Boy Meets Bunk
I've made no secret of my deep-seated love for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the gay-based makeover show on Bravo. The question which naturally follows is how do I feel about Bravo's other gay oriented show of the summer, Boy Meets Boy?
Until recently, I felt nothing.
Boy Meets Boy, for those of you who have missed the show, the seemingly endless promos and the press surrounding it, is TV's first gay dating show. Following in the shoes of such shows as The Bachelor and, more to the point, Joe Millionaire, the show presents us with a young, reasonably successful gay man who's in the mood for love. He is matched up with 15 potential "mates," and eventually whittles them down to one winner. The twist - and this is where the show finds its affinity to Joe Millionaire - is that some of the mates are straight, unbeknownst to our hero. If he chooses a gay mate, they go on a fabulous trip to New Zealand; if he picks a straight mate, the mate wins $25,000 and our hero gets bupkiss.
The twist is a cause for some concern. Some feel the show supports the stereotype that all gay men want to sleep with straight men - although given that the straight men here are playing the role of the seducers, that turns the stereotype on its head. Of greater concern is that the show is a big practical joke on gays, since the twist is not revealed to the lead until he's down to the final three contestants, so that in essence he is playing a game without knowing the rules. James, the lead in question, says he felt betrayed. The creator of the show, Douglas Ross, who is himself gay, scoffs at that notion, asking, "Why do gay people need to be protected from participating in reality shows with twists?" The answer to his question, of course, is not that that gays need to be protected, but that it is telling that the first gay dating show should so obviously play to straights.
My problem with the show, at least until recently, isn't the twist, but that the show is so horribly boring. I must divulge that Joe Millionaire is the only mating show I've seen in any depth. I saw the first few episodes of Cupid, but that bore more in common with American Idol than The Bachelor. I've never seen The Bachelor, or The Bachelorette, or Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, or any of the slew of similar product. Nor have I seen The Amazing Race, The Mole, more than an episode or two of Survivor, or any of the non-dating reality shows with which we have been deluged over the past few years. So I don't have much to use for comparison.
I watch Boy Meets Boy because it's on before Queer Eye. One of the elements that makes Queer Eye successful is that they pack so much into every episode. BMB, on the other hand, is like watching lube dry. The reasons for this are plentiful. First, the men have all come from Central Casting. With the exception of the one or two who have distinctive physical attributes, you can't tell the boys apart without a scorecard. There's no Carson, no Tom, no Jai - there's not a distinctive personality in sight. In part, this is because the boys are so young. James in 32, but only five of the fifteen potential mates are 30 or over. Five others are younger than 25. There's nothing wrong with matching a 32 year old man with a 23 year old boy, but in most cases, it ain't gonna take. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that James and the mates have no time to get to know each other. In real time, the show takes place in less than a week. That time is so filled with group dates and one on ones and shopping trips and nature hikes that there's no time for anybody to simply interact. The entire experience is like a package tour of Europe in which you see ten cities in seven days.
Beyond that, the focus of the show is all wrong. James and his girlfriend/advisor Andra live in one house. The twelve mates (winnowed down from fifteen in the first episode) all live in another. So how do we spend our time? With James and Andra. It doesn't help than they are both prime dullards. James may have a thought in his head, but if so, he's keeping it warm and dark and safely squirreled away. On Joe Millionaire - another show in which the lead was leaden - we spent on-camera time with the women who were vying for his hand. This put us, the audience, with the competitors, rather than with the prize. We got a chance to get to know them, and perhaps find someone to root for. Since we knew Joe wasn't really a Millionaire, we watched their interactions with an understanding they didn't have. This is the definition of dramatic irony. Similarly, on Boy Meets Boy, we know that some of the mates are straight. The gay mates don't know there are straight men amongst them, and even the straight mates don't know who else is straight. It would be so much more interesting to spend time with them and make out own judgments about who is who. As it happens, one of the mates ended up falling for one of the others, who turned out to be straight. A brief scene of their flirtation is all we saw of their story. Watching BMB is like watching a football game lensed by a cameraman who doesn't know how the game is played. You see a lot of running around, but you miss all the action.
We are now down to the final episodes. James has three mates left. It has finally been revealed to him that one of the three is straight. One might think the producers are lucky that James hasn't axed all the straight contestants. One would be wrong. This is reality television, after all, and nothing is left to chance.
