LAST EDITED ON 10-25-01 AT 06:39 PM (EST)
Love Cruise: The Maiden Voyage Episode 7
“Lei Me Down”Yeah, I know, you’re expecting some clown. Hey, anyone involved with this show is a clown, in my book.
So what would make a clown shake on this show anyway? Michael’s not getting much sex, at least in the edited version. In fact, if not for Toni’s perpetual rut (rhymes with slut), there wouldn’t be any sex on the show at all, and she’ll do it on a boat and do it with a goat before she’ll “clown around.”
Anyway, I should acknowledge that the clown has given us a teensy amount of humor over the past six months. This is my last chance to “reward” him for it. Bombs away.
When we last left the whores, everyone was stranded on Loser Island … uh-huh, like we believe that only losers go to Aruba. I don’t think Bunim-Murray Productions ever thought this show through. If the idea was to have hot sex and passion, then the WINNERS should have been on Aruba, while the losers were doing the cruise thing after being cast off the island. Maybe they could sink the boat when just Toni and Anthony were aboard. But nooo! There already is a show like that -- Temptation Island –- and BMP doesn’t want to copy someone else’s show, because it might look like they don’t know what they're doing. Instead, they made up their own show, and by gum, there’re going to prove that they don’t know what they’re doing. So now everyone is on Aruba, while Basically-Moronic Productions is doing a last-minute rewrite of the rules, federal law and network standards and practices be damned.
Only two couples are going to get back on the boat as contestants; the rest will be boarding as jurors. Through great play and some astute writhing as human juicers (in a good imitation of a new Latin dance), the “ChiTown Alliance” of Beauty and the Beast, Me-lissome and Me-cow, have managed to make it all the way to the finals with their partners, Darin and Jeannette respectively. But each of their partners holds a “switch” card and could dump the ChiTowners right on their windy keesters. What drama.
If they don’t use the switch cards, we’ve got a great vote coming up. Everybody on Loser Island hates at least one of the final four. Some hate all four of them. Could we see another “snakes and rats” speech? The tension between these whores is so thick that they can’t even wait to get back on the boat to start duking it out.
But it isn’t just about the money. Everyone is happy making nada, while the winners make $100,000 each, aren’t they? Sure they are. You’re dealing with Basically-Moronic Productions here, people who are very experienced at cheap casting, and who already knew that some people will whore themselves for free.
Sixteen such people are in this show. Fourteen of them will get nothing except a scarred reputation.
OK, it IS just about the money. No one wants to be a cheap whore. Except Toni.
We pick up where we left off, with Phoni-Baloni throwing a screaming tantrum directed at J-Ho, after Anthony tells Phoni that someone trashed her in the last Hot Seat for offering a bribe. Phoni is shocked, shocked, to find out that someone could say that about her. She never did any such thing. So she immediately marches off to confront Melissa about it and screams, while doing her best Popeye imitation, that she doesn’t know anything about a $20K bribe offer. Uh, Phoni? Assphony didn’t tell you the dollar amount when he told you that someone accused you of offering a bribe. You don’t need to be Columbo to know that someone is playing fast and loose with the truth here.
But Phoni doesn’t care. Her reputation has been besmirched, and she thinks that if she yells loud enough and long enough, people will believe her words instead of their own lying eyes. Right. So she marches out and confronts J-Ho. Time for the famous eye-popping scene, when she tries to stick her enormous surgically-enhanced mammaries in J-Ho’s eyes, while popping her own eyes out of their sockets. Must have been from the strain of seeing J-Ho over those twin man-made falsies. Geez, if Mark Burnett were doing this show, he probably would have had a product placement for the Wonderbra right after this.
J-Ho doesn’t back down one bit from Popeye. And why should she? Perhaps because Phoni’s nipples are registered as a lethal weapon with the Chicago Police? But J-Ho shows great courage standing up to this lunatic. In her mind, she’s faced worse –- after all, she’s been sleeping in the same room with Mikey.
Phoni tells J-Ho that she still loves her and still wants her to win. Then, behind her back, she tells the camera that there is no way she wants J-Ho to win. Hey there, bimbo – do the words “two-faced” mean anything to you? No wonder she had her chest inflated to Goodyear-esque levels; it’s the only way any man would spend more than two minutes in her company.
OK, time for the switch card ceremony. Mikey tells J-Ho to boot him if it gives her a better chance to win. J-Ho looks at the other men. Let’s see, there’s Assphony, who started this whole brouhaha. Greg, who caught Lord only knows how many different kinds of VD from hooking up with Phoni. Ralph, who made us all want to ralph by double-crossing the ChiAlli. Oh, what about Tony the guy, who has his hair cut in a brand new Mohawk. Real sexy look. And there’s Sideshow Bob … who? And last but definitely least, Adrian. Given the choices, it’s easy to understand why J-Ho ripped up the switch card. So did Darin. BMP got what they said they wanted – two couples who chose to be together in the final vote. Everyone is happy, right? Time to get on the boat and wrap this puppy up, right?
Julie/Justintime, the gender-challenged host, comes out to round all the whores up. He tells them to form into couples, because…
WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
In the … single dumbest moment … in the short history of reality TV, Joustin tells the whores that a third team will be voted back into the game. OK, please explain this to me: couples connive to stay on the boat and make enemies along the way … and then, at the very end, someone else is put back in to compete against the connivers. Someone who DIDN’T connive to stay on the boat. Someone who probably doesn’t have any enemies. PLEASE tell me how this makes sense. But you can’t. It doesn’t. This show has just fallen, and it can’t get up.
The happy whores don’t care. They form into pairs. And the lucky couple is … Adrian, yeah, OK, and … Gina? Gina? Didn’t she get booted in the FIRST episode? Isn’t she the Queen of Loser Island? What, did she do all the crew to get this chance?
