Average Nooooooooooo!

(Warning: This post contains spoilers...but not 'til the end.)

Okay, what the fuck? Did they not screen properly or was this part of the plan all along? If one of the Average Joes is a millionaire, doesn't that make him not at all average?

I also got really tired of the voice-over about "looks vs. charm." Because it's not like Adam is bad-looking. Sure, he could lose a couple of pounds and his teeth are too big for his mouth, but he's not like those guys who were eliminated in the first round. (Adam on kissing Melana tonight: "My stupid big teeth got in the way." At least he knows!) On the other hand, what is it about these shows that makes people write lame-ass poems?

I've been a little confused over the weeks by how long the taping of this show lasted, and tonight we found out it was five weeks. Isn't that a really long time, or do I just watch a lot of really low-rent reality TV? Boy Meets Boy was only a week, I think. Who are these people that they can pick up and leave their lives for five weeks? Especially without the promise of a million dollar prize like on Survivor?

At one point, Melana said (in voice-over), "After the way I felt on the first night, I would have never guessed that I could have such strong feelings for someone --" and there was an incredibly obvious cut. I want to know what she said next! 'Cause again, if it's not "with humongous teeth," I'm not sure what she could have said about Adam.

Towards the end, there was a montage of all the guys, and someone looked at the camera and said "Remember Wally!" Um, I don't remember Wally. At all.

Every time Jason opened his mouth in this episode he seemed dumber and dumber. "When we first met, it was all superficial, but now it's, like, deeper." Yeah, like when you first meet anyone, and then spend a bunch of time with her?

The Rocky montage of Adam working out was just degrading. I know I shouldn't expect anything more, but they've stayed away from that for the last couple of weeks. Speaking of staying away, where was Kathy Griffin for the first 90 minutes of this episode? Hello, she's the best thing about the show!

Okay, there's no avoiding it, on to the final decision. Or as I like to call it, Melana is a Big Stupid-Head.

"To me he's the total package," said Melana of Jason. Um, apparently Melana likes her packages dumb, living with their parents and taking 8 years to finish undergrad.

To be fair, if Melana is what she appeared to be (and given what I'm about to say, that's not a fair assumption to make) then I can only assume the producers/editors were playing us this entire episode. Every time we saw Adam he was charming and sweet and he and Melana were getting along fabulously, and whenever we saw Jason he was dull, kind of a schmuck (I know I don't know much about the mating habits of the heterosexus americanus, but I think if you're actively trying to get your date drunk, maybe you should be a little subtle and not order her two drinks at once), and seemed to have little to talk about with Melana. (There was plenty of kissing with both couples, so "nothing to talk about" isn't some kind of euphemism for constant sex.) Yet I'd like to believe, from what we've been shown of Melana, that she truly felt more chemistry with Jason, but we just weren't allowed to see it. On the other hand, she rationalized her choice with this: (I'm paraphrasing here) "Adam has stronger feelings for me than I do for him so I'm sending him home." My translation: "Jason and I are both lukewarm about each other, and that makes for a much better couple." The hell? I guess there's some kind of logic to that, not wanting to hurt Adam, but if she likes him too...it just sounds weird to me.

This whole episode was clearly designed to mislead the viewer. First the unbalanced portrayal of the guys, and then they broke with dating show convention and showed the acceptance before the dumping. This was torture, because we had to watch Adam get dumped knowing he was getting dumped, when he thought he was getting on the prize plane. And I'm convinced that someone wrote her speech to Jason, because it was cleverly constructed to make us think she was rejecting him at first.

It's funny, at the beginning of all this I was really harsh on Adam, and tonight I was not only rooting for him, I found myself feeling actively hostile towards Melana for not picking him ("It tore me up, literally, to send Adam home." Really? Literally? Then I wanna see BLOOD.) That has a lot to do with the manipulation of the producers, and for that I tip my imaginary hat to them. Because let's face it, I and many other people who should know better were totally hooked. And that's just good TV.

Is it totally wrong then that I'm looking forward to Average Joe 2? It looks like they managed to find a bunch of guys even dweebier and creepier than the first set. It's really hard to believe it's not Fox.