Gluttony is another sin of excess. It’s probably the most common sin of excess, although it’s probably the second least-known sin of them all. Gluttony has often been described as the overindulgence of food or drink. People who commit gluttony have more than enough food or drink to survive. They will not share their supply, though, and end up consuming more than they need to. This leads to “waste”. You can probably imagine that gluttony is close to greed in that way. You would also be right in thinking that wrath and/or envy may come from gluttony.
On The Real World, this sin is everywhere. Its most common form on the show is overconsumption of alcohol or binge drinking. The Real World is infamous for all of the wild parties on the show. That’s what people want to see and that’s what the show delivers. You can’t fault the show for that. Thus, gluttony is usually the center of the show. You can argue that on The Real World gluttony is the REAL cause of all of the other sins that occur.
The Denver cast is no different when it comes to wild parties and alcohol. The very first night they went out to all of the local bars and partied it up! There was alcohol flowing freely and I’m sure they didn’t have to pay for anything. When you drink a lot, you become more free. You do things you normally wouldn’t do. When you mix alcohol and beautiful people together you get trouble, especially on this show.
Colie already liked Alex and Alex seemed to like her. But after Alex drank some more with Jenn, they “hooked” up. Jenn later says that this was all due to her drinking a lot of alcohol. She wouldn’t have done that sober as she is friends with Colie and wouldn’t betray her. That’s what she said at least. That’s the first example of how gluttony has caused troule in the house, but not the last.
On the next episode, we saw more drinking involved with Alex and Colie. After things are smoothed out, Alex basically tells her that he enjoys spending time with her more than any other girl. That’s a contradiction from the previous episode, where he said he liked “hooking up” with Jenn more than Colie, since Jenn was “just having fun”. Alex and Colie seem to talk about a serious relationship here, but the next morning Alex changes his mind. He blames the alcohol for that. Alex says that alcohol makes him turn into “Mr. Emo”, the guy that loves everyone and is so sensitive.
We are not done yet, though. The next episode alcohol caused problems between Davis, Tyrie, and Stephen. Everyone went out to drink. (Really this is the first night, but I’ve talked about that elsewhere.) Stephen thinks that Davis didn’t stick up for him, but really Davis is so out of it, because of the alcohol, that he can’t even think straight. This leads to a drunken fight between him and Tyrie, which explodes into an almost uncontrollable situation. Davis wants Tyrie to hit him and all of this. The next day Davis admits that he has a drinking problem. He is embarrassed at his actions and doesn’t want to do this again. But he doesn’t want everyone else to stop drinking and partying because of him.
These are the early examples, but you can almost guarantee that every day and every episode there will be drinking involved. Since the alcohol is free to the roommates, you can bet that there will be overconsumption of it. We haven’t seen much overconsumption of food, but we don’t need to. Gluttony is one of the main focuses of this show. It’s the root of all evil on this show. But it also leads to the best drama and that’s what this show is REALLY all about anyways.
