he faced the galloping hordes, a hundred bad guys with swords. the bachelor is still on tv? what a complete sham this show is. the only thing the bachelor has proven is that even when set free in a candy shop for weeks on end, a bachelor will still remain -- solidy, firmly, resolutely -- a bachelor. there's been no successful marriages from any seasons in the bachelor. they're in season nine by the way. that's zero for eight so far. this year's twist? the bachelor is an actual prince and the heir to a cosmetics company. so he's rich, able to make any little girl he chooses a princess, and yes, he's italian -- albeit, without the accent. did we mention that his company makes cosmetics for pets? what products does that encompass exactly? bare escentuals, watch out!

well, whatever teh show is doing, it's working. currently, at least four females i know are pinned to their tvs watching the 2-hour premiere. this might be the biggest thing since, well, the last bachelor. really, the key to any reality show is to cast enough weird females to make our normal everyday females have to bitch and complain and verbally catscratch their counterparts on tv. that's it. the formula for a successful reality show is mainly just cast enough "love to hate" personalities to capture america's attention.

the problem with having these rich, successful, good looking men on a show like the bachelor is that being confronted with twenty five women (plus this season's wild cards; two italian ladies brought in to cause some international rift) is nothing. the number of women a man can get is exponentially higher the more desireable they are. if you're someone like brad pitt, you're rejecting 1000-2000 women daily. even as a non-celebrity, if you're someone like this prince lorenzo borghese, you can reject twenty five women just by going out to a nice club for a few hours. so why limit yourself?

on the other hand, for normal guys like me and most of the males i know, twenty five might represent the number of women that might be interested in us ever. like over our entire lives. count it out. how many women could you have possibly selected, or dated, during your lifetime so far. i'd bet that number is somewhere around twenty five -- if not lower. what they should be doing is casting normal joe schmo's on these shows if they want a successful marriage. as long as they continue to cast playboys, they'll never get a bachelor to settle down. oh wait, that's not the point of the show.

the reality show i need to see is one where they pit physically ideal guys versus guys who have great personalities but aren't exactly lookers. finally we can determine whether or not personality trumps physicality. all anecdotal evidence points to "yes," but observational data might say otherwise. where is this reality show? or the one where a charming, gallant asian man faces off against a typical dorky white guy for the love of a cadre of multi-ethnic women. which one wins? or perhaps a reality show based on the infamous ladder theory. these are the type of shows that would entice me, the ones that tackle the big questions.