The prologue.

I’m calling shenanigans.

Not the shenanigans that we want to see, in this genre. Not fun reality-TV shenanigans! There has been no surreptitious peeing in the other laydees’ shampoo bottles, no pushing each other into the pool fully dressed, no hair-pulling, no death threats. There hasn’t even been much garden-variety lying and/or sabotage, at least not after we lost our beloved Saint Bitch Lauren. A surprising number of the “This season, on More to Love!” preview clips we saw early on never appeared again. What happened with the shrieking laydeez and the flower-bouquet-throwing incident? What about the shot of a laydee pretty much straddling Luke in the limo at some point (I now think this was Mandy, but I GUESS WE’LL NEVER KNOW)? I am led to believe that standard reality-TV dramaz did happen, but we’ve been robbed of their entertainment, with the standard schadenfreude-driven dating-show format never quite taking shape, and in its stead we got an often painfully-dull show about sad fat women.

My suspicion is that somebody up there thinks they’re protecting us. I suggest that somebody, at some point in this process, decided they wanted these laydeez to be sympathetic characters the whole way through (Bitch Lauren excepted) and cut the show accordingly. After all, this is a show about fat laydeez and given their representation is already limited enough in mainstream media, it’s just possible somebody didn’t want to contribute to more fat-hatin’ and thus tried to make this a show about nice people. Except nobody wants to watch television shows about nice people. This is reality TV: if there’s not dramatics and histrionics and general insanity, then why am I here? If they really, really wanted to make the fat laydeez the heroes of this show, I almost wish they had done what a lot of folks erroneously predicted early on, and brought in some skinny broads to serve as counterpoint and villain. This is not to say slender women should be demonized any more than anyone with any body shape or size should be demonized–but at least then we would have had something compelling to watch. What this show has lacked is any real dramatic tension that wasn’t manufactured out of creatively-cut-together confession clips.

As things are, we got a collection of (mostly) nice (mostly) young laydeez who are very sad and very lonely and in varying stages of self-loathing and self-acceptance. And at the center of it all, like a supermassive black hole of suck, has been Luke, our lumpy hero, the literal object of the laydeez’ affections.

The distance from there to here has been traversed, and what a long strange ponderous trip it’s been.
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Last week: I had an hilarious nightmare about dancing with Luke Conley and Kate Harding battling MeMe Roth Beat-It style, and the wonderfully talented Fillyjonk saw fit to illustrate it for us all, which you can see in all its furrowed-brow glory here (I am particularly impressed with how well she’s captured Luke; it’s the hair, I think). Also, Luke met some of the laydeez families with awkward and knee-slapping results that should have surprised no one.

Turn around, bright eyes! We begin this week’s episode having been magically whisked away to Hawaii. What, no shots of Luke and the laydeez being forced to buy a second seat for their flab on the airplane? No confessionals of flying-related fat pain? Psshhht, that’s not reality. Hawaii, at least, is beautiful and oh yes, I would like to go lie on that beach right there, yes that one, with a fruity drink please, now, without the hassle of flying whilst fat. No? Fuck. I am still in my living room. I guess More to Love’s Fat Travel Magic only works for those contracted to be on the show.

Luke lingers on a beach taking abnormally deep breaths and voiceovering about how like totally intense this whole experience is, like shyeah. A hundred years ago, when I was in film school, this would have been an object lesson in “show, don’t tell.” Luke standing on a beach sucking in air like an errant whale whilst in voiceover he tells us how intense this is not really showing us anything aside from Luke’s lung capacity and the real prospect that he is, indeed, full of hot air. Is Luke deeply moved? He may very well be, and he may just be the kind of guy who’s not very expressive. That or he truly is a lump of animatronic wax and the climax of the final episode will be when they open his casing to reveal a chimpanzee sittting inside pulling the levers. Now THAT would be a fucking FINALE.

