I was in the gym of our apartment building in Abu Dhabi, doing puny exercise, and the TV up in the corner of the room was stuck on MTV. Not my first choice but my only choice — someone had stripped the batteries out of the remote.

And then came a blast from the past. Old episodes of the series MTV Cribs … including the one Landon Donovan did back in early 2006. That appeared on February 1 of that year, to be specific.

It was a melancholy moment — for me. I had been in that large but tasteful Manhattan Beach house for an interview when Landon shared it with Bianca Kajlich and three dogs and a cat.

I recognized many of the rooms, as Landon led the MTV tour of the place. The couch where I sat during the interview, while Bianca ducked in and out. The counter where Landon had left the L.A. Times crossword puzzle. The cabinet with mementos in it, including the ball from his first Major League Soccer match, signed by his teammates, something he said (to MTV) was particularly special to him. The street where her SUV and his Jaguar were parked.

And the two of them seemed happy. Especially Landon.

On the Cribs episode, he would often enter a room, and while beaming at Bianca he would defer to her to name which room, exactly, they were in now. “The family room … the sitting room” and whatever other names she had that Landon couldn’t quite keep straight.

He was not quite 24 when the episode aired. She was not quite 29. It had to be his first house; she had to have been central to decorating it. He was already a soccer star; she had not yet begun her breakout run with the sitcom Rules of Engagement.

They had met a few years earlier at the ESPYs. They would be married on New Year’s Eve of 2006.

Things didn’t work out. By 2009 they were separated. When Landon scored the winning goal against Algeria at the 2010 World Cup, he had a shout-out for “Binky” … and a month later they reunited (for one last time?) to attend the ESPYs again, where Landon appears to have won three awards. Late in 2010, they were divorced. She remarried in 2012 and had a daughter this year.

So.

It was a fairly big pop culture moment, to be on “MTV Cribs”.

Now, it seems like a potentially dangerous marker in time.

Where someone lived when they were riding high … before the career implosion … before the lawsuit … before the divorce, the bankruptcy, the return to a much smaller and less lavish “crib”.

Among those who did Cribs episodes who probably are ready for a “where are they now” file are Nick Van Exel, Carlos Mencia, Rob Schneider, Andruw Jones, Leah Remini, TJ Housmandzedah — and any number of pop musicians who had faded into thin air.

I wonder how many of the subjects of that show kept a recording of “their” episode and look back on it fondly. I would guess it isn’t many.

The other “cribs” on that February 1, 2006 episode were those of Paulina Rubio, a Mexican singer whose career now seems to be in eclipse (she has reached the “judge on a singing competition” place), and Three 6 Mafia, a hip-hop group with numerous members … and maybe they lived together in some mansion? Or was it one guy’s crib? Anyway, they, too, seem to be fading in relevance.

Up in the gym, they had cobbled together a new episode from various parts. Joey Fatone, the former ‘N Sync star who now appears to be a game-show host, was up first. Then Landon. And the third was (I believe) about Thomas Jones, who had a nice NFL career and a gaudy “crib” … and has been out of football for three years now, and his wiki page says he intends to donate his brain to science — presumably so it can be examined for football-related trauma.

Looking back, the show seems exploitative. Certainly, the subjects were willing, but many of them, athletes and pop music stars, probably had not really grasped that their moment in the sun would not last forever, and neither would the money.

According to Forbes, Landon’s Manhattan house (“5 bedroom, 6.5 bathroom) was put up for sale in 2012 with an asking price of $4.3 million.