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Ode to "Joe Millionaire"

2/18/03

Back in December, when I first started seeing ads for “Joe Millionaire”, I remember the feeling I had when they showed those first few promos during football games or episodes of “24”—

That is going to have the best ending of any TV show ever.  Like my boy J-Mann says, “PERIOD!”

You know what has been really interesting about the “Joe Millionaire” phenomenon?  The number of MEN that have been watching the show.  I always think the mark of any truly great non-sports programming is the ability to attract men to watch it every week.  In my humble estimation, of the ~350 people on this mailing list, the women of Bellview watch more non-sports TV programming than the men do.  With that in mind, damn near every guy I have talked to about the show before it aired felt the same way—they were DEFINITELY going to watch “Joe Millionaire”, which is essentially “The Bachelor” with one little twist.

I am a relative newbie to reality programming.  I have never watched “Survivor”, I’ve watched two episodes of “The Real World”, didn’t see “Temptation Island” or “Fear Factor” or “The Greatest Race” or any of those other shows.  Comparatively in this regard, I don’t watch dating shows either; I have watched “Elimidate” three times since moving into my current apartment mostly because my roommate Jon was on the show once (and won).  No interest in “The Bachelor”; shows like “Change of Heart” on down have never turned me on, either.

But, when I first saw that teaser for “Joe Millionaire”—hey, it’s a dating show, where 20 women compete for a guy...except, this guy is NOT the super-rich playboy he claims to be—sealed it for me.  The idea of embarrassing 20 women by making them look like money-grubbing bitches for a full series run, then to tell the “winner” that she wasn’t really dating a $50-million trustafarian, but a $19,000-a-year construction worker...

SHIT NEGRO...THAT’S ALL YOU HAD TO SAY!

Seriously, ladies, I wish you could have been in on some of the hilarious conversations I had with guys about the show before it premiered.  It was like when you talked to a buddy after the Super Bowl, and you had both seen the trailer for “The Matrix Reloaded.”

J:  Yo, d’you see that trailer for “The Matrix...”
G:  Oh my GOD, that looks amazing...I couldn’t breathe, man...
J:  Hey, when Neo was swingin’ up on dat pole...
G:  OOOOHHHH!  That’s gonna be hot!

No lie, same exact conversation about “Joe Millionaire.”  This was mostly because of the potential for the end of the show, which many of my male friends thought could be the greatest money shot in the history of filmed entertainment.

So, I did what I had to do—set up a Season Pass on TiVo to tape the show each week, and then I watched every show, just to get myself built up for the finale of the series.  That’s right—I could have only watched the first and last episode and still been pretty happy, but to amuse myself, I watched all of the episodes, as Evan Marriott (the Joe in question) cut 20 women down to 12, then to five, down to just two.

Fox did a great job of stringing out what little content they had and turned it into some of the funniest bad television on record.  Who can forget the shocking similarity of the commentary from the 20 women as they were brought by buggy to the chateau where Evan supposedly lived?  “Oh my God!  He must be, like, SOOOO loaded!” mixed with sighs of “Oh my goodness!  This guy is rich!” interpolated with “I’m a money-grubbing whore!  This guy’s got hella cash!”  Or, the catty looks shared when early evildoer Heidi took more than her fair share of dresses, admitted she had a boyfriend and generally treated everyone like a doormat?

The personalities of the women of “Joe Millionaire” did nothing to bolster women’s reps in my eyes, but the production values of “Joe Millionaire” once again confirmed that with a fantastic idea and little else, you too can get a seven-episode series on the air.  Having each episode on TiVo was key, because each hour long episode only contained about 25 minutes of actual show, so skipping through the eight-minute introduction and the extra-long commercial breaks was made decidedly easier as a result.  But, the shows themselves were a low-budget TV fan’s sight to behold.  How about the great, cheap Korg-like softcore music played whenever Evan went off with Sarah to “hang out” off-camera?  Or, in what might be my favorite TV highlight of the last year or two, when Evan talked about a moment during a date with Zora as seeming like it was “straight out of a Disney movie”, complete with slow-motion shots of birds chirping, squirrels frolicking and the like?  Subtitled kissing captions like (slurp)?  Evan’s stunned look when three of the women crashed a date by showing up nearly naked in a hot tub?

Oh, I was laughing my ass off for about 80% of the running time of these shows.  Paul Hogan, an eerily-named Australian, as the butler was fabulous.  His lines at the end of each show dissing one woman or another were always good for a laugh or two.  How about MoJo’s picture puzzle?  Melissa’s comment that “all I have ever wanted to do was to be a mercenary”, instead of a missionary?  Host Alex McLeod, who clearly was intended to be the show’s host but was turned into a non-issue by the show’s finale by not making an appearance, had one job for the first three episodes—be a total bitch to the women that were cut by telling them to leave the chateau by nightfall so that their rooms could be redistributed to those still on the show.