Luke finally gets off Deep-Breathing Beach and reunites with the laydeez at a luau, where they proceed to chow down. For all my endless bitching about this show, seeing people unselfconsciously eating on television is so refreshingly normal, even though the context is clearly the implication that fatties do nothing but gorge themselves on food all day long. Unfortunately, the meal is followed by dancing, and Luke does that same horrifying butt-shaking dance he did at the fat prom. I had hoped, however feebly, that we’d seen the last of Luke’s ass-dance, but no such luck. Luke then breaks the news that this luau is their final group date. Mandy is especially stoked, pumping her fists and twirling. Damn, y’all, this show might actually finish its entire run! But not before taking us on some of the most boring fucking dates ever to be committed to digital media.
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Gather round, friends fat and otherwise, and I shall tell you how More to Love is slowly devouring my will to live. This travesty of a television program has burrowed so deeply into my subconscious that — chillingly — last night I had a More to Love-related dream. In this dream I was a contestant on a sort of fat-blogger version of Dancing with the Stars, and I was paired with none other than detestable lummox Luke Conley. We were supposed to do a paso doble, but I was a total bitch to him and he was a ragingly passive-aggressive asshole back and so there was much Reality TV Drama over whether we’d get our shit together enough for the performance.

But that is not the punch line. The punch line is that the fabulous and whip-smart Kate (who is, incidentally, guest blogging at Jezebel this week) was also in this dream. Kate’s dance partner was none other than MeMe Roth, and they were tasked with reproducing the knife fight from the “Beat It” video. This is one of those times where I fervently wish that either I had a talent for drawing myself, or a great illustrator on staff at Fatshionista, because the epic dance battle I dreamed between Kate and MeMe cannot adequately be described using mere words. Dream-Kate was like a fat ninja, though sadly I woke up before I could see her dispatch MeMe to hell, which in MeMe’s case would probably involve Fat Satan’s minions rubbing their bellies on her while forcing her to eat food that is of dubious nutritional value.

Last time on More to Love: Luke made out with many laydeez. The intro montage would have us believe that nothing else happened, but we know better.

Now, my pets, we approach the really draggy endgame of More to Love, since it appears henceforth we shall be losing but one laydee per episode. I remain perplexed by the producers’ decision to dispense with so many laydeez so rapidly, and so early on; all this has done is leave us a glut of episodes from which all the most interesting characters have been meticulously scrubbed. Is it possible that Anna, Mandy, Malissa, and Tali are all, in fact, deeply engaging people? Sure, but my money’s on our never finding out for sure. Now, this show is likely to devolve (further) into your standard gross-out Bachelor fare; it almost ceases to matter that the women involved are slightly larger than some other women, as the song they’re playing is the same. Bitch Lauren, your mathmatically-challenged, complusively-mispronouncing-multisyllabic-words brand of haterism is sorely, sorely missed. Kristian, the loss of your sweet and wild-eyed LOVE YOOOOU TV BOYFRIEND idealism renders this experience even more soulless and vapid than it was before. And I am still upset that Arianne–who, when the first amphibians first crawled out of the ocean and onto the land, was present to lovingly mop their little amphibious brows, feverish with the evolutionary effort, and to offer words of kind encouragement–got cut before she could do a loving tribute to Liza Minelli, or at least before we saw her in a sequin-spangled top hat, or at least before we got to see her dressed up as Jerry Sizzler for More to Love’s special Halloween episode, Henhouse of Horror. But perhaps poet Carl Sandburg said it best: “I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.” The laydeez of yore are gone but not forgotten. Now, let us get on with the pig jokes.
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Last week: there was good-wife/bad-wife judgyness, Kristian cried, laydeez were JELLIS, Mandy did something to Luke’s heart, and Malissa did something to another part of Luke’s anatomy. Overall, I feel the prior episode contained altogether too many allusions to Luke’s meat thermometer, and by this I mean his penis. I don’t want to think about Luke’s penis anymore, folks. In fact I wouldn’t mind forgetting it exists altogether.

Of course, we begin the episode in the kitchen, where the laydeez line up at the trough to gorge themselves on an hourly basis. Kristian is talking about eating nothing but waffles since their second day here. CUE CLOSEUP ON THE STACK OF WAFFLES. CAN WE GET A PA IN HERE WITH MORE BUTTER? MAYBE SLATHER SOME ON KRISTIAN’S FACE AND GET A SHOT OF THAT TOO. ALRIGHT WE’RE GOOD. I totally suspect there is a production assistant on this show who is exclusively responsible for smearing butter on things.

