Monday, January 6, 2003

JOE MILLIONAIRE: Well, hot frickin' damn, that was some quality television to start up the new year.

I kid you not. Now, I certainly had my trepidations about the show -- was it just going to be The Bachelor with a wicked, humiliating money shot at the end? Was there going to be nothing original to it but the twist at the end -- that Evan Wallace, recent inheritor of $50 million and your host at a French chateau, was really just Evan Wallace Marriot, $19,000/yr construction worker and part-time model?

Thankfully, no. There's a there there, and that there, primarily, is the imperfections in our man-about-France. First off, he seems like a genuinely decent guy -- which is to say that he's cognizant of the moral thicket he has willingly waded into, and he's already expressed his qualms about engaging in this Big Lie with these twenty women. Moral Conflict = Good Television.

Two: the Fox producers haven't trained him perfectly in the art of posing like a multi-millionaire. Yes, we got a lot of footage of the butler quizzing him on wine choices (Pheasant? White. Steak? Um, red? Foie gras? What's that?), and trainers to get him started on etiquette and dancing lessons. But they haven't provided him with a full backstory as to where he came from, where the money came from and whether he plans to work again soon. This produced a lot of stumbling, a lot of "uh"s, and a real long pause when he was asked what his middle name was -- since they were using his real middle name as his fake last name. (He eventually offered up his mother's maiden name, "Elder").

So, we've got the constant risk factor of it all falling apart. Again: this is Good Television.

Three: we've got a butler. Let's just call him Jeeves. He's a learned confidante, he's got a British accent, and he's snooty. Bravo. Nice touch. Everyone loves butlers.

There are drawbacks: first of all, of course, this is trashy, humiliating, degrading television which should shame us all for its existence, let along watching it. Shame, shame, shame on all of us.

Okay, now, with that minor disclaimer out of the way, it should be noted that we've only got 20 women, already down to 12, and down to 5 next week. That's a bit fast. Other than that, it's too soon to get a good read on our cast, whether they'll be as memorable as the women of MTV's Sorority Life or just another garden variety troupe of schemers, dreamers and halfwits.

Also, there's a female host (Alex McLeod, formerly of Trading Spaces) who's sucking the life out of the room like having your grandparents chauffering you on prom night, and is just unnecessary. More Jeeves, less Alex.

Finally, there's a serious problem with Our Hero: he somehow thinks that by lying to women and claiming that he's rich, eventually it will allow him to figure out who'll love him for who he is. Now, that'd have worked in reverse -- a rich man poses as average to find out who'll love him for who he is, not his money -- but it doesn't make sense here. In the real world, if you lie to someone and boost your credentials, she generally isn't too fond of hearing the truth later on. His justification for being on the show doesn't make any sense when you think about it.

Aw, who cares? It's trash tv, and it's good trash, because unlike most reality tv, it acknowledges its own immorality, and rather than revel in it, Our Hero's got some problems with it. Good. Will he find true love? Will he want to, once he realizes what he's done? Will the butler get some?

All this and more, for the next month or two, on FOX. (And to think I was worried about my Monday night viewing once the football regular season was over . . .)

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