Joe Millionaire, Episode 2: Reality Bites

Posted on January 13, 2003

I just finished watching the second episode of Joe Millionaire, the Fox Network's amazing attempt to kill the golden egg of reality programming. By now, surely you've heard of the premise: the construction worker who pretends to have inherited $50 million and a French chateau invites twenty women to vie to be his wife. Under the auspices of the delightfully acerbic butler, Paul Hogan, the women are forced to endure humiliation after humiliation in order to win the prize: one Evan Marriot, ex-underwear model, ex-bellhop and current construction worker. He's no suave sophisticate, that's for sure. He's sort of tall, dark and dorky, if you ask me. But the halo effect of that fabulous chateau and all that money has these girls treating him like a cross between Brad Pitt and Albert Schweitzer.

Tonight's episode was a corker. The first group of women was forced to slog through the mud of a nearby vineyard and pick grapes in the rain while their hair either frizzed or fell limp, depending on whether the owner was originally curly or straight-haired to begin with. The second group was forced to shovel coal into a fiery, smoky furnace of a train before they were allowed to get on board (one presumes the Fox attorneys had those waivers signed beforehand, as well as signed affidavits that none of the women suffered from asthma). The last group showcased women mucking out a barn before they were allowed to get on some of the sorriest horses still alive in France - on English saddle, no less (the attorneys hard at work again, no doubt). One girl burst into tears when her horse refused to go any further, and -- feeling a bit peckish -- stopped for a snack of delicious grass. She -- the girl, not the horse -- got cut later in the show.

Evan was forced to choose only five women to get an incredibly cheap-looking sapphire and diamond necklace and four days in Paris. Everyone else got a one-way ticket home.

So, is this guy for real? He offer soliloquies about how he wants to find true love with someone who loves him for who he is. And he says he feels guilty about lying to the girls. He's not really unlikable, oddly enough. In fact, he's strangely without personality, if you ask me. He has yet to offer one personal opinion on anything: his taste in music, books (ok, that's a stretch, I know), or even the weather. Does he have a dog? A computer? A family? One thing's for sure: he's got the ratings. And in tv-land, that's all that really counts.