LUKEMAIL, woo. Kristian and Mandy are going dancing with the Lukenator. Kristian jumps up and down and jiggles like the proverbial bowl full of jelly. It’s totally cute. In confessional, Luke says he thinks Kristian and Mandy are the two best dancers in the house. The note says something about a tango, but they’re actually getting salsa lessons. SEMANTICS, am I right? As they enter the dancing facility, Luke says he can’t wait to see what kind of moves they have, and Kristian says “I’ve got moves you’ve never seen.” Hee! I want to pinch Kristian’s cheeks and buy her an ice cream. Shortly the dance instructors appear. They are both slender, probably because they live in LA. In confessional, Kristian admires the lady instructor’s legs, and says her jiggliness makes her look like two pigs fighting under a blanket, however she also asserts that “dancing wasn’t just made for thin people, hello!” Kristian thinks you need some ass to dance. Awwww yeah. The lessons begin, and Mandy confessions that it’s “hard” to have a date with another woman along; she says Kristian was loving every minute of dancing with Luke and “couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.” Of their dance-time, however, Mandy also says she and Luke “were connecting on every level; everything was like perfect.” I don’t think Luke has that many levels, so that may be less impressive than it sounds. I’m guessing he has two. Maybe three, if “hungry” counts as a level.

Back at the laydee farm, the laydeez decide to make Luke cupcakes, which they will leave for him to find when he gets back from his date. Clearly, the laydeez are compelled to make cupcakes because they’re fat. And fat people make cupcakes. It’s what we do. Like baby sea turtles instinctively seeking out the ocean after hatching, cupcake-preparation is our deepest instinct, so inherent to our being that we are barely aware of its influence. Deep in the genetic memory of every fat woman there is an ingrained knowledge of cupcake-making, going back to our early fat ancestors, who baked cupcakes made of rocks over a fire in a cave. Cupcakes are a critical part of the rich legacy of the Fat Race; nay, cupcakes are the very axis on which the world of the Fat turns! So it has always been and so it will continue to be. Fat people & cupcakes are a partnership older than TIME ITSELF.
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Hey, no “THE AVERAGE WOMAN WEARS A SIZE 14 SO WATCH THIS SHOW AND FEEL SUPERIOR” montage this week! I guess Fox has decided they’ve ensnared all the viewers they’re gonna get. Last week: there was a fake prom, and laydeez cried. Incidentally, does anyone know how many episodes this horror show is going to go on for? If it’s six, I’ll be very sad I squandered an opportunity to set up a series of Star Wars-themed post titles.

The episode opens with Luke at home in the guesthouse. He makes coffee! He sits on a couch! Famous people, they’re just like us. Luke blabbers in voiceover about wanting to do something repellent to the laydeez (okay, I’m embellishing), so he’s asked Emme to assemble the laydeez for a little activity. Oh, I hope they’re going to make friendship bracelets! Alas, no, they’re going to assess one another’s wifely qualities. In confessional Luke tries to take credit for this idea by saying, “I’m hoping that their honest opinions of each other could help me find out who could potentially be who could be Mrs. Luke Conley.” OH, I need to unpack this a little. To start, this is not going to bring the honest opinions of anyone; in fact, it’s more likely that the laydeez will each try to downplay the advantages of their biggest competition, if not sabotage each other outright. It’s politics and jockeying-for-position; ain’t nothing “honest” about it. I guess we’re supposed to assume that Luke’s never seen a reality show before. Secondly, I love that it’s just assumed that any and all of the laydeez would be into marrying Luke. I mean, I’d expect some of them are rational enough to occasionally think: hmm, maybe we should get to know each other without the warm glow of industrial lighting and an omnipresent camera crew watching us before we talk about spending the rest of our lives together? Lastly, Luke sucks. Really, though, I think we’re all aware these are producer-hatched shenanigans and Luke, ventriloquist dummy that he is, is just saying the words they’ve told him to say.

The ladyeez are assembled on the laydee-stacking couch in the laydee-stacking room, and Emme passes out sparkly-edged plate things that say “good wife” (in pink!) on one side and “bad wife” (in RED! WARNING WARNING) on the other. Emme tells the laydeez that they’ll each stand up before the group and be judged by the others as a potential wife for Luke. (My husband interjects at this point to say, “I can’t believe Emme is doing this; that’s like the biggest disappointment of all,” and I’m inclined to agree.) The laydee being judged stands with Emme before the other laydeez on the laydee-stacking couch and has to listen to each laydee explain their assessment of her. It’s like the worst group therapy in the world. I wonder if the More to Love Fat-Lady Prison Compound has a locked gate or something. Not to inject myself into the proceedings, but folks, it’d be tough for a woman with a shred of self-respect to stand up there and let this happen. I’d be all “See you assholes later! I’m out! Fuck you very much!” but unfortunately none of the other laydeez seem to be receiving my psychic suggestions to get the hell out of this circus.
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Bring on the princess references, ramp up the teenage-prom trauma, and order up some phallic desserts: it’s the (belated recap of) the third episode of More to Love. The same three-minute intro montage we’ve seen prior to every episode sets the stage, again. See, this show is just like every other Bachelor clone, except it has fat people! I’m starting to suspect it’s just me and a handful of reality-TV masochists actually watching this. The montage is not drawing in new viewers, Fox. Your show is soul-sucking and depressing.