When the show premiered, I thought I had read that five of the fifteen mates were gay. Thus, when James eliminated five straight mates by the third episode, I thought he was in the clear. I was wrong. As it turns out, seven of the fifteen mates were straight. This is not a twist in which a few straight men are included in a pool of potential love matches; this is a test in which nearly half the questions have no correct answers. But they didn't stop there. A friend who pays closer attention to this sort of thing than I tipped me off that the producers stacked the deck to ensure that James had at least one straight mate left in the final three. They never gave James the opportunity to cut all of the straight mates. Here's how it happened.
In the first episode, James was presented with the fifteen mates and told, after a brief cocktail party, to cut three. He cut one straight mate and two gay. This left him with an equal pool of six gay and six straight mates. At this point, chance (and strategy) was eliminated. In each of the subsequent episodes, instead of allowing James to cut who he would, the producers - through the show's host - presented him with three groups of mates, forcing him to cut one from each group. In Episode 2, he faced three groups of four. One group consisted of all straight mates, guaranteeing that at least three would go on, and one consisted of four gay mates, guaranteeing that one would be cut. The third group had two gay mates and two straight, and from this group, the only one that presented a choice, James cut one of the straights. He was now left, unknown to him, of course, with five gay mates and four straight. In the next episode, he was presented with three groups of three. Once again, one group was all gay, forcing him to cut one gay mate. The other group were mixed, with two straight mates and one gay in each, assuring that at least two straight mates would go on, and providing the potential for four straight men to stay. James cut two straight mates - the most he could have in this round. This bring us up to the most recent episode, in which James was again presented with three groups, this time with two members in each. The two remaining straight mates were paired up, so that no matter what James did, the host could reveal that one of his remaining mates was straight. As it turns out, even if James had cut three of the seven straight mates in the first episode, this strategy would still have worked. The producers would simply have presented a group of four straight mates in the second episode, assuring that three moved on, and a group of three straight mates in the third episode, assuring that two moved on. Pair up those final two, and you're left with one straight mate in the final three.
Part of this scenario is speculation, since the sexual orientation of the contestants isn't revealed until they are cut. Thus, my friend and I are both guessing the identity of the remaining straight mate. But the guess seems reasonable. One of the mates, Wes, has been shown endlessly in a clip saying, "You just assumed I was gay. Why?" This assures that Wes is gay. Of the remaining two, Franklin refers to himself as a wine steward rather than a sommelier, thereby assuring that he is straight. In any case, only Wes and Brian, the final contestant, have spoken on camera of how they are falling for James. Franklin has complained of a dearth of face time and has said he doesn't know how James feels about him, but hasn't shown any evidence of attraction toward James. Nothing is certain until the final episode, but this is TV, not the lottery, and the producers' desire for a compelling finale trumps any need for fairness or honesty.
Now the twist becomes more than a plot element. It becomes a nasty trick. The game is fixed. No longer is this a show about putting a gay man in with a group of straight and gay men and allowing him to choose, it is indeed a show about gay humiliation. Joe Millionaire was a show about straight humiliation, but with three distinctive differences. One, it followed in the shoes of a dozen similar dating shows, all of which had been played, forgive the word, straight. Two, if the girl Joe chose accepted him in spite of the lie (which she did), they got to split a million bucks. If James picks the wrong guy, he's SOL. Finally, Joe Millionaire was on Fox, for God's sake, where one expects to see this sort of thing. James, in an article in Newsweek, put it in perspective, saying, "They told me they put the twist in there because they wanted straight people to watch. I said to them, 'Well, you've played gay people as entertainment for straight people. Of course they're going to watch'."
One might think Bravo would be peeved at such trickery. But no, they have revealed their own twist. According to Bravo president Jeff Gaspin, gays aren't the target audience for Boy Meets Boy and Queer Eye at all. Or at least not the primary target. At a press conference last month, Gaspin explained, "On the surface (the program block) might seem designed for gay audiences, but it's really not. When we discussed our advertising plans for how we are going to promote it, the first group of people we are going to promote it to are women 18-49." Vivi Zigler, Senior VP for Marketing and Advertising at NBC, which owns Bravo, elaborated, "Gay men are not measured by Nielsen. Women 18-49 is a more salable demo." Gays are a secondary target, but since apparently no one knows who they are or what they buy, there's no point in marketing to them. This explains all the DiSaronno ads on Queer Eye, at any rate.
