No Bunnies Here

The Series: “The Real World” on MTV at 10 p.m. Thursdays.

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The Setup: Second season of cinema verite roomie watch with a location change from New York to L.A. The formula still involves seven perky strangers, all young enough to be on intimate terms with “The Brady Bunch,” sharing a house in which cameras broadcast their every gesticulation.

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The Costume Designer: None.

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The Look: Using their own money (not a penny from MTV), Beth, Dominic and Irene (front row from left) and David, Aaron, Tami and Jon are presentably dressed and camera-alert 75 hours a week. Too cool to bring along their bunny slippers, the seven provide no major style faux pas, look remarkably like their fictional counterparts on “Melrose Place” and occasionally provide insight into their relationships with their closets.

For instance, David, a stand-up comic from Washington who favors “X” baseball shirts and hooded sweat shirts, explains his predilection for ironing: When he was a kid, his mother scavenged his clothes from dumpsters. Now that he has good clothes, he wants to take care of them.

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Bicoastalisms: Last season’s New York trendies dressed in the pack mentality. They were all heavily into the Gap ad look and anything black. In L.A., the look is highly diverse--from punk to country-Western. Only two of the cast are locals, and in different ways they are absolute examples of L.A. style--Irene, the big-haired Los Angeles County deputy marshal who wears her uniform very tight, and Aaron, the UCLA surfer with golden hair, pearly teeth and Lambda Chi Alpha T-shirts.

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Don’t Try This at Home: Grunge is simply not happening in “The Real World.”

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Hit: Tami, a Vanessa Williams look-alike, has the hippest and most up-to-the-minute look--lots of black leather and an ankh necklace. She confesses to having two warrants for unpaid parking tickets for which she owes about $2,000, money that one assumes she’d rather spend on clothes.

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Miss: Jon, the country singer from Owensboro, Ky., is surgically attached to his cowboy hat and a selection of grotesque, big-patterned cowboy shirts.

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Standby: The great equalizer, from Owensboro to Bel-Air, continues to be a T-shirt promoting something. One day, even Jon wears one (“Just Do It”).