Last time: there was vomiting, first dates, swimwear, and Lauren The Trifler turns out to be a full-fledged rank bitch.

We start in the kitchen, where Kristian, who didn’t go on the swimming group date, is quizzing the laydeez on Luke’s physical characteristics - most specifically on whether he’s tanned or pasty-white. Then she says, “I want to pour barbecue sauce on him and eat him like a pork chop!” which, forgive me y’all, is just so bloody adorable. I want to stick the beautiful, precious, over-earnest Kristian in my pocket and protect her from the big mean world that will inevitably break her heart and leave her jaded. Lord, I am becoming a fan of someone on this show. Heaven help me. TEAM KRISTIAN, amirite?

Kristian, with help from Bitch Lauren, is rattling off personal info about Luke, like he has a nephew and stuff. Wait, did she just say his dog is named Maximus? Because that’s pretty hilarious if true. Also my most burning question about Luke thus far - was that his dog in his introductory montage? - has been answered and now I can honestly say I’ve no further interest in the man.

Speak of the devil: Luke appears and summons the laydeez to the laydee-stacking room, whence there is a big pile of silver-wrapped gifts. Luke, for his part, is wearing a construction-cone-orange polo shirt, and it’s AWFUL. He looks like he should be picking up trash on the side of a highway with a bunch of other orange-clad dudes. Clear evidence he needs a woman in his life, if only so she can throw that shirt away one day while he’s at work. (I bet Luke is the kind of guy who has a special chair, say, a reefer-reeking tattered recliner from college, sitting in his house, and he thinks of it as an old friend. Possibly it has a name, like Stoney the Recliner.)

When Luke says “Hello Laydeez,” to to assembled group, he sounds exactly like my tenth grade Catholic-school Latin teacher when she addressed the class. A little bit patronizing, a little bit condescending, a little bit ironic. The laydeez respond in near-perfect unison. Are they being graded on this? Luke goes on to explain that they all share Fat Pain from not going to prom, or from going to prom and having a crap time. This is a bit of a stretch for me, as the odds of being miserable at prom, in my experience, have little to do with relative fatness. Finally Luke pauses and then all but shouts, “Would you all go to the prom with me?” and his enthusiasm is marginally endearing. Luke: skeezehound, Nice Guy, I can’t figure out what to make of you.

The laydeez say yes, they’ll go. Luke pretends to be relieved, like anyone had a choice. I envision a cadre of producers standing just off camera with cattle prods in case any of the heifers step out of line. Luke leaves and the laydeez pounce on the pile o’ sparkly packages, which are filled with prom dresses, evidently of a random assortment of sizes. The laydeez begin making efforts to pack their fat selves into dresses that may or may not fit them. Bonnie, zipped into a green satin strapless dress with help from another laydee, says, “That’s not bad.” When asked if she can breathe, she responds swiftly, “No. Who needs to breathe?” Breathless with excitement, or breathless with lack of oxygen, I suppose in the grander scheme of revisiting the ridiculous ritual of prom it doesn’t matter. Because who needs to breathe.
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Warm the towels for the post-show shower to wash away the skeeve, it’s the second episode of everyone’s favorite show about hysterical and insecure fat women.

First off, we get a montage reminding us what’s to come in this series: crying, jealousy, crying, fat pain, crying, and food. Next, we get another montage showing us what happened last week: crying, jealousy, crying, fat pain, crying, and food. Also Luke kissed some people and I nearly barfed, though my affection for regurgitation (reference? somebody has to get this) is sadly not covered in the clips. There was sadness and middling drama, and now it’s mansiontime.

A few laydeez are in the kitchen preparing food. We launch right into the food angle, of course. One laydee asks, “Do you cook a lot at home?” and Christina replies, “Yeah, you know, like grilled cheese, and macaroni…” Malissa laughs and says, “That’s good.” I am hoping against hope that this is meant to be a wry joke, but apparently not. Hell, why not just fill the hot tub with gravy and have one of the laydeez drink it?

