The New Jerusalem

Meteoric Mediocrity

I watched about 10 minutes of Average Joe last night. The new Hawaii one. It is brilliant. I only watched because Dahlia Lithwick, the Jurisprudence Editor of Slate magazine and my personal hero (universally my hero worship ends in disallusionment. is that the purpose of hero worship? dunno, but Dahlia has yet to be tainted, so let's move along) wrote a really great column declaring her love for the original series.

Essentially, the magic is rooted in two things, a macro and a micro. Most immediately, the issue separating it from reality television is the liberation of non-naturalistic meathods. Rather than fill a screen with young and sexy folks, it doesn't, it gives a bracingly honest cross-section of american men. some are kind of attractive, but most all are dorks. It seems cruel to put people in the position of being "less desireables", but at least it doesn't simply ignore them. I don't exist in a blind date universe, and blind date propagates a sentiment among so many people, i think, of self-hatred. it seems like such a satisfying world that you kind of wonder if the world wouldn't be better with only sexy people. Hitler seems so EVIL when he's whiping out the mud races, but if we concede he was simply using a flawed methodology of weeding out the less aestethically pleasing, it hardly seems that different from what your average television producer does.

Next week Average Joe is shipping in a boatful of sexy model guys. apparently last time they brought in sexy model guys they went out of their way to ensure they were guys with virtually nothing else to reccomend themselves. The guy who ended up winning was 27 and still lived with his parents. I simultaneously relish the honesty of forcing us to confront the dehumanization of rank and the caricature of the pretty boys presented. We're not supposed to participate in stereotypes of people based on appearance, but realistically, pretty people DO get away with more. They are able to coast on looks, parlay meager talent into success, all based on the fact that people, including me, would like to be around them. All pretty guys may not be model/waiters living at home, but they CAN be, and Average Joe admits it.

Oh, and the producers have pumped them to be arrogant bastards. Sometimes i wonder if my parents hadn't tried so hard to beat all possibility of arrogance (and even simple pride) from me in childhood, would i be a sexier guy? That may not make sense. I was always wierdly gigantic, always the biggest kid. So my parents were so freaked out i was going to be a bully, i mean, i did enough damage just inadvertantly hurting/breaking. But they tried to make me very self-circumspect about such things. the result was puny little guys being physically confident and arrogant and me being freaked out i would hurt someone, always so aware of others' feelings and all.

So what i'm saying is that my parents decided to make me an astoundingly empathetic gigantic guy instead of a sexy gigantic bastard. and suddenly decisions make more sense.

the point is, on average joe last night, they previewed one of the arrogant bastards pulling up his shirt and saying "they're gonna have this to deal with", refering to his torso, which looks exactly as you'd imagine.

making that text was very compelling to me. It's so often an unspoken reality, and a reality i'd hazard far more bracing among gay boys. I just ain't got the firepower to hook most men. i have to contend with those pebbly torsos, and i can't.

Average Joe forces the girl to be a bitch, to weed out the fat guys and make clear that she's scared to relate to anyone too physically unappealing. it is a non-reality television i can understand as reality.

And that, in the larger picture, is what makes it great, that its non-naturalism is being used to a particular artistic agenda. Scripted television has been decimated by the low production costs and high ratings of reality television, but so infrequently has the reality show been truly compelling, because it lacks a point or objective. You can turn a camera on an anthill for 48 hours and have a season of programming, but like a good war, you can't have good tv unless you know where you're going or what you want.

In sum, Average Joe is brilliant.