I remember catching wind of For Love or Money right around the time that Joe Millionaire was just struggling its way off the air. Scott and I had made a habit of heading over to our local pub to watch old Joe, finally growing so comfortable that we’d belly up to the bar, scoff peanuts and soak up the free beer we were offered by the bartender who thought we were funny.

“Greetings, I am designated Rob Campos, alleged star of For Love or Money. I have volunteered myself for this exercise to help understand what it is you humans call… love. How can love make you feel so happy and yet so… sad? It is in error. It does not…! brrzzt! Does not… bzzt! Does not … gzzzrt! compute!”

We both enjoyed Joe Millionaire intensely, to the point that we watched it to the exclusion of all else. Wrestling, which had started our weekly pilgrimages to the bar television, was discarded altogether; I even have a faint memory of us pushing the NHL Playoffs into the background just to hear if there would be more slurping and smooching between Dunderheaded Evan and his harem. There was just something so compelling about the show, a lure that drew us in and guaranteed our viewership.

Actually, there were two things:

  1. Utterly despicable contestants, and
  2. a profound, totally cruel deception at the heart of the show.

Joe’s conceit was, of course, that a low wage-earning bohunk would be plucked from his blue-collar lifestyle and dropped into a world of fabulous wealth. There, he would be groomed by the producers of the show into a figure who reasonably resembles a wealthy person, and then unleashed upon a group of women who have no clue about his true origins. Ideally, this would translate into a fascinating study about the competition between greed and genuine affection, with the audience witnessing which women would fall on which side, and siding with Evan as he attempts to choose the right person.

In reality, oh, in reality — what a mess.

Not that anyone blew themselves up on the show or anything, but it quickly became apparent that there was no protagonist in Joe Millionaire. The most likable contestants were edged out almost immediately, leaving a group of finalists who included a woman who didn’t know the difference between “missionary” and “mercenary”, and another who made weird, sexless bondage movies to make money in college. Joe Millionaire himself ended up being a hopelessly thick, painfully boring prize for the ladies to win, rendering the whole exercise even more pointless than most reality television.

Above: Rob Campos’ promotional legal lighters provide physical evidence for For Love or Money’s argument that women will tolerate any level of eely scumbag if enough money is involved.

And yet we couldn’t stop watching. It was a train wreck, but it was the best train wreck we’d ever seen. You just couldn’t wait to see how much worse it could possibly get. Crying on horses! Blow jobs in forests! Subtitles of blow jobs in forests! “I’m really mercenary that way”! Zora, the adorable old-lady-helping cripple-loving charitable softcore boobie movie star!

It never ended. And through it all, there was a producer at NBC who was watching the whole thing and thinking to himself, “This lying and greed is great, but I’m very concerned about the ambiguity: This is just not misogynist enough.”

“I have questions that are unanswered,” he went on, in his head. “How am I to know whether these women are truly evil, or whether some of them might be decent? This does not expose female behaviour so much as it merely illustrates it. I need to do something about this.”

And so was born the concept for Bitches Can Sure Be Greedy, Can’t They?, which was, for legal reasons, later re-titled to For Love or Money.

For Love or Money sought to continue the process that Joe Millionaire started, building a show around a central lie involving a million dollars. The reversal came in placing the million dollar secret in the hands of the contestants, blowing the competition wide open and sweeping away any pretense at romance. Whichever woman that the bachelor, Rob, chose would win the money.

Let the catfight commence.

Above: Erin dons her lucky necklace, strung with a pouch full of shattered male souls, as she prepares for her turn to play in For Love or Money II: Men Are Still Victims.

The self-sealing thesis of this is absolutely brilliant. At the heart of the show, place an even greater doofus than even Joe Millionaire, who is, for any useful purpose, the victim. Leave him with the impression that these women are clawing and biting each other to win his attentions. Watch as even the most disinterested of the women gaze at him lovingly during their Dream Dates. Listen as the contestants pop out sound bites like, “Forget this guy, I’m in it for the money!”

Even if Rob, who was as charismatic as a pocket calculator, had stayed a warm and friendly — if utterly bland and robotic — guy for the duration of the show, this would have been perfect. But the true genius of the show’s construction was truly realized when Rob turned out to be a lecherous, drunken asshole. Fairly early in the show, Rob decided that the best way to charm and dazzle a group of attractive women was to drink too much and sexually harrass them. Convincing two of them to pull off his boots so he could leer at their breasts and ass, respectively, and then draping himself over the rest of the group in the hot tub, he managed to prove in the space of an evening that he was hardly a prize worth competing for.

But the show just kept on rolling, the women kept on competing, and the show just kept on saying, “See what happens when you put money in front of women? You see? They lie to you, just like my fucking ex-wife.” You know, if shows had ex-wives that it hated. You get what I’m saying. With Rob as the victim, the show gave the audience greedy women preying on a hapless dupe; with Rob as a lecher, the show gave us hypocritical women willing to do anything for money. It didn’t seem possible, but somehow the show managed to dial itself up into a realm previously unexplored.

And in the end, a final twist. One of the two remaining women would be chosen by Rob, and then face a choice herself: the man, or the money. And which did Erin, the winner, the woman selected over the almost painfully adoring Paige, choose? Not RoboRob, no sir. She took the million.

I’ve heard it argued that in fact, For Love or Money is actually an empowering display, that it demonstrates that there are women who are clever enough to take advantage of a game show and smart enough to take a huge grand prize when offered it. Would I, for example, have chosen Rob over the sum of a million dollars? When there are times when I have clipped things off of my toes that have demonstrated more personality? Absolutely not — but being accused of acting like a gold-digging vixen isn’t a big problem for me any more, either. Joe Millionaire redeemed itself entirely through Zora, the only reasonably genuine human to appear on the entire program; For Love or Money defined itself through Erin, a woman depicted as being just interested enough in Rob to take his money.

Christ, and now there’s a sequel! Erin’s the bachelorette now! And the guys are going after her and the million dollars! The tables are turned, viewers, so hold on to your seats! But wait — what’s that? Erin’s going for double or nothing? That she actually takes a ring from the guys when she kicks them off, rather than giving them a token when they continue? She gets twice the money the guys do if they pick her over the cash? And if they pick the money, she loses hers?

Tune in next week, for the next exciting episode of That Skank Is Playing You Like a Fiddle.