![]() But the 21st-century Real World is more often a place for day-drunk frat types to hook up, fight each other and-most importantly-audition for lifelong roles on MTV’s reality-competition franchise The Challenge. The Real World has captured a few beautiful unions over the years, most memorably the one between late HIV/AIDS activist Pedro Zamora and his loyal partner Sean Sasser, in an early San Francisco season. Both a sign of the times and a harbinger of things to come for the genre, the show ended up documenting the dissolution of the family in question after its patriarch was caught cheating. Sex and romance have preoccupied the makers of stateside reality programming since its birth, in the 1973 PBS experiment An American Family. ![]() There’s some irony in the fact that a seemingly unstructured, low-concept Japanese series has managed to tell a love story that feels more authentic and moving than just about anything I’ve ever seen on American reality TV. Romantic relationships like Tsubasa and Shion’s have a unique will-they-or-won’t-they intensity. ![]() Friendships and rivalries develop just as slowly on the show as they do in real life. But because no one seems to be self-consciously performing their personality for the cameras, the character arcs feel more believable, and therefore more resonant. They aren’t all lovable there are spoiled brats, sad sacks and immature manchildren. Thanks to some combination of cultural differences and purer intentions, the producers of Terrace House avoid belligerent exhibitionists, amateur actors and not-here-to-make-friends narcissists in favor of young adults who behave like actual human beings. What separates the show from MTV’s 26-year-old institution-which has been barely-watchable for more than half its run-as well as most other American reality series, is its casting. It is a shining example of what many critics have identified as a new vogue for “nice” reality TV. But unlike The Real World, which notoriously explored “what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real,” Terrace House sees no fundamental conflict between politesse and realness. Like The Real World, it’s premised on the assumption that, when left to their own devices, young singles from a variety of different backgrounds will inevitably find some way to entertain millions of viewers. Set in the sleepy winter-sports enclave Karuizawa, Opening New Doors (whose fourth season appeared on Netflix earlier this week) is the latest installment of a franchise that began with a house in beachy Shōnan and has also set series in Tokyo and Hawaii. This is the magic of Terrace House, a Japanese reality phenomenon that throws six strangers together in a gorgeous home and… well, that’s about it. Yet-with the possible exception of the Valentine’s Day scene where Shion surprises Tsubasa with a bouquet of flowers and the confession he likes her-that chaste, awkward, split-second kiss is the most romantic thing I’ve seen on TV this year. When their lips finally touch, for the briefest moment, their bodies remain as far apart as two kids stiffly slow dancing at a middle school semi-formal. The show isn’t exactly documenting an explosion of untamed passion Tsubasa, a quiet hockey star who’s been too focused on her sport for the past several years to date, initially backs away as her affable, laid-back model boyfriend leans in. ![]() Ten minutes and 33 seconds into the 20th episode of the Netflix reality series Terrace House: Opening New Doors, Tsubasa Sato and Shion Okamoto share their first kiss.
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