Did you watch Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire? on the Fox Network? Well, of course it was on Fox, home of highbrow entertainment on the order of Car Wrecks So Gruesome You’ll Vomit, Part 4.
You expect to wade in the shallow end of the gene pool when you flip to Fox.
But this. THIS. Fifty women competing to marry a man they’d never met in a two-hour competition wedged between commercials for mouthwash and macaroni complete with a legal wedding at the end of the show.
The women looked normal. Most were very attractive in a five-foot-ten, 118 pounds kind of way. If you like that type.
The multimillionaire’s identity was kept top secret. Viewers, and more important, prospective brides, just saw a shadowy profile from a distance. When he was making notes you could see one hand, attached, I thought, to a long, hairy tentacle covered with green scales, but maybe that was just my imagination.
These women didn’t care. When the mystery millionaire narrowed his choices to ten, they giggled and hugged the pouty-faced contestants beside them and skipped on to the beachwear competition.
At this point, I wanted badly to huff about how repulsive and degrading TV had become and read a, whatchamacallit, book or something.
But I couldn’t turn away.
There were great comic moments such as when one of the five finalists (by this time they were all wearing actual wedding gowns, I kid you not) said that she believed that too many people were emphasizing “the money part” of the show, that this was about “re-la-tion-ships.”
Right. That’s why next week Fox plans to follow with Who Wants to Marry an Unemployed Roofer With a Drinking Problem? I’ll be looking for Little Miss Relationship on that one.
Like any beauty pageant, the best part is the “interview segment” where they get to talk about stuff like if they could be any piece of cutlery in the kitchen drawer which would they pick and why.
When the host (a fairly no-name actor who must’ve gotten the gig because Carrot Top has some standards after all) asked the “gals” to name three things their new husband could do to make them happy and three things that would upset them, not a single one of them could count.
“Welllll,” they’d drawl coquettishly, “I guess if he surprised me with a little romantic getaway that would make me happy and if he got moody that would bother me.” While the audience waited expectantly for more pearls of wisdom, none came. Three. It’s that number after two.
Now, of course, we know that the millionaire and his bride, a blond emergency room nurse who shoulda had better sense, returned from their Caribbean honeymoon separately. Oh, and we’ve learned the groom once had a restraining order against him after an ex-girlfriend said he hit her and threatened to kill her.
An embarrassed Fox canceled the rebroadcast of the show, which was one of the highest rated ever, but don’t expect the corporate remorse to last. Somewhere you just know somebody’s got that honeymoon on video.