extricate from your brain and body entirely.

As your official Bustle RW recapper, I don't have that luxury. Which brings us to this post, in which we outline those latest fights on the house ledger and assess causes, grievances, and outcomes. When future generations reflect on the TV recapping era and wonder why we recorded all of this information, why the need for posterity, I only hope they come to understand: so that we might learn from our mistakes, and never make them again.

Fight #1: Cory vs. Brian, Van-Style

Flashback to last week, where these two guys are fighting in the van. Cory: "At this point, I'm ready to rumble!" So he does! Cory starts to unleash on Brian while Tom and Jay do their darndest to stop them. Everybody's wasted. Maybe not Arielle, who looks on in the back of the van with morbid curiosity. Cory continues to explain directly to the camera how he's gonna knock Brian out.

Meanwhile another show producer, "Jetzen" (hahahahahaha) tries to calm Brian down and explain how violence isn't the answer. When of course that's precisely what they want.

Fight #2: Brian vs. Jenny

Brian describes what he's fighting for as though he's Vin Diesel's Facebook page: "I'm a lonely soldier." "I'm fighting for everything I stand for, everything I am." When he goes to the bathroom, Jenny decides to douse his bed in, like, baby oil or something to get him out of the room. It works! And Brian calls her "bitch" and "slut" on the way out, because that's how you do.

Fight #3: Brian vs. Cory, *Averted*

"Brian needs to learn his lesson" Cory tells the camera, again, before Brian sits down with him to hash out their issues. Maybe they're not drunk anymore, but they're at least hungover. So alcohol is still in play. Cory sits on his throne of patience and "courteousness," letting Brian know that he lives a hair's breath away from gettin' his ass beat.

But then! Cory, the paragon of maturity and rational thought, says that he's gonna be "civil" and "not start shit." Everyone has grown so much in this house of horrors!

Fight #4: Brian vs. Everyone

Drunk drunk drunk, Brian is just losing his shit in the kitchen. "I hate you!" screams Jenny (also "my food is ruined!" when he bumps into her food). Brian kicks... multiple trash cans around the house. And suddenly Cory looks like the rational one, which is absolutely astonishing. Brian tries to get physical, and Cory neutralizes him. Just in time for Security to show up. Brian takes that opportunity to run back into his room and bounce around the beds like a gorilla. And then.... Brian tackles Arielle, who was only trying to talk some sense into him. "I've never seen that person before in my life," says Jenny.

...there were also some hugs and kisses or whatever outside the fights, too, but come on — superfluous. This show is about booze-fueled skirmishes. And this season those booze-fueled skirmishes were initiated almost exclusively by Brian.

Brian: "I guess I went big, and now I'm going home."

Image: MTV