Until recently, I felt nothing.
Boy Meets Boy, for those of you who have missed the show, the seemingly endless promos and the press surrounding it, is TV's first gay dating show. Following in the shoes of such shows as The Bachelor and, more to the point, Joe Millionaire, the show presents us with a young, reasonably successful gay man who's in the mood for love. He is matched up with 15 potential "mates," and eventually whittles them down to one winner. The twist - and this is where the show finds its affinity to Joe Millionaire - is that some of the mates are straight, unbeknownst to our hero. If he chooses a gay mate, they go on a fabulous trip to New Zealand; if he picks a straight mate, the mate wins $25,000 and our hero gets bupkiss.
The twist is a cause for some concern. Some feel the show supports the stereotype that all gay men want to sleep with straight men - although given that the straight men here are playing the role of the seducers, that turns the stereotype on its head. Of greater concern is that the show is a big practical joke on gays, since the twist is not revealed to the lead until he's down to the final three contestants, so that in essence he is playing a game without knowing the rules. James, the lead in question, says he felt betrayed. The creator of the show, Douglas Ross, who is himself gay, scoffs at that notion, asking, "Why do gay people need to be protected from participating in reality shows with twists?" The answer to his question, of course, is not that that gays need to be protected, but that it is telling that the first gay dating show should so obviously play to straights.
My problem with the show, at least until recently, isn't the twist, but that the show is so horribly boring. I must divulge that Joe Millionaire is the only mating show I've seen in any depth. I saw the first few episodes of Cupid, but that bore more in common with American Idol than The Bachelor. I've never seen The Bachelor, or The Bachelorette, or Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, or any of the slew of similar product. Nor have I seen The Amazing Race, The Mole, more than an episode or two of Survivor, or any of the non-dating reality shows with which we have been deluged over the past few years. So I don't have much to use for comparison.
I watch Boy Meets Boy because it's on before Queer Eye. One of the elements that makes Queer Eye successful is that they pack so much into every episode. BMB, on the other hand, is like watching lube dry. The reasons for this are plentiful. First, the men have all come from Central Casting. With the exception of the one or two who have distinctive physical attributes, you can't tell the boys apart without a scorecard. There's no Carson, no Tom, no Jai - there's not a distinctive personality in sight. In part, this is because the boys are so young. James in 32, but only five of the fifteen potential mates are 30 or over. Five others are younger than 25. There's nothing wrong with matching a 32 year old man with a 23 year old boy, but in most cases, it ain't gonna take. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that James and the mates have no time to get to know each other. In real time, the show takes place in less than a week. That time is so filled with group dates and one on ones and shopping trips and nature hikes that there's no time for anybody to simply interact. The entire experience is like a package tour of Europe in which you see ten cities in seven days.
Beyond that, the focus of the show is all wrong. James and his girlfriend/advisor Andra live in one house. The twelve mates (winnowed down from fifteen in the first episode) all live in another. So how do we spend our time? With James and Andra. It doesn't help than they are both prime dullards. James may have a thought in his head, but if so, he's keeping it warm and dark and safely squirreled away. On Joe Millionaire - another show in which the lead was leaden - we spent on-camera time with the women who were vying for his hand. This put us, the audience, with the competitors, rather than with the prize. We got a chance to get to know them, and perhaps find someone to root for. Since we knew Joe wasn't really a Millionaire, we watched their interactions with an understanding they didn't have. This is the definition of dramatic irony. Similarly, on Boy Meets Boy, we know that some of the mates are straight. The gay mates don't know there are straight men amongst them, and even the straight mates don't know who else is straight. It would be so much more interesting to spend time with them and make out own judgments about who is who. As it happens, one of the mates ended up falling for one of the others, who turned out to be straight. A brief scene of their flirtation is all we saw of their story. Watching BMB is like watching a football game lensed by a cameraman who doesn't know how the game is played. You see a lot of running around, but you miss all the action.
We are now down to the final episodes. James has three mates left. It has finally been revealed to him that one of the three is straight. One might think the producers are lucky that James hasn't axed all the straight contestants. One would be wrong. This is reality television, after all, and nothing is left to chance.
