From masks to big money, reality dating shows have offered over-the-top concepts from Day 1. The Bachelor franchise is still going strong in its 14th season. Since its inception in 2002, however, ways to find love on television have hit an all-time low. Let's take a look back at some of network TV's worst (and completely out-there) dating shows.
read more
(Warning: Do not read if you haven't watched the Shield finale and intend to do so.)
Easily the most shattering episode of this TV week came from a show that has delivered the goods for the last 11 hours of what has been arguably The Shield's best season yet.
I'm talking about the cliff-hanger finale of The Shield's split season (10 more episodes are scheduled to air early next year), which really seems to me more like a season finale. The producers have yet to declare the back half of this fifth season The Shield's series finale, but given the enormity of what transpired in this latest episode, my gut tells me that the best creative decision would be for them to wrap the show in these next 10 episodes and go out on a dramatic high.
The dramatic stakes have rarely been more intense as poor Lem (the excellent Kenneth Johnson
read more
Whatever happened to Evan Marriott, 29, after the first Joe Millionaire wrapped? He split a $1 million prize with his chosen one, Zora, and then they split up. "I didn't have to marry her," he says with a laugh, "and she still took half of what I had!"
Once Uncle Sam and Zora took their cuts of his cash, the former construction worker says, "I invested in real estate. It helps that I have a father that's an investment banker." Oh, and he's found a new, cleaner line of work. No, he's not back to underwear modeling. Starting March 17, Marriott will host Fake-A-Date on GSN (formerly known as the Game Show Network).
It's just a guess, but more viewers will likely see Marriott's new dating show than Fox's Joe Millionaire 2, which bombed heinously. "I thought it was a great show," he says of Joe's sequel. "Why the rest of America didn't open their arms up and welcome
read more
Fox may not be able to produce a sequel to its reality phenom Joe Millionaire — the secret being out and all — but we still have to wonder: What if the network reversed the genders and next recruited 20 gold-diggin' studs to drool over a well-to-do Princess Charming? Would viewers find a Jane Millionaire as richly rewarding?
"No," theorizes Evan Marriott, the 28-year-old construction worker at the center of the $50 million big white lie, in an interview with TV Guide Online. "I don't think women are portrayed as breadwinners in America. I think it's an old-fashioned reality that men are the breadwinners."
That said, Marriott believes a female-driven Millionaire would work if producers dangled a different booty in front of her male suitors. "They ought to call it Jane Big Boobs," he suggests with a grin. "They get a woman with big, fake boobs, have all these guys go after her, and then, in the end, she takes them off a
read more
Analyze this, Dr. Joyce Brothers: There are currently six — count 'em, six — reality programs on the networks' schedules, and we can't bear to miss a single one. What does that say about us? We've "grown up with television," she tells TV Guide Online. "[You've] grown up spectators to other people... to other people's baseball playing and other people's football playing... " And, for that matter, other people's hot-tub canoodling and beach-blanket bickering. As a result, says the celebrity shrink, "Some [viewers] think that what goes on on television is much more interesting than real life itself. We've grown a whole generation of spectators." Is that all? Well, what if we favor one show over another? Ah, now that's a different story. Since the doctor is in, let the head games begin.
If you like Joe Millionaire (Mondays, 9 pm/ET, Fox)... Chances are, you're a Dear John-letter recipient whose wrath rivals that of any wom
read more