Apparently Christina’s cookery practices are a segue into Malissa telling us in confessional (rolls!) that she has issues with Christina, whom Malissa thinks has an “attitude” about how things go on in the kitchen (come on producers, couldn’t you actually scrounge up a clip that provides evidence of this?) and is a “whiner”. No doubt this is a setup for drama to unfold.

As an aside, we are still seeing the height and weight info, along with typical reality-show character info like name, age, and career. I am still of two minds about this. I observed in my prior recap, it’s obviously there for sideshow-freak appeal. And there’s nothing to assure us that these are real weights; we have no way of knowing if they’re self-reported or whether Fox actually made the laydeez hop on a scale (which, honestly, wouldn’t surprise me). But fake weights or not, what’s interesting is the effect this may be having on the perception of the people watching the show even from a non-critical perspective. I’ve also been reading some more mainstream approaches to the first episode and I saw one commenter on one non-FA blog say something to the effect of, “I’m glad they show the weights, because I wouldn’t have thought any of those women were over 200 pounds.” Hell’s bells, if some folks are so clueless as to what 200 pounds actually looks like, it’s no wonder they assume that anyone who weighs 300 pounds must be confined to bed and at death’s door.

Emme appears and calls all the laydeez to the laydee-stacking room, and I’m still not sure why she’s here since she only turns up for a total of like five minutes per episode. Today the laydeez get to have their first dates with Luke. Group dates. They will be busted up into two “teams” and each team will get to go out with Luke on some ridiculous couch-sitting extravaganza. But here’s the twist: they have to choose the teams! Emme names Anna and Malissa as team captains — whether they’re chosen because they were the first two picked by Luke during the last elimination is unstated, but I’m sort of assuming that’s the case. Or else I’ve watched too many cycles of America’s Next Top Model.
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Fire up the circus-calliope music and make sure that cheeseburger’s extra-greasy for its closeup: it’s the long-awaited/dreaded premiere of More to Love. The show begins with a long montage of what we can expect of this series. Namely, crying, jealousy, crying, extravagant dates, crying, despair, crying, and at least one beating of another contestant with a bunch of flowers.

We meet Luke, sitting in his office, wearing a polo and looking vaguely tanned and Californian, in a fat way. He makes six figures and enjoys “voluptuous curvy women.” What’s that? You don’t care for the phrase? Well get used to it suckers, we’re going to hear it a lot over the next few weeks. Luke was often teased about his weight and embarrassed as a kid, though eventually he took up football and got over all that (gaining the ability and opportunity to pound his bullies into a bloody stain in the mud probably helped; I can only hope one of the yet-to-be-revealed “girls” can offer a similar experience).

There are a few notable things about Luke. For one, he doesn’t say fat. Rather, he says he is “a man of large stature”, as though he’s the fucking Lincoln Memorial. In other news, Luke grills and eats hamburgers! In closeup, even. He also seems to have a very cute dog, unless the dog belongs to one of the friends for whom he is unselfconsciously grilling burgers whilst surrounded by camera and sound folks. In Luke’s plus column are his observations that he explicitly doesn’t want a woman who diets. The positive or negative of his apparent love of thoughtfully staring into the sunset is yet to be determined. Or else maybe a producer told him to do that so they could intercut shots of Luke’s thoughtful sunset-staring into Luke’s slightly vague descriptions of what kind of woman he wants (she has to “carry herself” in a certain way, though the way is not specified - Luke is a Man of Mystery!).

But enough sunsets! Night has fallen, and we’re outside the Bel Air mansion where this catastrophe is going to take place. Emme’s there too, in a shimmery one-shoulder cocktail dress and what appear to be Reef flip-flops. I am struggling not to sneer all judgmental-like over her odd choice of footwear; maybe she’s got a sprained ankle or her plantar fasciitis is acting up, but then Tyra Banks told me that models just have to suffer mightily for their modelly art, so who knows. Emme meets with Luke, who looks for a moment like he’s going to hit on her, but he’s cut off when Emme asks him to elucidate, again, what he’s looking for in a “girl”, and he says it’s in “how she carries herself and who she is as a person.” As opposed to who she is as a tree sloth? Or who she is as a flesh-eating disease?

The “girls” - whom I am henceforth dubbing the laydeez because every time I type “girls” about a group of women all of whom are over 20 I break out in hives - are about to arrive in a series of limousines. Fancy! As each girl exits the car, the camera does a quick pan-up from her feet as she steps out, over her girth (or lack thereof), and finally to her face, which is usually smiling in a brittle, nervous, or terrified way. I am not sure if the bottom-up pan is for maximum lechery or maximum LOOK LOOK SHE’S FAAAAAAT effect. I suppose it doesn’t matter.

