The 6 Most Pathetic Dating Show Contestants of All Time
Every time I'm on a date with someone new, I wish that I could skip to when we've already broken up and are deciding whether or not to hide each other on Facebook or unfriend each other entirely. That would make things way easier.
Have you ever been one of many dudes trying to get a girl's attention at a bar? Take that impotent, terrible frustration and put it in front of millions of people, and you have reality dating shows. But, since you're all Cracked readers, I assume that you snag the attraction of any lovely lady/handsome guy that walks by, because you're people of exquisite taste. These six things, not so much.
Christopher Mendoza -- Seducing Cindy
The subject of Seducing Cindy, Cindy Margolis, was in the 2000 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as the "most downloaded person" in 1999, a fact that the show wails at you as often as possible in a futile attempt to endear you to her. "MOST DOWNLOADED! MOST DOWNLOADED! GAH, ACCEPT HER!" As you might guess, the objective of the show is for Margolis to find true love. She spends most of her time making out with every contestant and then complains to the camera that she feels guilty about it, so I guess you're supposed to support her because she ... talks more than everyone else? Her only defining characteristics are "hot" and "older," so I guess the producers felt that by the time the finale rolled around we'd be Stockholm-Syndromed into digging her.
Hollywood personality type 48B1H-9Q.
Enter contestant Christopher Mendoza, the human equivalent of a moist towelette, who arrives on the show only to immediately be mocked by the other contestants for absolutely no reason at all. The rest of the cast really doesn't like him, and they constantly let him know and confront him about it. This quickly draws the question: are the other cast members bullies, or am I missing something by not loathing him from the start? Eventually, you lean toward the latter answer. Mendoza has a gravitational pull of hatred. Every orbiting body around him seems to be thrust into wanting to curb-stomp him simply for being alive. If one of the cast members was revealed to be the reanimated flesh of Ted Bundy, people would make a toast to FrankenTed, because he isn't Mendoza.
Mendoza, his face shaped like his own ass cheek, takes his lumps and then whines about it, never standing up for himself throughout the whole season. At a certain point, you'd think that there would be some kind of character arc for him, where he finally grows a backbone and yells through his mouthful of toilet water for the other guys to leave him alone. Sadly, it's not to be, and his hero's journey follows a flaccid trajectory all the way to getting sent home.
His interactions with Margolis are equally depressing, as he can never quite muster the energy to have anything more than these moody, bleak confessionals with her. The other guys make the effort to at least brighten her day, but Mendoza is unable to get past figuratively offering to tongue-wash Margolis' diaper, should that be one of the challenges. His conversations are all full of sad dedications, where he promises to love her, something that never comes to fruition, as I imagine Margolis was too preoccupied with the rotting smell emanating from her own ovaries that flared up whenever Mendoza got too close.
There's no reason for it, but I just punched my monitor out of sheer reflex.
For a dating show, the idea behind Making Mr. Right is needlessly complicated. Typically, all you have to do is stick a person in a room with 25 contestants who all want to bone that person and hope that the contestants end up calling each other "bitches" enough for ratings to stay high. In Making Mr. Right, we have three women who pose as matchmakers in order to evaluate the male contestants' behavior on dates, only to reveal, eight weeks later, that it was all a lie and that the matchmakers are actually the ones looking to find love. It's a masterful plan, Goldfinger, one that is completely undone by the beginning of the second fucking episode.
It doesn't help the ladies' causes that they completely ignore the premise of the show as soon as they talk to the guys. Rather than try to act like authoritative love gurus, they fall apart, choosing favorites and leaving you to remember the other participants only when they are inevitably eliminated. I've never tried to pretend to be a date wizard in order to spy on people's intimate moments in the hopes of sleeping with one of those people, but my approach would be more subtle than "I like that shirt! That shirt looks good on you! If a date goes sour, we should hang out, because I like you!"
"I love how psychotic you are! Have you ever eaten a baby?"
The original premise of Making Mr. Right lasts a grand total of about 45 minutes before the dudes dismantle the ploy and basically use it as an excuse to flirt and make out with as many girls as possible before being eliminated. Meanwhile, Rachel, Brittany, and Lindsay watch all of it from their secret Bat Cave-esque monitor room, shocked. "How could he be doing this? I can't take this! How could our plans have gone so awry?"