There were so many great moments, yet I still enjoyed watching Evan go on these dates and stumble uncomfortably through a handful of them while having good times on some of the others.  In particular, it was cool to watch Evan’s dates with Sarah, because all of the dates went pretty well and both seemed to have some genuine interest in each other.

But, it is this bit in particular that continues to baffle me—why didn’t Evan choose Sarah in the end?  Maybe I am no genius, which is no surprise to me, but if I go out on five dates with someone and all of them go pretty well, what would make me think that the sixth would not be worth it?  Clearly, Evan was (and should be) concerned with Sarah’s possible interest in him being based on the fact that he has money that Evan really doesn’t have.  But, it seemed like Sarah and Evan were starting to get along great just buddy-buddy, big money fortune or not.  Which makes the selection of Zora even MORE shocking, because...

On their second date, Zora claimed (directly to Evan) that she had no interest in him and no real interest in continuing.  Right there, I remember saying to no one in the room, “Evan, cut her!  She doesn’t even wanna hang out with you any more!”  These up-and-down dates continued, and after the 12 women were cut to five, I felt the conspiracy was on—the producers simply had to have had a hand in Zora’s progression to the final show.  From the beginning, Zora seemed like finalist material—super-nice, down-to-earth, a save-the-world-one-soul-at-a-time substitute teacher that came from an impoverished upbringing.  The second her “I’ve never dated anyone that had money” speech showed up in episode 1, I remember Marnie, Aaron, Wes, and I all sitting there watching and saying, “Oh yeah, she’s going to go all the way.”  But, as the show dragged on, I just couldn’t believe that she made the cut each time.

Sure, there were other problems with the Zora/Sarah comparison.  Even to a blind man, Sarah is RIDICULOUSLY hotter than Zora.  Zora’s sex appeal, if the TV show “Are You Hot?” is any indication, is hovering around zero.  Sarah oozes a sexual energy that none of the other women on the show could even touch.  As the two women commented during a breakfast one day, Sarah is much more geographically desirable; how much more?  BOTH EVAN AND SARAH LIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!!!  Zora never gave anyone the indication that she would move to Los Angeles to date a construction worker; Evan must have considered this.

But, the bottom line with Zora?  She ruined any hopes for the greatest single frame in television history.  Why?  Two big reasons:

1. She is a tougher read than the Buccaneers’ defense on third down in the Super Bowl.  What did Zora do when told that Evan didn’t really have $50 million?  She held the same half-smile she had on her face for Evan’s entire speech.  Nothing!  Not a single diversion of the eyes, not a move of the mouth, nothing.  It was almost like she didn’t hear him when he said it.  But, the more important reason why the shot was ruined?

2. Zora is the hero here.  We don’t want the hero to win, we want THE VILLAIN in times like this!  This is why, if you were like me, you were rooting for Heidi, then MoJo, then Melissa, then Sarah to win “Joe Millionaire.”  All of them would have led to fantastic money shots of women unplugged and really pissed off.  Luckily, we still got a taste of how good those shots would have been by having Sarah laugh uncomfortably when Evan uttered “I’m a heavy construction operator” and then having Melissa suddenly appear in Sarah’s room after getting booted and showing us Melissa’s reaction to Evan’s news through Sarah.

(Aaron, Aimee, Wes, Jon and I watched the double-gasp of Melissa about eight times, thanks to the instant-replay button on TiVo Monday night.  Talk about comedy; this was the show’s second-best shot, after the Disney medley in week four.)

So, as it ends up, “Joe Millionaire” was a good time with a bit of a disappointing payoff.  Not only was Evan’s final choice not very interesting, but the producers angered millions of folks (including myself) last week by showing a clip show of past highlights instead of just finishing the show’s run; with a show that only had five original episodes, a clip show and a two-hour finale that featured about ten minutes of actual relevant stuff, this is one of the greatest ripoffs in recent TV memory.  Hopefully, Fox won’t get greedy and try to sequelize this thing...

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

• Getting an e-confirmation for a trip to Italy:  Opening Weekend

• Getting a gift subscription to Stuff Magazine recently:  $9.50 Show

• Getting the chance to see “Chappelle’s Show” on Comedy Central:  Matinee

• Getting the antenna broken on your StarTac cell phone...for the third time:  Rental

• Getting off a plane and having to dig your car out of two feet of snow in the BWI parking lot at 10 PM...without a shovel:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com