The episode opens with a shot of one of the roommate's alarm clocks -- an acrylic rooster that holds a guitar and squawks, "Heeeeeey, baby, wake up! Come and dance with me!" I know this alarm clock well. My college roommate Jen had exactly the same one, and my other roommate Phung and I loathed it, because Jen had to get up at, like, dawn, and while she had the ability to sleep through the alarm, Phung and I did not, so our morning routine became a round of Phung and me taking turns sharply telling Jen to turn off the damn rooster, and moreover, for some reason, that rooster scared the shit out of me, so I'd generally have strange nightmares involving barnyard animals all morning after it finally shut up, and Phung and I started hating the rooster -- hating it with all the passion we could muster toward an inanimate object -- and then something weird happened to the inner workings of the rooster, and it used to go off at unpredictable intervals -- sometimes when I was alone in the house, and I'd have to go into the dark bedroom, and pull it out from under the bed, and try to turn it off, and it wouldn't turn off, and I had to take out the batteries and it still wouldn't shut up and it was all starting to feel like some potentially gory Stephen King story, so I finally just threw the alarm clock away in the dumpster behind the apartment and when I told Phung she was all, "Thank God," and Jen didn't really even care, because she's really easy-going like that. I think Phung and I pitched in to buy her a new alarm clock though, since, you know, we put out a hit on her old one. Anyway, I really don't appreciate being reminded of The Great Alarm Clock War of 1996, Bunim-Murray, and I'm adding that to the long, long list of grievances I have with the two of you, which also includes "launching, more or less, the reality-show genre, thereby inadvertently leading to my agreeing to recap Big Brother" and "Glenn."

Anyway, the roommates are getting ready to go, en masse, to Mexico, on MTV's dime. Dom and Aaron discuss the number of shoes they're bringing ("Two," Aaron says). Banthony has brilliantly lost her ticket, and searches the house, looking in her lunchbox and the trash can. Beth, Jon, and Tami play rock, paper, scissors to decide which of the three of them is going to have to pay for their communal sunscreen, because they're cheap; and I don't know what Glenn is doing, and, wow, do I not care.

Eventually, Banthony finds her ticket, and the kids get taxied to the airport to catch their flight to South America. This season has had more shots of the airport than any other season of The Real World, I think. I mean, nothing caps the Seattle Space Needle Count, but there's a whole hell of a lot of LAX in this season. I told you, the airport rocks! Dom finds a condom tucked inside his passport, and looks at it like, hey, this might be useful. Once they get on the plane, Dom celebrates his finding by ordering "a cerveza," and it turns out that the beer on the plane is free. For those of you taking notes about where you can score free booze, this is Mexicana Airlines. Long story short, Dom orders a ton of free beer and gets wasted. Can I see a show of hands from those of you who are surprised by this? I didn't think so. A bit later, Dom leans over his pyramid of beer cans to toast Aaron, who's in the seat in front of him. Banthony looks on, all holier-than-thou, a tight-lipped smile on her face. "I can't recall after drink five," Dom says. "Not that I was drunk after drink five. I just don't bother counting." He's surrounded by empties. Dude, how long is the flight from Los Angeles to Mexico? It can't be more than a couple of hours. I guess Dom really does like to drink. I had no idea!