Joe Millionaire
Fox
Mondays, 9pm / 8pm Central

"Joe Millionaire" is a seven-part reality series in which 20 women vie to marry a dashing millionaire named Evan. The catch: He's a construction worker who makes $19,000 a year. The women are eliminated until Evan chooses his bride and reveals his secret, leaving the winner with an ostensibly heart-wrenching decision. Flak will provide spirited commentary on every episode each Tuesday morning.

Part Two:
In which Evan gets waist-deep in something.

"Once there was an average Joe, who made a humble living by simply moving dirt..." So begins the second installment of our silly fairy tale, as once again we join Evan Marriott, his butler, Paul, and the 12 remaining "girls." It's time to watch the misspoken clichés and bad analogies pile up like, oh, leaves on a rolling stone.

"I'm waist-deep in it now," whines Evan in the four-minute-long opening promo, showing us the ethical agony he will feel in future episodes as his web of lies thickens. "It eats my brain out." As if inspired by the Hayley Mills classic The Parent Trap, Evan decides to take his favorite gold-diggers on yucky, dirty outdoor field trips to prove their mettle. He begins by choosing four women to go on the first group "date," picking grapes in the freezing cold at a nearby vineyard. What better way to see the girls' true colors than by giving them pointless fake chores to do?

"Should I be pulling the uglies off?" asks Melissa M., examining a bunch of grapes and foreshadowing Evan's end-of-episode herd-culling ceremony. Evan's plan seems to go awry as none of the girls takes to frozen-fingered grape harvesting, and he's off to the next date.

After a sweltering coal-shoveling session, the next group of unwitting dupes joins Evan for a train jaunt across the French countryside. The other girls sulk and stage-sigh as Melissa Jo (aka "Mojo"), monopolizes Evan with her sparkling conversation as Evan's voiceover narrates. "Mojo is a good-looking girl who will definitely match wits with me," he gushes. Truer words were never spoken, as Mojo regales her captive audience with tales of how married her sisters all are. We also learn that she's willing to move anywhere "just to take me away," and that her grandma is "awesome."

The next caper brings Evan and a new crop of girls to a barn, where they muck stalls before going horseback riding. Everyone has issues with "horse doo-doo," except first episode golden girl Zora, who has to be coaxed away from the manure pile. Dayana, a self-described "princess," breaks both fashion and logic rules with her stiletto heels, prompting sensitive poet Evan to describe the date as "about as romantic as an iodine enema." The riding jaunt goes swimmingly at first as Evan admires Alison's initiative in taking the lead. "And she looks like a million bucks," he says, smiling, and then becomes serious, gravely reminding us, "Not that I know what a million bucks looks like."

Suddenly, a crisis arises: Heidi is not getting enough attention! Her horse is being "disobedient" and it's time for a good cry to remind Evan of her existence. In voice-over, Heidi bravely reveals her very rare handicap — "fear of being on something that she can't control" — and they all head back to the stable. Back at the castle, anxious Top Gun-esque music plays and the girls are shown in voyeuristic grainy black-and-white, lounging on the floor and glancing back and forth at each other. A bomb has been dropped. Heidi has a boyfriend!

"I always said I'd be married by the time I was 23," Heidi says, by way of extra-crazy explanation. "I don't want to look back when I'm 40 at a missed opportunity."

For a few minutes the other girls gang up on Heidi once again, furrowing their well-plucked brows and declaring worriedly that they "feel bad for" Evan because Heidi is "being dishonest" with him. They discuss spilling the beans in hopes of disqualifying her, but someone off-camera must explain how transparent that is, because they grudgingly give up just in time for the next revelation: tomorrow morning five of them will be chosen to stay, and seven will be eliminated. "Holy cow!" someone shouts, as sure-thing Melissa M. tries her best to look worried for the camera.

The girls wake up the next morning and the death march begins. "It's like survival of the fittest," one amateur evolutionary biologist muses as they get purtied-up to be mostly rejected.

Meanwhile, Evan gives his butler, Paul, the list of girls he's chosen to stay in the game. Paul seems pleasantly surprised at Evan's choices, and they head over to deliver the news. The host-lady makes her appearance and five super-symbolic sapphire necklaces are dangled in front of the drooling group.

You could cut the manufactured suspense with a knife as the names are slowly announced. Predictably, Zora and Melissa M. make it, along with "red hot" Alison, and "hot but uptight" Sarah. Just one girl is left. Heidi looks nervous.

And the last girl is...Mojo! It seems her Dorothy Parker-like wit has drawn Evan in — he must really believe her grandma is awesome! Mojo doesn't even try to hide her smug self-congratulation as the necklace is bestowed, and a new Heidi is born. Paul announces it's time for the uglies to get ready to leave while the chosen ones pack for four days in Paris!

"Random!" screeches Heidi, who apparently doesn't realize that nobody cares about her anymore. "I've never seen anyone make such random choices!" And to top it off, it seems Heidi's bag is missing and she must sit in the foyer wearing sunglasses and tossing snide comments at butler Paul in French (presumably to show the injustice of her exile), until he tracks it down. "It's too bad Heidi doesn't get to stay," says Paul in voice-over. "She could work on her French."

Heidi mutters to herself in French and subtitles pop up: "I have no happy. You no find bread baggage." And with that, whether Heidi has closure or not, she and all of her baggage are sent back to her now-probably-ex-boyfriend, doomed to look back at age 40 and realize she missed the opportunity to not be a bitch in front of 20 million people.

Next week: Eat your brain out, Evan, and prepare for your modest wits to be matched by Mojo, Zora, Sarah, Melissa and Alison in the City of Lights!

— Lindsay Robertson (lindsay@lindsayism.com)