Mikow and J-Ho look as happy as if they were standing at Ground Zero. Mikow says that the A & G got voted back in because they conducted themselves with class and dignity. Cut to Gina on her knees offering free servicing in exchange for votes. She concludes that she and Adrian have an excellent chance of winning. Yeah, even someone as dense as Gina could see how stupid this is; why couldn’t BMP?
OK, now everyone finally boards the boat for a final Hot Seat. J-Ho and Mikow go first, as the producers obviously know they have no chance of winning and just want to get them off the stage. Toni’s acolyte, Andrea, asks J-Ho how she could possibly believe that the beloved PhoniBaloni would ever try to bribe someone as lowly and unfit to be in Phoni’s presence as herself? J-Ho says that she heard it and saw it. Android insists that she needs more evidence than that. Be honest … had anyone realized before this moment that Android was one of the original O.J. jurors?
Mikow’s session in the Hot Seat produces one “sympathetic” question, from Tomiko, who asks him if he thinks he’s hurting J-Ho’s chances of winning. That’s a sympathetic question? Geez, I’d hate to hear an antagonistic one. Oh, but I just have to wait, don’t I?
Nobody asks Adrian anything, since they’re all afraid of him, except for Phoni, who wants to know if he forgives her for not using the switch card to save him. Adrian, who understands the difference between first ($100K) and second ($0) quite well, promptly lies that he does. Phoni collapses in gratitude, flopping over onto her back as usual before the producers stop her in the act of pulling down her shorts. Some habits are hard to break, I guess. The Va-Gina Monologues make for a good snoozefest. Same for Darintintin, who calls Melly his “friend for life.” Wow, Melly’s got him wrapped around her little finger without even having sex with him. She must be one hot babe. That, or Darin’s just wimpy.
Last up comes Melissa herself. Assphony decides to go after her about her boyfriend until she breaks down. Guess he can’t believe that she didn’t swoon over him after seeing his tattoos. She calls him a “joke.” Ah, c’mon, Melly, we know you can do better than that. How about calling him a “lamebrained, subhuman form of pond scum that pollutes everything it touches”? Better, but it still disrespects pond scum, which is clearly a higher life form than the Tattooed Man is.
Melly finishes off by telling people not to vote for her. On that note, the three finalist couples are sent below deck so that the others can deliberate. Gina says, over and over, “We have a good chance of winning this.” I guess having an actual idea was too much for her brain to handle, and so all she could do was spew out the same eight words repeatedly. Melissa and J-Ho talk, and Melissa is actually crying on the bed. Melissa tells a very moving story about imagining that your dad dies in your arms … and even I teared up during this (true or not), so I need to get back to something less moving. Oh, right, the voting. Good choice.
The final three couples come back on deck. Julie/Justin tells them that they are going to get laid. Say what? Oops, they are going to get “lei”-ed; each of the loser whores will put a lei around the neck of the couple that he or she wants to win. Another prop that must have cost $1.99 at K-mart for the whole set of ‘em.
Ralph and Phoni vote first. Now, this ought to be easy, right? Both of them were in the ChiTown alliance with Melissa and Michael, right? So Ralph gets up there first and votes for … Adrian and Gina. This is just a little bit strange … first Android does Phoni’s bidding, and now Railf? What, did they have some hot ménage-e-trois and became her sex slaves? Or are they just too dumb to think for themselves? Anyway, Phoni and Android also vote for Gina and Adrian, making it three to nothing/nothing. Injun Tony, trying to bring some sense back to this show before it spins completely out of control, makes a plea to vote for the team that played the best and then votes for Darin and Melissa. But Assphony is next, and all he knows is that he got booted by the ChiTowners. Assphony votes with the idjuts for Gina and Adrian. 4-1-0. The idjuts need just two more votes, and Gina would win. Around America, Sonja, Debb and Diane all hold their breath and pray for the worst to end up first.
Then, suddenly, the stoopid-person-parade ends (Yea!). Greg votes for Darin and Melissa, showing that he understood which part of his anatomy was shared with Toni and which parts weren’t. Sideshow Bob and Tomiko also vote for the distaff member of ChiTown. Next up comes Laura, who votes the same way. 5 for Melissa and Darin, 4 for Adrian and Gina, zip for M & J. Last vote: Lisa. She moans how much she loves Gina (hmmm, a little "bi" action there? thecaptain would have loved it.) ... and gives Gina the lei, making it a tie. Mikey and J-Ho join the jury, and the other two couples go below decks. Julie/Justin talks about the need for redebate. Assphony says no one is changing their vote. The final couples come back. It’s still 5-5.
J-Ho votes for … hey, come on, is there any doubt? Mikey says that what he’s about to do will make him feel better than anything he’s ever done in his life. Well, when you finish next-to-last in your class at law school and then make your living as an apprentice ambulance-chaser in Daddy’s firm, even buying dental floss is one of the high points in your life, so I’ll just skip all of that and go straight to the outcome: they both vote for Darin and Melissa. Darin and Melissa hug, as Gina resolves to drop to her knees twice as many times during her next bid for fame.
And, as a little cheesy footage runs at the end raising phony expectations that Darin and Melissa might be a real couple, Love Cruise: The Maiden Voyage finally makes drydock, leaking water in many places, and with a huge torpedo hole in the hull below the water line that was inflicted during this episode. Let’s see, what needs to be fixed before it can sail again? The rules? The host? The challenges? The “balls of shame”? Everything except for the casting? Barely-Moving Productions doesn’t care. If they did care, they would never have launched this crew before they thought through the rules.
And so we bid "adios" to shakes, though hopefully not for good. Please check back in every so often as you advance to the next pillar of media whoredom. And to all the rest of you, thanks for taking the “cruise” with us.