Zaza -- Take Me Out
A dating show hosted by George Lopez needs a shot in the arm every once in a while. In between the greatest puns that a writing team devoted entirely to ending Lopez's career can create, and women whose only character traits seem to be "I am hoping to get laid as hell," the human attention span requires a healthy dose of crazy. Thus, like a gift from God, Zaza was handed to us, and Take Me Out rose above numbing mediocrity for a few minutes of every episode.
The way the show works is that a man goes on stage, we're treated to various video packages showcasing him lifting weights and standing on boats and shit, and then female panelists individually choose to either stay in the game or vote themselves out. In the end, the dude picks between the unlucky women who have decided to give love a final, fatal effort. A more accurate title for Take Me Out would be Only 8 Percent of Women Like You.
See those red lights of rejection? That is the world, son. That is the world.
All in all, it's pretty lighthearted, which makes it that much easier for Zaza to transcend it completely. In the third episode, Zaza tries to explain to Lopez that a contestant reminds her of an ex, and instead of having his usual insipid banter with her like he does with the other girls, Lopez abandons her to wallow in the confusion of the audience. In the fourth episode, Zaza's buzzer breaks, so she attempts to remove her name card and hide behind her podium. In the fifth episode, she compares another contestant to an ex and Lopez bluntly asks her, "Why does he have to pay for your ex-boyfriend's mistakes?" Is it a joke? Is it Lopez attempting to provide some kind of emotional counseling for her? We'll never know, because he once again leaves her stuttering and struggling to make sense of the harsh reality that Take Me Out has provided for her.
In the final episode of this terrible human experiment, Zaza, apparently afflicted by a bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome, says that if she doesn't find a man tonight, she'll follow Lopez onto the "love lift," which is what the contestants enter the stage on, and "get a cookie from that cookie jar." Most of my knowledge of sexual metaphors comes from Lil Wayne songs, so as far as I can tell, Zaza is threatening to just bang Lopez if no one else suits her. The show ended with Zaza never finding her match, so we can only assume that she made good on her promise. And, Lopez: you have only yourself to blame.
Every Male Contestant -- The Latest Season of The Bachelorette
I'm not wrong to expect a little testosterone-fueled rage in my dating contests. For example, every episode of Tila Tequila's show A Shot at Love had a moment that seemed like it was choreographed after a revelatory viewing of the prologue of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, The Bachelorette is a very different show from A Shot at Love. For instance, I'm pretty sure that Desiree, the "protagonist" of the latest season of The Bachelorette, never featured in a song with rising rapper Hot Rod called "I Like to Fuck," claiming to "like to fuck everybody in the world." God speed, Miss Tequila. I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor. Wait, what's going on in my pants? Oh no, it's happening.
I'm so terribly sorry. I truly am. But if I suffer, so do you.
Maybe there was a "No Punching" clause in their contracts, but every contestant in Desiree's Bachelorette was neutered to the point of ridiculousness. There wasn't a single trace of masculinity among them, and only by working together could they have accomplished a single erection. I don't know if you've ever watched 24 men in a room moaning about how the 25th guy doesn't love or deserve a girl that they all just met, but it's about the lamest thing you'll ever witness. At every point, you're waiting for a man to stand up and announce, "What the FUCK is happening to me? What will my family think?" and storm out of the room.
All of this passive-aggressive ineptitude comes to a head when Desiree is having a heart-to-heart with James, a guy who modeled his appearance after hearing the words "Vin Diesel" and had to interpret what that meant with no visual reference. While James tries to explain to Desiree that he didn't talk behind her back (I'm not shitting you, that's an actual plot line -- it's like middle school if the only girl in class was twice our age), the other guys stand atop an adjacent balcony and spy on them, stomping their feet and whimpering. "Look how far I can tuck it between my legs!" one of the men shouted.*
*The scene was later removed for the ABC broadcast.
It's hard to take an "I love you" seriously when it's coming from someone you've hung out with twice. The show does nothing to dispel the idea that these men have had less one-on-one time with Desiree than the guy who edits the show's logo, so we're left scratching our heads at the commitment that each contestant flings at a woman who will go on an equally "meaningful and romantic" date with the next guy in about 30 seconds. I was under the impression that you needed to know a person somewhat before planning an entire future with them, but a show like The Bachelorette doesn't have time to include all that text-messaging. On the other hand, if The Bachelorette is right: Eva Mendes, I'm ready when you are.