As Luke meets each laydee, they either shake hands, hug, or kiss each other on the cheek, or all of the above, depending on her perogative, and there’s a piece of her pre-meeting interview cut into the encounter, over which her name, age, occupation, height, and weight are listed. Oh my friends, I am not joking about this, and I don’t altogether think it’s a bad thing, considering it’s an illuminating study on how different weights look different on different people. Ultimately, though, the intended purpose of these stats (which are repeated every time a laydee has a piece of an earlier interview cut into the show) is for people to either gawk at them, or possibly to make watching this show a bit like bidding on livestock: you want to know what you’re getting, I suppose, in the absence of being able to check the horse’s mouth for yourself.

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Today, the brilliant Marianne of the The Rotund has a piece on The Daily Beast about More to Love, the fatty-focused Bachelor-simulacra premiering tonight on your local Fox affiliate. For those unfamiliar with this type of reality show (you few lucky bastards), More to Love features a fat dude named Luke, who is shut up in a mansion for three weeks and faced with a bevy of fat ladies from which to select his soul mate.

Yes. I know. Misogyny ahoy! Permission to board granted!

I was initially uncertain of whether I’d watch this show; the only reason I even considered it is because it lacks the weight-loss component compulsory to pretty much every other reality show with fat people on it. That said, the lack of diet-induced misery doesn’t mean it won’t be depressing as hell. I could do what I do with several despicable and absurd reality shows and, in lieu of actually watching the show, just read other people’s possibly non-fat-positive recaps and ignore any bad fat politics contained therein.

Or I could do recaps myself.

So here we are.

The prize of this competition is a dude named Luke Conley, who is 26, apparently successful at whatever it is he does (anybody remember Joe Millionaire?), and 330 pounds of maybe/possibly love. Based on my initial impressions, Luke manages to make himself seem likeable and nonthreatening and legitimately fond of women he (revoltingly) terms “thick and juicy”, while deftly skirting the very edge of full-on chubby-chaser creepiness. The contestants, henceforth The Laydeez, range in weight from 180 pounds to 279 pounds (I am left to wonder whether it was intentional that none of the Laydeez come within fifty pounds of the prize steer over whom they’re trifling). Also, no word on whether these are real weights or Hollywood weights (“250lb Kirstie Alley collapses!”). Arriane, at 37, is the dinosaur of the bunch, so I immediately want to root for her. 25-year-old Bonnie, with her tattoos and Bump-It hair, is my favorite based on looks alone. There is also a real live rocket scientist, though I understand her time amongst her less-intimidatingly-employed peers is pretty limited. And, the rest.

I should say starting out, as a caution to those with high hopes for this show, that my expectations are abysmally low. This is based partly on conversations with Marianne after she saw an advance copy of the first episode, and partly on the show’s early press. The first glaringly off-putting aspect is the relatively low ratio of women of color to white women amongst Luke’s would-be soul mates. The casting clips on the show’s official website are chockablock with women representing a wide variety of race and ethnicity, while the selected twenty features (based on my highly inexact assumptions) only one maybe-light-complected black woman, and a couple of other women who are potentially biracial or of non-WASPy backgrounds, but the rest of this group is a sea of blinding whiteness.

Finally, of course, there’s always the uncomfortable intimacy with the unavoidable hypocrisy of real-life unscripted humans going about their lives, even when their lives are taking place in a bizarre fishbowl environment. But without this - without conflict, and bawling, and pettiness - we wouldn’t really have a show. For example, from an LA Times article that took a behind-the-scenes look at the show:

Supervising producer Mark Allen (one of 20 producers on the show) calls Conley over to tell Conley it’s time for one-on-one spa treatments. Mandy is thrilled to learn she is first. They head for hot stone massages and cozy up on a sofa, holding hands. She brings up Conley’s relationship with God.

“I am who I am because of my relationship with the Lord,” he tells her. “I pray every day and I read the Bible, and it’s important to me to meet someone that shares my faith.”

Mandy seizes an opening: “Just so you know, not to be competitive, but no other girl in the house has a Bible. . . . To me, God is a third person in the room.”

Soon, they are passionately kissing while he rubs her thigh. Next door, at least a dozen people are watching on monitors, including [executive producer SallyAnn Salsano], who deadpans: “Excuse me, where did God go?”

Man-God-Lady threesome, y’all. Now that’s good TV.