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 Three: In which Evan gets freaked out.

Having whittled his harem down from 20 to a paltry five, Evan whisks his "girls" off to gay Paris, a land where things are expensive, food is gross and the Moulin Rouge is the most photogenic locale. Evan will go on five dates, and eliminate one girl.

Date one: Mojo. SWF, "24," Blondish hair with 1989 bangs, in it to win it, ISO real man to "take her away" from her life. Has nice rack, awesome grandma. Music from the Jaws soundtrack plays in our heads as Evan chooses Melissa Jo, aka "Mojo," as his first date. "She's got that suck-you-in aura," says Evan excitedly.

"Mojo is ... different," says Melissa M. tactfully in voice-over, as Mojo parades in front of the other girls in a nondescript black dress and a big, floppy, male-repellent hat. "She's got no style at all."

The other girls ooh and ahh, telling her she looks great, while Mojo describes Evan in voice-over. "He's a maaan," says Mojo, who, if you think about it, has yet to say a single sentence beyond a first-grade reading level. "I'm sure he can teach me a few things!"

After a hotel suite scene where Mojo is presented with several gowns to shimmy on in front of Evan, the two sit down for a lavish dinner.

"She was constantly staring at me," says Evan. "She kinda freaked me a bit." At a loss for conversation and running out of interesting new ways to stare, Mojo is forced to make thinly veiled sexual comments about the food. "The tomato squirted at me!" she squeals. Then hollow, painful silence. Back to staring.

"We were making up stuff to talk about," complains Evan as they head to their next venue, the fabulous Moulin Rouge (you know, from the movie!) and describes dinner as "a total disaster."

After strolling into the theater as paparazzi inexplicably snap their picture, Evan and Mojo sit near a stage while women in flouncy dresses dance. "Every time I went to tell her something, she would turn around and hit me in the face with the hat!" Evan whines. "Can you lose this hat please?"

Date two: Melissa M. A curly-haired, cute-as-a-button brunette with a tendency to compare herself to a princess, Evan to a prince or the show to a fairy tale.

"This isn't the normal dating scenario," Melissa whines before her date. "There's the whole thought of pride, rejection, competition!"

Melissa and Evan's date begins as they stand in front of the Eiffel Tower! "I felt like a princess," marvels Melissa.

"It's a structure," Evan says, trying to impress her with his architectural knowledge.

They soar to the top (in a "private elevator!"), where they look out over Paris through heavy rain.

"I knew she thought I'd rented the entire tower," says Evan. "The truth is, it was raining and we were the only fools out there."

Melissa M., unaware she is being called a fool, is mesmerized by the view. "I saw him watching me to see my reaction to everything," she says forebodingly. "That made me feel so ... special!"

"Let's go back to my place," suggests Evan. "I got somethin' for ya'" Instead of the expected full-frontal nudity, he presents Melissa with an extremely unflattering portrait of her he's commissioned from a street artist.

Could that artist have been Mojo in disguise? Because the buck-toothed, gummy, accidentally Picasso-like portrait is hideous!

"I love it!" Melissa says. And Evan leaves, grinning.

"Holy gift on the first date, Batman!" yells Alison as if she's practiced all night. "What do you do with a portrait of yourself?" The answer is, predictably: hate it. We can almost see Melissa imagining putting the portrait in storage in one of the many dungeons of her castle the day they get back from the honeymoon.

Date three: Sarah. Prissy, rockin'-bodied blonde ISO some hot leg action. Loves to kiss and tell.

"Sarah's not afraid to talk, that's for sure," says Evan as he prepares for the date by flexing around in boxer-briefs.

"She's self-absorbed," snarls Paul, the butler with the sixth sense, as Sarah is seen in various stages of primping and whining about the bags under her eyes.

"She's got a great little rockin' body," Evan says appreciatively, and presents Sarah with high heels and an outfit that involves a shockingly correctly pronounced bustier, in preparation for their tango lessons.

"It was sensual. I got my leg on him," Sarah gushes about their tango session. After the dancing, Evan escorts Sarah to her hotel room and, when it's time to say goodbye... leans in for the show's first REAL KISS!