I don't need to explain to you what the friend zone is and why it was invented to give a name to the feeling that people sometimes get when they want their best friends to fuck them but their best friends don't want to and it's totally unfair. If I want to have sex with a female friend, and I know that she's not into me, I keep my lust to myself. I can do this because I'm a human with the ability to use basic logic and the most remedial restraint. It's fairly easy.
MTV decided to make a show about the concept of the friend zone, based around people revealing their feelings to their best friends and either getting accepted or shot down. While it's technically not a contest, it all boils down to whether or not someone wins their prized person, so it has all the stakes of a contest and degrades people into being seen as something you earn when they laugh at your jokes enough. One particular contestant was named Chris, and he was the medical definition of a boring nutsack. The only positive thing about him that I can say is that, at one point, he wears a blue plaid shirt that looks sort of decent. Even as sort-of decent as it is, he's still a boring nutsack, and no matter how many Old Navy button-downs you own, that kind of lowers your score on the "Not a Nutsack" board.
Her mouth says, "Mmm, popcorn," but her heart says, "Away with you, nutsack."
The object of his affection is Stephanie, who doesn't even really seem to like him that much, stating from the very beginning that she thinks he can be boring. When your best friend says, not jokingly, that you suck at keeping people entertained, they're probably not going to be receptive to your attempts to grease the wheels into an eventual tongue in the mouth. And I hate to spoil it for you, but when Chris finally asks her if she wants to be more than friends, she turns him down.
Chris doesn't handle this well.
Pictured: Nutsackishness.
When Stephanie tries to explain why she has reservations, Chris interrupts her to tell her that he does too, but just because it could ruin everything doesn't mean that they shouldn't give it a shot. If we always used logic like this, our main strategy with grenades would be holding them in our palms as we offered the enemy high-fives. He then prods her with the same question, blocking her every attempt to try to stop him from coming off like an asshole. His logic is: "But we felt more. It SHOULD be more." Her counter-argument is: "No. I have to think about school and my job. Also, this isn't helping anything when it comes to me not hating you."
Chris ends it by trying to guilt-trip her in the weirdest way, saying that if she doesn't go with him on the date, he'll go without her. Obviously, this last-ditch effort to get her to reconsider a romance with this boring, unfriendly nutsack backfires too, and she leaves him alone in the rain.
It's beautiful.
Why Am I Still Single? seeks to answer the question found in the title. How can totally unlikable people be single? It's a question that has bothered the socially atrocious for years, and it's a show that reaches its climax in the first episode, with the stunning example of Rich, a 34-year-old who likes to wear kimonos while crouching in his garden and peppers conversations with waitresses with as many French words as he can muster. He says, "It's hard to find cool people," and I imagine that's very true for him, as he comes to his first date dressed in a bright blue jacket, white shirt, and red pants, which signals the runway attendants of vaginas to tell their pilots to do a few more passes before settling down when Rich has finally exited the building.
Fortunately for women everywhere, that suit comes with a siren.
The show's host, Siggy Flicker (not a joke), and her aptly named team of "love pickers" (also not a joke) dissect Rich with all the specificity of an H-bomb. Siggy repeats the phrase "phony bologna" constantly when describing him, as if she's surprised that the two words still rhyme whenever she lays them down again. Her "love pickers" never get much further than, "He thinks he's a player, but he's not!" ... an insight that's psychologically comparable to telling someone that their shirt is inside-out. And being worn around their crotch like a diaper. After hours and hours of watching these shows, I still have no clue what it takes to be a matchmaker, other than the constant desire to be unhappy with the petty romantic issues of others.
And the saint-like restraint to not shoot this douche in the face with a rocket launcher.
However, since this is a VH1 reality show, even Rich himself is taken aback by their criticism, and he immediately changes. I know that it's tough to go into deeper analysis than saying that a person is trying to act cool when they really aren't, but maybe Rich wouldn't be so lonely if he had a personality with enough consistency to withstand the loose remarks of a stranger. If I took every suggestion completely to heart, I'd be wiping up the tears caused by my 40th attempt at grad school with my 1,000th ShamWow.
Daniel wants to talk to someone, anyone about Take Me Out. Indulge him on Twitter.
For more from Daniel, check out 6 Movie Special Effects That Have Gotten Worse Over Time. And then check out 23 Romantic Movies Revised for Honesty.
