MTV back at debauchery beach

A scene from the first episode of MTV Floribama Shore. Photo / MTV

All told, MTV has spent more of its life grasping for a piece of popular culture than actually affecting it. Besides its vulgar awards shows, occasional hits come and go and ideas are sometimes recycled (TRL as a recent example), but the network's derelict condition rarely improves in the long run. Age may certainly be a factor, but it's hard to remember the last time I heard anyone talking about what's on MTV.

Oh, wait, I do — it was Jersey Shore, the surprise-hit reality series about a group of young party animals living together for summer seasons in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, which aired from 2009 to 2012 and briefly held viewers in a guido grip of voyeuristic astonishment. Fast success elevated the cast members to a fleeting and opportunistic fame; they eventually became future answers to trivia-night questions. (Sure, you can get the names Snooki and the Situation correct, but what about Pauly D? Or JWoww?)

People over 40 like to suggest MTV could solve all its identity problems by returning to its original, all-music video format, but that idea grows more outlandish as time goes by, especially in the Spotify era.

Instead, the network is venturing back to the debauchery of a beach town — this time in the US premiere this week of MTV Floribama Shore (the use of "MTV" in the title already suggests an erosion in brand confidence), where eight young strangers gather in an oceanfront house in Panama City Beach, Florida, and behave precisely as their forebears who settled the first Real World season 25 years ago.

"There is not one other bitch like me," proclaims Kortni, 21, a Panama City Beach local.

After drunkenly urinating in her roommate's bed, she says next day: "I wasn't just blacked out, I was blacked the hell out."

The viewer can see MTV is again clinging to some unworthy aspect of its past, nostalgic for those reality shows where alcohol abuse could be seen as an affectionate quirk or rite of passage. But the luridness of it has lost all meaning. Rather than laugh at Kortni, you think: Someone help her.

Similarly depressing is having to watch and listen as a group of young people adhere to outdated ideas about gender roles. "I have to be a gentleman and a douchebag because I feel like that's what women want," says house heartthrob Jeremiah.