User Reviews

A lot of people were disappointed by the first "Average Joe" series when "nice guy" Adam Mesh lost out to Jason Peoples in the final episode. So playing on that sympathy, the producers quickly created "Average Joe: Adam Returns" in which Mesh returned to the Palm Springs location, but instead of being one of 16 guys, he found himself surrounded by 19 eligible women to choose from.

Some had been chosen by video submissions, some by audition, others through e-harmony! Mesh took the girls snowboarding, bullfighting, riding, golfing and a number of other activities as he slowly weeded the group down to the final two.

These nineteen young ladies were no "Average Janes" either. They were a fine mixture of attractive and unusual. At one point Joe Fabiani and two other "Joes" from season one showed up with a bus load of bikini babes to add to the date (similar to the way the three hunks were added to the first show to compete with the Joes) but Adam turned them away before the original girls even got there. Although most definitely staged, it was a nicely done moment.

In the end, Adam found himself facing the same kind of dilemma Malena did in the first show: to pick the homebody that seems right for him or the slightly flashier gal. To up the stakes, he even brought both girls home to meet his mom and dad.

However, the girls just didn't have the same colorful personalities as the guys from the original show, though several, notably Christine Morrell, were smokin'.

This was followed by one final "Average Joe" season, "Revenge of the Nerds".

The fourth and currently last in the "Average Joe" series restarts the franchise by hooking up a lovely Polish girl with 18 Average (and some below average) Joes in Los Angeles. Ana lives on a yacht in the harbor while the Joes get various opportunities to date her. As the 4th in the series the guys now know somewhere along the way a group of hunks are going to show up and steal the girl away...they just don't know when.

There are seven hunky model guys this time, racing to Ana in red convertibles. These guys are prompted to be really obnoxious and loud in ways that seem unreal, even for a reality show. In another new twist, with every cut, one of the guys sent home is given a professional makeover and brought back to the show in a later episode.

When it gets down to the final six guys, the show moves to Tahiti where the romance continues and an "Average Joe" tries to finally prevail in one of these shows.

The guys in this are more colorful than the girls in season three: Adam Returns, but also there's a lot of them that are just too camera aware and acting rather than being themselves: Carson, Michael and the obnoxious Dante. And they are given dumb, dangerous dates like roller derby where its amazing nobody gets seriously hurt. NBC agreed and kept this on the shelf for a year. Then they aired it in the dead of summer when nobody watched. So maybe they should call this one "Below Average Joe".

Network: NBC; Genre: Reality/Game; Average Content Rating: TV-PG; Classification: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Season 1 & 2

There's a war going on. Not against terrorism and fascism, I'm speaking, of course, about the battle of the sexes. Men don't understand women and women can barely stomach men. The latest beach front in that war is NBC's 'Average Joe' - a ridiculous, but undeniably original spin on the usual 'Bachelor' reality dating shows in which a women is duped into thinking she's on some other show and then must chose between a bunch of 'average Joe's' - to put it kindly. Geeks, slobs, nerds and jerks. Ultimately, she must choose between the Joe's she's gotten to know and the airhead hunks she's just met. Will love triumph? Will she go for personality over looks? Honestly, who cares. But it sure makes for interesting water cooler debate. A quality most shows of this ilk certainly don't have. Women can look at this show and, based on isolated comments and incidents, have her dreams of believing in the stereotype that all men are pigs vindicated. Men can see women depicted in a way that they rarely are on TV. When the babe picks the hunk (and she does ever time, I'll get to that later), the women of the country go on damage control protesting that 'It's just women like here'. Then the scenario repeats itself over and over with the same results.

The original angle of the show, and one of the reasons this trash is tolerable, is the light it casts the women in. Most TV women are emotional, deep, intellectual, benevolent creatures that just want what's right. This show shines a light on the shallow and self absorbed people that they can be. You don't see this on TV much at all and that's what makes it so unique. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Average Joe' where conceived by a group of average Joe's themselves seeking revenge on years of female neglect and rejection. Hey, it's their right. It's about time the average Joe's had a voice. And the joke isn't just on the babe (respectively delicious Melana in season 1 and Larissa in season 2 - all 'Average Joe' women must have odd twists on popular female names). It's on the audience as well. This show could rope in women and have them rooting for guys that they wouldn't give the time of day if they passed on the street. And not just babes, but 'average' women just the same.

Another reason the show is tolerable is that it doesn't take itself to seriously. That's in part due to the concept: when you get a group of guys like this together they are going to have a sense of humor about themselves. And average guys are immeasurably more interesting to watch than blank-faced studs. Thankfully, this show mostly spares us from idiotic speeches about the importance of love or finding 'the one'. Actually, it even goes beyond that. The show is so brazenly stupid that it crosses the line into funny territory. It's so unabashedly phony that any hope of viewing it as a social experiment gets tossed out the window. The execution of it all is shoddy and silly at best - are there kids in the editing room putting this thing together? And for that, I can't recommend the show and sure wouldn't call it 'good'.

Still, there's a sick part of me that likes it. Again, drawing from an unpredictable pond 'Average Joe' will deliver an ending less like a reality show fantasy and more like. well, reality. In the final episode we see the babe finally unable to keep humoring the remaining Joe (Adam in season 1and Brian in season 2 - both seem heartfelt and endearing) and drops him like a bag of dirt inexplicably for the hunk. I believe that the Joe being dropped at the end is a forgone conclusion. He'll never get the girl. The victory is in how broken up the women is over dumping him. At the end of the season: nice guys finish last, the Joe gets humiliated on national television and we the audience savor the brief moment of tears the babe sheds for hurting the Joe - yes, it is all pretty nasty stuff. And daring if you think about it. 'Average Joe' is like the reality TV version of a Neil LaBute movie. Talk about that at the water cooler.

* * ½