The final episode of "Joe Millionaire" kicks off with Paul the Butler acknowledging his audience's understandable anger at having an hour of our lives mercilessly wrenched away last week by a notorious con artist known as the Fox network. "I understand you were distraught," he says smugly of last week's clip show bait-and-switch, knowing full well the proper word is "furious." No matter, despite last week's expletive-laden boycott vows, we're back again with news of a "surprise twist" and hopes the show will redeem itself with the pageant of public humiliation, catfights and bitter tears we know we deserve. But once again, we are wrong.
The first hour consists of interviews with some of the original 20 girls, who now are all wise to the $50million lie. Most of this is boring — quickly flashing clips of the girls saying the phrase "fairy tale," several girls alluding to Sarah and Evan's tryst in the woods, and someone giving us this motto to live by: "You can't take yourself, or reality television, too seriously."
Mojo, Melissa and Alison all make appearances, but it doesn't get interesting until we catch up with Heidi. Heidi, the spiral-permed, soulless, completely transparent, spoiled Nellie Oleson of the show takes her cue from the sacred moral code of reality television and characterizes her ruthless, pointless and ultimately hopeless embrace of the dark side as "assertiveness." "Girls don't usually like me that much" Heidi explains with an obvious "and I think we all know it's because I'm so hot" subtext. It boggles the mind why anyone would think that a life spent earning the negative regard of more than half of the population of the entire world would be something to brag about, but that's our Heidi.
After revisiting the Two Dresses Incident of the first episode, the subject of Heidi's boyfriend comes up. Heidi explains that if she had gone "into the woods" with Evan during her brief chateau stay, she would have broken up with her boyfriend. "But now we live together!" she says smugly. We then meet Joe (no relation), her boyfriend of eight months. He seems about as smart as Evan, and has lots of nice things to say about Heidi, nearly all of which concern her physical appearance. He says Heidi is the "most funnest" woman he's ever met. We then learn that Heidi is only the third woman he's ever met, and the first two were Barbra Streisand and Martha Stewart. Not really, but isn't that the only scenario in which his statement would make sense?
Next, we learn a little more about Evan. Are his childhood and parents as apple pie as is humanly possible? Yes. Will he compare his family to a Norman Rockwell painting? Naturally. What about the Cleavers? Of course. Let it never be said that Evan doesn't know his pop culture. We see pictures of Evan as a child, learn that he was obsessed with construction equipment even as a young boy and that his brief foray into modeling (those ridiculous underwear catalog shots flash across the screen) was so unsatisfying that it drove him running back to the construction site.
We learn all about Sarah's high school popularity and her four years in Los Angeles. We're treated to stills of hands and feet tied with ropes with the label "simulated images" across the bottom as Sarah brushes off her "fetish modeling" as tame by L.A. standards. The show's allusions to this gossip-page item, Evan's modeling shots and the poor reception of last week's episode combine to give an unsettling Adaptation effect. Even though it already seemed pretty obvious that the "revelations" about Evan and Sarah's respective pasts were leaked to the press by Fox, it feels odd when the real-life reaction to the show is alluded to on the show. It's like seeing a reference to reviews of a movie in the movie itself.
Next up, sweet Zora. We learn that not only is Zora a kind and compassionate person the way everyone is when their friends talk about them on television, she also appears to actually demonstrate this purity of heart by visiting the elderly in nursing homes and living in a house without heat. Zora even speaks of wanting to sell the jewelry she was given on the show so she can send the money to a sick aunt in Yugoslavia. Twenty million people search Zora's eyes for any sign of false altruism, but she comes up clean, giving no clues about the ending as her goodness hints equally at victory and doom.
Finally, the moment of truth. Zora is brought into the salon, and Evan walks in and sits down. After hemming and hawing and nearly driving Zora to tears of second-guessing, he finally says that he has chosen her.
Evan wastes no time in ruining Zora's moment of joy, telling her his secret — that he doesn't have $50 million. "I don't even have 50 thousand dollars" he says in what is, sadly, probably his wittiest moment ever. Evan tells a surprised Zora to meet him in the ballroom that night with her answer. And without so much as a big sloppy wet French kiss, he is off to shatter Sarah's caviar dreams, leaving Zora to ponder his deception alone.
Next, Evan meets Sarah. For a brief moment, it occurs that the twist could be that Evan chooses both girls, then waits to see who will meet him in the ballroom. But, no, he tells her his fool's gold secret right away. This lets Sarah down easily, diminishing her lost prize while letting Evan off the hook for leading her on as he hints he thought his true circumstances would not meet her standards anyway. After he comes clean about the $50 million, she says, "Did you feel that was something I was concerned with?" All of America felt that was something she was concerned with, but Evan lets silence serve as an implicit yes. Evan delivers his news and leaves, and the camera lingers on Sarah, waiting for her to cry. She doesn't, but the twist has not yet been revealed. There's still a chance unexpected drama could occur.
