Pretty Wins -- even over success

[Timber Loftis]

Malena chose the guy that lives with mommy and looks like a model over the real guy (who isn't as homely as this article suggests) who works on Wall Street and had a write-up done about him in Forbes.
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December 9, 2003
THE TV WATCH
In a Made-for-Television Romance, the Most Telegenic Man Wins
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

elana chose pretty Jason over homely Adam. And that decision, dragged out over the six weeks of NBC's reality show "Average Joe," was an affirmation of sorts. It suggested that beneath all the artifice and selective editing that make up a reality show, there is still a tinge of realism left.

Nice guys do finish last, and opposites only rarely attract. Men and women more frequently select mates who are equally attractive and from a similar social rank. And inevitably, last night Melana Scantlin, 26, a former cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs who aspires to a career in show business, selected the suitor who most resembles a soap opera star.

Though perhaps it didn't hurt that Jason's foil, Adam, pegged by the show as the funny one, had a fairly sophomoric sense of humor, joking during their last date on an open-air drive through the desert, "I'm going to throw up."

"Average Joe," which was the umpteenth variation on the dating reality craze started by "The Bachelor," managed to hook large numbers of viewers (14 million for the penultimate episode) with a somewhat malicious but refreshing premise: instead of the usual array of tall, handsome Ken dolls, Melana was presented with a stag line of schlubby men, so-called average Joes. Many seemed selected for their below-average looks. Several were obese (and quickly eliminated); others were spindly nerds and geeks.

When that joke paled, the producers added a twist: they threw into the mix three absurdly handsome suitors to tempt Melana away from the plain, good-hearted men she had been considering. Jason, 27, a student/waiter from Costa Mesa, Calif., came from that group.

Other twists were used to postpone the inevitable. At one point the producers disguised Melana in a fat suit (the kind Courteney Cox Arquette wore on "Friends" to play the imaginary fat Monica) so she could pretend to be Melana's cousin Danielle and witness how her suitors treated less attractive women. She overheard Zach in the locker room deriding Danielle as a "Duff." He explained to his pals that it stands for "designated ugly fat friend." He was quickly sent home.

Adam, 28, a Wall Street trader, was one of the more plausible of the average Joes, but not very. Husky, slightly goofy, with big teeth and an outer-borough accent, he clashed with the glycerine-eyed Melana, who spoke in the tight, smarmily sincere tones of Trista, the Bachelorette-turned-bride-to-be in ABC's "Trista and Ryan's Wedding," tomorrow. Day after day Melana spoke mistily about the agony of her indecision. Yet on a date in New York she seemed to flinch at Adam's touch.

The producers tried to keep the audience rooting for the underdog until the end, contrasting shots of Jason tanning himself poolside like an Orange County Adonis while Adam, in sweat pants, jogged and did push-ups to the score of "Rocky."

In perhaps the most deliciously silly backdrop yet, Melana made her decision on a red carpet separating a jet and a bus — the aircraft poised to fly the happy couple to a glamorous resort, the bus waiting to take the loser home.

It is not impossible to find a heartening moral in the outcome. Adam, for all his gaucherie, is a successful trader (though the apartment he shares with a roommate, spartanly furnished with black leather couches and a wide screen television, did not suggest vast wealth). Jason is a waiter who lives at home with his parents while studying business and accounting. So Melana did not choose money over looks. She just chose looks. Or as she put it, "He's not only gorgeous, he's very sincere."