Back at the cathouse, Sarah waves goodbye to any class she may have inadvertently picked up in Paris and dishes about her date to Melissa. It goes like this:

Sarah: "And my leg was on him and ... did you kiss him goodnight?"

Melissa, deep breath: "Just on the cheek."

Sarah, smugly: "Oh. Ours was a little ... more."

"I like suave guys," Sarah says in voice-over. "But I'll take a diamond in the rough." Or, any way she can get a diamond.

Date four: Zora. Smart, pretty, guileless girl-next-door ISO down-to-earth guy who will somehow find a way to love her even though she grew up poor. Cinder-Zora once again meets her prince, but she's nervous because she thinks he'll reject her if he knows of the lower-class status of her birth. Let's just pray that the show's producers have noticed this twist and will make some sort of use out of it!

Zora and Evan sit in a quiet bistro. Zora looks as if she wants to send a strongly worded letter to whoever talked her into doing this show.

"I wanna know what you're about," says Evan.

"That's not really the best topic." Says Zora, implying that she's wanted for child murder. After a few moments of awkwardness she tries to shift gears.

"What's going on in that head of yours?" she asks.

"I'm just taking it all in ... What little you've given me."

They sit out by the river Seine as Evan tries to penetrate Zora's mind. Zora, afraid, ashamed of her past, and sensing defeat, slowly wipes a tear from her eye. If only she could just tell her secret!

"The more I try to win her over, the more she retreats," Evan says in his foreshadowing voice, frustrated by Zora's puzzling lack of sycophantic calculation. As they stroll back to the hotel, Evan, desperate to find common ground, spills the beans: "I mean, three weeks ago I was running a bulldozer!"

"How long ago?" asks Zora, not even seeming to care as she ponders her future as a nun.

Evan corrects himself: "Two years. I meant two years."

"I hope she didn't notice," he says in voice over, and you can hear him biting his lip.

Date five: Alison. Spunky, beautiful redhead who knows what she wants ISO classy, upscale Mr. Suave. Has ability to put honesty before greed. Actually seems to be learning a lesson.

Alison and Evan meet for a date on a yacht. Evan says he wants to see if he "can get her to relax a little."

Evan chokes down his half of a gourmet French dinner and declares it to be inferior to a burger. Alison seems unhappy with this, though it's not very believable that this would bother her so much.

"She has this look of total disgust on her face," Evan says. "Like when you've eaten something bad." Or, like when you've put your life on hold to compete for the hand of a complete idiot on national television.

A few hours and a million eye-rolls later, Evan asks Alison to level with him, and she admits that things are not going well. This is the first honest moment of Evan's interaction with the women. They both relax and enjoy their view of Notre Dame, and Alison chats about her friends. "If all goes well, you'll meet them..." she says, trailing off, and Evan's voice-over is confident. "You don't insinuate that someone is going to meet your friends if you don't expect something to happen!"

Whatever, Evan. Rejected!

Five women. Five dates. But only four emerald necklaces will be given. Despite their editorial placement as opposing forces of good and evil, the title of Queen Not-Good-Enough seems to be a toss-up between Mojo and Zora! The host-lady comes out to help deliver the bad news. First, Sarah The Kissed gets a necklace. Then, mop-top Melissa M. Then ... Mojo!

"Mojo's gorgeous." Evan says. "And she's got that stick-to-itiveness." It's time for the final name, and ... nobody puts Zora in a corner! "There's something intriguing about her, and I want to keep her around." Evan explains.

The camera pans to poor Alison. The rejecter is now the rejected. "Don't do this to me," she prays aloud to an unseen and uncaring God.

"I would never live up to her expectations," Evan says sadly.

"He'd like to chase after her," decrees Paul the Omniscient Butler, wistfully. "But I don't think he knows how to. A faint heart never won a fair maiden."

And with that, we skip to a preview of the next installment of the Princess and the Pea and the Beast and the Stepsisters, where we learn that late night rendezvous will lead to fainthearted Evan getting "half-NEKKID."

Will Zora find the courage to tell Evan the shameful secret of her poverty stricken past? Will Mojo reveal her evil banality in a way obvious enough for Evan to comprehend? Will the others do anything remotely interesting? We'll find out next week.

— Lindsay Robertson (lindsay@lindsayism.com)