Sarah goes up to her room, where Paul has a surprise — Melissa is here to help her pack! The two rejects take a smoke break together, just like old times. The setup is perfect in dramatic terms — two bitter fellow soldiers rationalize their losses together, each with obvious contempt for the other. Melissa doesn't even try to comfort Sarah, launching in with "So he didn't pick you!" before their cigarettes are even lit.
Sarah breaks the news of Evan's blue-collar status to a shocked Melissa, who still has her eye on the bottom line. "Did you ask if the necklaces are real?" she asks, pretending it's a joke. They both laugh hard, forced laughs that go on for five seconds too long, and Sarah drags on her cigarette and surveys the foggy chateau grounds that will never be hers. "That's so funny. That's so funny," Sarah says when she runs out of fake laughter. Then, like two triple-divorcees at a truck stop at last call, the two wearily stub out their butts and get ready to go home.
Back in Sarah's room. "Alone," Sarah and Melissa try to have a private conversation, all of which is caught by the microphones anyway and displayed in subtitles. "What happened that night," Sarah mouths, speaking of her evening in Slurp Forest with Evan. She wants Melissa to tell her if she thinks the woods episode was what ruined her chances. Melissa seems to need more information, so Sarah decides to mime her make out session with the use of a clothing item bunched up into a bulge. After making odd kissy-faces at the clothing-bulge for a moment, she says something garbled, but that sounds like "it was, just a little bit" or something suspiciously similar, all but confirming her attempted blow-job-for-jewelry racket.
But then, after Melissa vaguely reassures her, Sarah returns to normal voice volume to express her relief that the incident of "kissing" didn't make her look bad. It's a nice try, but here in the 21st century we don't need to employ bunched-up socks to communicate mere kissing. It's finally time to leave, and Sarah and Melissa disappear off down the driveway as Zora peers out the window at the women who, however unpleasant, seem to have temporarily escaped the forces of karma by not having to spend any more time in the presence of Evan.
It is now evening, and Evan paces in the ballroom, all dressed up. Paul waits beside him with a jewelry box. Finally, to Evan's relief, Zora enters in an evening gown. Having been, like Evan, obviously coached by the show's producers to deliver her acceptance speech in the form of a fake-out, Zora begins by telling Evan how important it is to her to be able to trust someone, blah blah blah. Evan looks terrified, until she finally says that she's glad he doesn't have $50 million and that she's willing to "continue this journey" with him. Evan breaks out into a huge grin and it looks as if he might cry. He presents Zora with a diamond solitaire ring, which he places on her right hand to symbolize the ring's lack of symbolism. They both look very happy. But there's still a twist!
Just then, Paul enters, carrying a silver plate with a lid. We know that this plate contains the surprise twist we have been promised. For a few brief moments, it seems that it could hold a check offered to one of the two just to walk away, but Paul announces that it contains a gift for the two of them. As he lifts the lid, he says "You are now about to become...instant...millionaires!" and reveals a check made out to "Evan and Zora" for $1 million. Evan and Zora look suitably shocked as we wonder if the banks are still open so they can rush down and split it in half before things get ugly.
Evan and Zora, relishing their good fortune, begin to dance, and Zora asks Evan if she can kiss him. In an interview, she says "I never thought I would say this, but I believe in fairy tales!" "The End" appears in script across the screen.
What a ripoff! Though Evan's choice is understandable in real-life terms, because Zora is obviously superior to Sarah, his wise decision is disappointing to those of us who watch the show for a weekly dose of schadenfreude. Because, deep in our hearts, we all wanted sleazy Sarah to win her un-prize and Zora to dodge the slow bullet that is life with Evan Marriott. Because we're sick, detached people, and we watch Fox.
It may seem cynical to characterize the happy-ending finale as horribly disappointing, but the fact remains that Evan and Zora haven't actually spent a single moment alone together and can't possibly have feelings for each other that go beyond the surface. Not to mention that a big part of the show's popularity was owed to the originality of its practical joke setup. A lot of people who wouldn't be caught dead watching "Survivor" tuned in every week for the simple reason that on this show, nothing was to be taken seriously and the joke was on everyone. To take the audience on this journey only to tack on a trite, pseudo-romantic happy ending betrays the essence of what made the show original. Nobody wanted to learn a Very Important Lesson from this series, but even if they're going to try to push "True love conquers all and fairy tales do come true" on us, I'll settle for "Fact is sometimes more mundane than fiction," or at least the old tried-and-true lesson of every reality show since the first "Real World" episode: "People are stupid."
— Lindsay Robertson (lindsay@lindsayism.com)
