"The year is 2035. Obama's Socialist economic policies had given the Western World a final blow only a few decades earlier. Religious fundamentalists and neo-Marxists now rule whatever's left of civilization. The mood on our little planet is somber, and there is generally little cause for laughter - and yet on a small spacecraft that is orbiting the Earth there is incessant giggling to be heard: two robots and a man are watching early 21st-century baloney and having a ball.
Yes: 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' has been revived, thanks in large part to Lars von Trier, Emir Kusturica, George Clooney, and - last but not least - 'Room Raiders'..."
RR is your standard, mindless, MTV pseudo-reality nonsense, about young people making asinine dating decisions based on what they see or sniff out in other people's rooms/houses. The laughable deductive skills displayed here should be enough to give a huge confidence boost to any cop who ever failed his first 28 detective exams.
The typical episode starts off with a 20 year-old airhead of either sex introducing themselves to the viewer. "Hi, my name is Makeesha, and I study Nose-Picking and Journalism at the Cheap Texas University That Enrolls Anyone. I am a cheerleader and I strip in my spare time. My dream is to become a nuclear scientist." After that, we're introduced to three candidates of the (usually) opposite sex... "Hi, I am Ted, and I pump iron, like, every day of the week and stuff". "Hi, my name is Brad, and I love surfing with my dudes." "Hi, I am Skip. I love hip-hop, and what I look for most in a girl is tolerance of my amazingly low IQ." What follows is the three candidates being quasi-kidnapped, thrown into a van (the most annoying part), and then - probably seven hours later - watch the room-raider on a monitor, as he/she snoops around their rooms, trying very hard to crack wise.
The mostly lame jokes - some of which are possibly even written on-the-site by some of MTV's lesser staff - usually involve puerile word-play and sexual innuendo that makes Bacall and Bogart seem like a pair of classy Einsteins by comparison. She-room-raider: "Your room is quite small". He-shirtless-van-bunny: "But I'm not small where it REALLY matters, baby."
I say seven hours later because I assume that's how long it takes the average room-raider to say all of his/her lines right without blowing them. Cut! Take 89!
Sure, RR is fairly moronic, semi-staged, and what-not. However, most of the episodes are fun due to the participants' often endless stupidity and cheerful primitivism. (Small wonder: my guess is that many aspiring actors/models apply for RR.) We're talking real sheep here: guys who try desperately to appear macho at any cost and at all times, and bimbos so dazed that they truly believe they can deduce from a single book that they find under a bed what the guy in question is all about.
There are several running gags. For example, nearly all of the girls who find a condom say something in the order of "condoms? hm... I don't really like seeing that sort of thing in your room". Another hilarious reaction, exhibited by 95% of all room-raiding females, is this: "A letter and a photo from an ex-girlfriend?... I don't like the fact that you had women before me." Ditto whenever they find porn and video-games. What it all boils down to is...: "Hi, my name is Nancy and I don't like guys who had girlfriends, who talk to other girls or even look at them, guys who practice safe sex - or any kind of sex (except when it's with me - IF I let them) - and guys who play computer games or watch porn. That is NASTY." Well, that certainly narrows it down - to about 0.01% of the young male population.
On the other side of the coin, we've often got metrosexual geeks who are offended by the slightest speck of dust landing on their finely-coiffed hair sitting all gel-glued on their soft empty heads. A woman can even be forgiven for judging a man by his clothes collection, but when a guy gets overly upset about what a woman has in her cupboard... One guy actually went through the garbage in a girl's bathroom, and then proceeded to lecture her for her ear-wax sticks being filthy - and without a hint of irony! "Hi, my name is Max, and I really like a girl whose ears are clean even before she cleans them."
There is only one thing a guy should be concerned with when room-raiding: the size of the bras and the underwear (so that he avoids picking out a flat-chested pig).
Which brings me to the matter of casting. Usually, the better-looking the room-raider, the better-looking the three candidates are. Nevertheless, sometimes the makers of RR forget to put on their glasses when casting these knuckleheads, so they end up with a male nerd or a homely librarian-type girl doing the picking and the choosing. (Beggars cant be choosers - and that should go for RR, too.) I wish they'd made more errors in this regard, because nothing beats the amusement of watching the show's 3 van bunnies make disappointed faces after realizing what a dog/dweeb the producers had chosen for them.
Naturally, these being the mindless politically-correct times, eventually someone in the MTV offices had the "brilliantly unique" idea of making homosexual RR episodes. The trouble with that (apart from being nausea-inducing) is that the three gay guys sitting in the van can for fall one another just as easily as fall for the guy who is searching their crap-laden rooms. Hence the outcome of which gay guy is chosen becomes even more moot. But that just shows how bright MTV staff is...
