Getting over Joe

Breaking up is hard to do – anyone will tell you. Next week, Americans will have to face their first Monday without Joe Millionaire, the FOX reality TV series that captivated American audiences every Monday night. Last week, as the newly-
millionaired couple danced uneventfully into the credits, my friend turned to me and speculated, “So whatever will we do next Monday without Joe Millionaire?”

I answered her with the resolute advice that must always be administered in the aftermath of a break-up. “You break out the Ben and Jerry’s and you go on. It’ll be hard at first, but you have to move on.”

Any person who is familiar with the stab of deep and sudden heartbreak will affirm: Ben and Jerry’s is necessary, but certainly far from sufficient in the crusade to get on with your life. Moving on requires the Great Purge.

You may have denied all the criticisms leveled by your friends during the bliss of the romantic Joe Millionaire interlude, but now that its over, you must embark on a faultfinding crusade. You must bring these harsh criticisms into the open and
swear off anything you ever saw in Joe Millionaire. You must repeat this exercise, and continue extracting evidence until you ask yourself why you ever bothered to waste seven weeks pining over this absurdity in the first place.

The task may seem daunting. After all, it is difficult to come to terms with why you wasted away your evenings only to be left with a vague sense of loss after the final credits faded to commercial. But take heart, and look to the inspectors
in Baghdad for inspiration: the evidence is there, even if it appears elusive. It may be hidden or disguised or buried under colossal dunes of sand, but the faults are there nonetheless, and you will find them.

Allow me to highlight some key blemishes:

First, don’t be fooled by the French chateau or the extravagant ball gowns: the whole affair was no fairytale. It was nothing about true love. Instead, it was a series of dates in which Evan Marriot tried to show these women the sensitive, unshaven, and bumbling man he was beneath his 50 million-dollar facade.

Meanwhile, the girls attempted incessantly to convince themselves that they could overlook his lack of refinement (Sara: "He doesn't seem to be extraneously intellectual.") and learn to love the shaggy brute anyhow because, if nothing else, he’s loaded.

And loaded is enough. After all, the show wasn’t called Joe Millionaire-and-an- Enlightening-Conversationalist-Too for a reason.

Second, you must convince yourself that Joe Millionaire was just about convenience. He came into your life at the right time, when you had nothing else to do on Monday nights. Joe Millionaire allowed audiences to partake in all the ingredients of the dating charade while offering prayers of thanksgiving that we aren’t going through it ourselves: the painful banality of getting-to-know-you conversations, the bad jokes, the penetrating talks about trust, the Freudian slips (Evan: “Did you bring that breast... that, uh, dress with you, or... uh...?” Zora: “Did you want to finish your sentence?”), the stumbling and slurping off into the
woods, the general sense of cluelessness that emanates from all parties involved, and the final divulging the after-date details. For weeks, Joe Millionaire provided an alternative to braving the singles scene. Instead of getting all dolled up and spending a perfectly good evening hoping somebody notices it, we tuned
in and saved ourselves the hairspray and the taxi fare.

But for all its faults, at least Joe Millionaire made us feel good about ourselves. Men can reassure themselves that while they may not have the chiseled physique of Evan Marriot or the lavish jewelry to keep the chicks coming back for more, at least they would never subject a date to small-talk about toenail fungus
and superglue. Women, meanwhile, can self-righteously proclaim that they would never dream to behave with such promiscuity as to put out like Sara in the woods, only to be rejected with a nationwide reputation as “used goods.”

Some critics of the show tout Joe Millionaire as the poster boy of why society is unraveling at its seams. Old folks shrug their shoulders and ask, “What is America coming to?”

It’s no accident that it was taped in France. The entire concept of Joe Millionaire stands contrary to the ideals of the American Dream. The show turns away from the underlying spirit of the American experience: the belief in one’s ability to
affect his own destiny through personal initiative.

One great hope of Americans is that happiness can be secured through hard work and determination to overcome obstacles and humble beginnings. For a moment it seemed the show would take this turn. As Evan admitted his modest roots and the substitute teacher, Zora, decided she could love him anyway, there
seemed a glimmer of hope that Joe Millionaire might really touch on some deeper part of the human experience. However, the happily-ever-after ending of Joe Millionaire returned to the get-rich-quick-scheme roots of the show when the producers injected a million-dollar check into the equation. Not surprisingly,
Zora’s demure skepticism melted away into giggles of disbelief and the exclamation “I really do believe in fairy tales!”

So it was, after all, about the money. It managed to prove that while love cannot be bought, it can certainly be coerced when people have dollar signs in their eyes. Face it: you can do better.

Don’t spend your Monday nights crying over your loss. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. As soon as the Joe Millionaire credits rolled, commercials for the next big reality TV show crowded the airwaves, eager to fill that empty gap in
your Monday night line-up.