Las Vegan’s job offers plenty of travel, drama

With the possible exceptions of whoever gets to eat the leftovers on Bravo's "Top Chef" and anyone who comes into contact with Eliza Dushku and her leather pants on Fox's "Dollhouse," the best job on TV has to belong to T.J. Lavin.

A couple of times a year, the native Las Vegan jets off to some exotic land -- Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Brazil, South Africa -- where his biggest responsibility seems to be steering clear of the booze-and-sex-fueled madness surrounding him as the host of "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" (10 p.m. Wednesdays, MTV).

"You know, I really gotta work out hard and really get my body and mind and soul ready for just the devastating impact of wearing flip-flops every single day," the BMX legend-turned-reality TV staple says.

"Nah, it's the easiest thing in the world. It's so cool."

For those unfamiliar with the series, it takes alums from both MTV shows, several of whom have managed to turn reality stardom into a vocation, and splits their time between the often-grueling competitions and their cramped living quarters where the liquor runs deeper than the conversation. Think "Survivor: Mardi Gras."

And every year, whether it's a posh resort or a series of beachside huts, the accommodations always feel as though they've somehow been constructed out of Barry White songs held together by Spanish fly.

This season's erotic entanglements have included guy-on-girl, girl-on-girl, guy-on-guy and guy-on-guy-with-a-girl-caught-in-the-middle -- and almost all of that was in the first episode, which represented the cast's first night together in New Zealand.

"It's not just going there and throwing cameras on a bunch of normal people and seeing what happens," Lavin says. "These people, they're cast for a reason, you know?"

But nothing quite compares to the adventures of CT from "The Real World: Paris."

In the season premiere, he showed up, saw his ex-girlfriend and (allegedly) had sex with some big-haired girl on the roof, all in the first 10 minutes. What followed was some of the year's most riveting TV.

Mistakenly thinking his ex heard about his rooftop rendezvous from his Paris housemate Adam, a drunken CT began beating him bloody while fellow cast members -- who, thanks to a costume party, were dressed as hillbillies, either a generic superhero or a downhill skier, and some Dog the Bounty Hunter-looking guy like something out of either a low-rent wrestling promotion or the world's worst male revue -- tried in vain to restrain him.

Holes were punched through a door, screams pierced the night, and other contestants fell all over themselves trying to get out of the way. CT eventually growled the Mike Tyson-esque "I will smash his head and eat it!" -- a line some of today's best action movie writers couldn't have come up with sober -- before finally being driven away for good as he wiped the blood from his face with the poker-themed footie pajamas Adam had been wearing.

Lavin wasn't around for the mayhem. He only has to interact with the contestants -- whom he swears are "a lot more normal" when they aren't on the show -- during the challenges. But soon after, he had a friend on the production crew show him what he missed.

"It was the most interesting footage I've ever seen," he says of the unedited recording. "I was, like, 'Man, this is great!'... It looked like an episode of 'Cops' mixed with 'The Ultimate Fighter.' "

Other friendships he's made through the series have led to his music -- Lavin has a recording studio in his southwest valley home -- being featured in "Challenge" episodes, as well as on "Making the Band," "The Bad Girls Club" and several other reality shows.

But the greatest benefit of his "Challenge" experience may have been the travel. Lavin had Wednesdays and weekends off during the seven-week shoot in Queenstown, New Zealand, and he fell in love with his surroundings.

"Queenstown is by far the best place I've ever been," he says, adding that once his days on the BMX circuit are over, he hopes to buy a home there and divide his year evenly between Queenstown and Vegas. New Zealand's Southern Hemisphere location would ensure he'd have summer, his favorite season, year-round.

"I'm seriously, like, the luckiest dude ever."

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.