When the show premiered, I thought I had read that five of the fifteen mates were gay. Thus, when James eliminated five straight mates by the third episode, I thought he was in the clear. I was wrong. As it turns out, seven of the fifteen mates were straight. This is not a twist in which a few straight men are included in a pool of potential love matches; this is a test in which nearly half the questions have no correct answers. But they didn't stop there. A friend who pays closer attention to this sort of thing than I tipped me off that the producers stacked the deck to ensure that James had at least one straight mate left in the final three. They never gave James the opportunity to cut all of the straight mates. Here's how it happened.
In the first episode, James was presented with the fifteen mates and told, after a brief cocktail party, to cut three. He cut one straight mate and two gay. This left him with an equal pool of six gay and six straight mates. At this point, chance (and strategy) was eliminated. In each of the subsequent episodes, instead of allowing James to cut who he would, the producers - through the show's host - presented him with three groups of mates, forcing him to cut one from each group. In Episode 2, he faced three groups of four. One group consisted of all straight mates, guaranteeing that at least three would go on, and one consisted of four gay mates, guaranteeing that one would be cut. The third group had two gay mates and two straight, and from this group, the only one that presented a choice, James cut one of the straights. He was now left, unknown to him, of course, with five gay mates and four straight. In the next episode, he was presented with three groups of three. Once again, one group was all gay, forcing him to cut one gay mate. The other group were mixed, with two straight mates and one gay in each, assuring that at least two straight mates would go on, and providing the potential for four straight men to stay. James cut two straight mates - the most he could have in this round. This bring us up to the most recent episode, in which James was again presented with three groups, this time with two members in each. The two remaining straight mates were paired up, so that no matter what James did, the host could reveal that one of his remaining mates was straight. As it turns out, even if James had cut three of the seven straight mates in the first episode, this strategy would still have worked. The producers would simply have presented a group of four straight mates in the second episode, assuring that three moved on, and a group of three straight mates in the third episode, assuring that two moved on. Pair up those final two, and you're left with one straight mate in the final three.
Part of this scenario is speculation, since the sexual orientation of the contestants isn't revealed until they are cut. Thus, my friend and I are both guessing the identity of the remaining straight mate. But the guess seems reasonable. One of the mates, Wes, has been shown endlessly in a clip saying, "You just assumed I was gay. Why?" This assures that Wes is gay. Of the remaining two, Franklin refers to himself as a wine steward rather than a sommelier, thereby assuring that he is straight. In any case, only Wes and Brian, the final contestant, have spoken on camera of how they are falling for James. Franklin has complained of a dearth of face time and has said he doesn't know how James feels about him, but hasn't shown any evidence of attraction toward James. Nothing is certain until the final episode, but this is TV, not the lottery, and the producers' desire for a compelling finale trumps any need for fairness or honesty.
Now the twist becomes more than a plot element. It becomes a nasty trick. The game is fixed. No longer is this a show about putting a gay man in with a group of straight and gay men and allowing him to choose, it is indeed a show about gay humiliation. Joe Millionaire was a show about straight humiliation, but with three distinctive differences. One, it followed in the shoes of a dozen similar dating shows, all of which had been played, forgive the word, straight. Two, if the girl Joe chose accepted him in spite of the lie (which she did), they got to split a million bucks. If James picks the wrong guy, he's SOL. Finally, Joe Millionaire was on Fox, for God's sake, where one expects to see this sort of thing. James, in an article in Newsweek, put it in perspective, saying, "They told me they put the twist in there because they wanted straight people to watch. I said to them, 'Well, you've played gay people as entertainment for straight people. Of course they're going to watch'."
One might think Bravo would be peeved at such trickery. But no, they have revealed their own twist. According to Bravo president Jeff Gaspin, gays aren't the target audience for Boy Meets Boy and Queer Eye at all. Or at least not the primary target. At a press conference last month, Gaspin explained, "On the surface (the program block) might seem designed for gay audiences, but it's really not. When we discussed our advertising plans for how we are going to promote it, the first group of people we are going to promote it to are women 18-49." Vivi Zigler, Senior VP for Marketing and Advertising at NBC, which owns Bravo, elaborated, "Gay men are not measured by Nielsen. Women 18-49 is a more salable demo." Gays are a secondary target, but since apparently no one knows who they are or what they buy, there's no point in marketing to them. This explains all the DiSaronno ads on Queer Eye, at any rate.
posted by John Bliss at
12:33 AM
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