I realize you may not be able to hear me over the general choir of groaning that this post will explore current reality television, but I assure you, there is some good news here.

I’ve now seen the first two episodes of the current season of the Real World, where not 7, but 8 lucky twenty-somethings get picked to live together to see what happens when people stop being polite blah blah blah.

What’s most interesting in this season is that – at least in these first two hours – the show has deemphasized the sex-crazed shenanigans of the past half-dozen seasons. Instead, the group is diversified to a point beyond any kind of legitimate “real” world. However, thrown in with the very straight-laced metro-sexual Mormon, the aspiring dancer, the guy with the abs, and the guy with Iraq-related PTSD, are a gay man (who used to train dolphins at Sea World – awesome), a girl that – up until her present relationship – used to date women exclusively, and a transgendered woman.

Looking at that roster, that’s a pretty hefty dose of sexuality for our impressionable youth. I couldn’t be happier. In these first shows, it’s interesting how the show is edited; clearly the two gentlemen that are not used to/comfortable around homosexuality are coming off the worse for wear. Their reactions and types of jokes they make are clearly supposed to be “not funny” to viewers at home. The way they speculated about their transgendered roommate – going as far at one point as referring to her as “it” – isn’t something that they’ll be getting praise for after the season is over. And when one of these guys is pecked on the lips by a drag queen at a gay bar, the way he violently wipes his lips and looks disgusted is downright upsetting (though this, unlike the other examples, is contrasted with the delighted cackles of the rest of the roommates).

Sure, the show is likely to devolve into fights, hook-ups, and tears in the coming episodes. However, for now, the Real World is opening up concepts of – and flat-out endorsing – tolerance for the millions watching the show. That’s got to be worth something, right?