Amy's Robot

Joe Millionaire: The Return of Linda; David Breaks Down

In this week's episode, David gets the opportunity to call back one of the girls he previously rejected, and you could damn well bet it would be Linda, the only girl he seemed to have a genuine connection with. So Linda returns, and almost immediately, she begins exhibiting the same insecurities which led her to abandon the show in the first place. Cat, picking up on Linda's persistent weakness, manipulates the hell out of her, revealing all sorts of intimate details about what she's done with David since Linda jumped ship a few weeks ago. You see the delight in Cat's eyes as she tells Linda (in some language other than English) something like "On the date, David wanted to do it." Linda looks horrified as she realizes that some people in the world, apparently, have sex before marriage. Linda is paralyzed by visions of Cat and Cowboy Dave jumping in her head, and her anxiety leads her to nearly blow her second chance, while Cat is off actually blowing Dave. On their morning date, Linda makes the bone-headed, head-slappingly-stupid decision to (a) confront David about kissing other girls while she was away, and (b) backing away from David when he moves in for a kiss. Honey, it is too late to be coy! If you have any self-respect at all, you'll jump in there and start slurping! David is not smart enough to read the the implicit message in your prudity -- he needs explicit physical signs of love. Cat understands this: she actually WALKS INTO THE BATHROOM while David is in there, and God knows what kind of watersports the two of them get involved in. As she says, it's a game, and you have to do whatever is necessary to win, even if it means walking in while your man's on the john. Meanwhile, Linda is back in her room writing gushy love letters and wrapping up the overly symbolic present she bought for David: an angel figurine. Linda: at this point the only way that angel figurine is going to get you anywhere is if it dispenses KY jelly and you're the one dispensing it! Cat is going for broke here, and you better catch up.

The confusion brought on by Linda's non-kiss causes David's brain to split in two, and he spends most of the last half of the episode swearing and apologizing for swearing, as his cowboy brain struggles to decode Linda's reluctance and Cat's ruthless overtures.

The re-appearance of Linda does, however, raise some questions about the role of the producers in this show. It seems evident that the idea of bringing back a rejected contestant was entirely theirs, since they realized what David didn't: without Linda, the show and the relationships had no heart. There is some hearsay evidence that this is precisely what happened: at one point, either Petra or Kat is explaining to the home audience what David said about Linda's return: "He tried to tell me it wasn't his idea." Well, if it wasn't his idea, then who's was it? Obviously the Powers That Be told David, hey, the show sucks, we're bringing back Linda, and he was like, "Yes, masters." Amy and I were talking about the move before the show, and she pointed out that if you think about it, no similar show would ever have a reason for bringing back someone who was already rejected. It just doesn't make sense in the format of the show. But, since the producers realized they had a turkey on their hands without Linda, they made the only move they could. One can assume they didn't ask Cat what she thought about all this. Besides, she was probably too busy studying up on the Der Freude am Sexen to have much of an opinion about anything besides how to put her Offnung on his Grosse Aufsatz, if you catch my meaning.

Linda, we're pulling for you, but honey, put your mouth where his money is. And soon!

categories: TV
posted by adm at 1:13 AM | #