Parents will always say that they don't love one child more than the other, but if a gun-toting villain with extreme moral views and a penchant for imposing these views in immoral ways (this happens on CSI all the time) burst into my house right now and said, "You can only save one child," lined up my TV, DVD, computer, stereo, and original Nintendo system against a wall execution-style, and said he would destroy all of them if I couldn't pick the one I loved most, I would race to my TV with open arms and clutch it to my breast, tears poring into the pocket around its Power button, and say, "It's just you and me, kid. Mommy loves you."
Why Paradise Hotel Was This Summer’s Most Devastating TV Show
Fox’s Paradise Hotel began as that benign drunk friend you have, the one who tells you that you’re like a sister/brother while she's hammered courtesy of Lady Zima. The guests arrived at the infinity pool, a symbol portending the endless opportunities awaiting them in Shangri-la, and delighted in the attentive services of head waiter, Alejandro, lesser waiter, George, and who can ever forget Kirk The Bartender? Kirk kept them coming. Kirk kept them strong.
The guests were warned by ambiguously accented host, Amanda, that they must hook up or leave paradise forever, and while this mandate struck fear in the contestants hearts because the next spring break was at least 10 months away and yes, 10 months did feel like Forever, they hopefully glanced around at their compatriots and realized that they could do this. They could hook up. In fact, they had spent all of high school and college training for just this sort of Olympics. There was no one in the group that each contestant wouldn’t at least consider going to first base with, and thus, a fire was lit in the breast of the hotel guests, a spark of confidence that whispered, “Bring on the boo-tay, cause paradise is mine!”
And then Dave joined the cast.
The PH guests, forced to choose someone from the “outside world” to join them, were presented with Tom and Dave. Tom was unattractive in the way that the men on birthday greeting cards for women are unattractive (“I almost got you him for your birthday, but…” Open the card and there’s a joke about being unable to fit him into the envelope or something), but Dave was unattractive in a “someday he’ll settle down with a nice Jewish girl” way. I can say this. I’m Jewish. All but one of the girls voted for Dave to join the group, and their spokeswomen called upon a deep reserve of ancient wordsmithing to express the girls’ reasoning for inviting on the ugly guy. He seemed like he had a “good personality.”
Here is the first moment where the guests unknowingly revealed their real intentions, the pivotal juncture when Paradise Hotel turned from sloppy yet fun Cathy into ill-tempered, eventually belligerent Catherine. Prior to Dave’s vote-on, the Paradisees had been deliriously happy at the hotel without being in the presence of any good personalities. Everyone was boring, simple, and insecure and they weren’t just glowing from the sunburns they incurred from floating in the infinity pool, sloshed, close to ten hours a day. They were glowing from the bliss of being alike. Already guests were proclaiming that they had made friends for life, that they had each other’s backs forever, that if they were ordering a Seven and Seven at the bar, they would always order another for their roommate.
In short, the Paradise Hotel “originals” didn’t want a good personality. They wanted someone they wouldn’t care about voting off next week. How did they know they weren’t going to get attached to Dave? No one was attracted to him. Not even the straight boys.
Dave showed up sweaty, big nosed (I can say this. I have a prominent nose), and large pored, and granted, while at first he behaved just as drunkenly and just as moronically as the old-timers, he read differently to them. He couldn’t get away with it. If you’re Zack, far and away the stupidest contestant at the hotel, you can A) tell the girl who picks you to room with her that you thought you could have done better than her because you’re hotter than she is (and then nail her later) B) claim that you have “lawyer” in you when you indeed, do not, although if you want to go head to head with Kirk The Bartender and claim that you have “bartender” in you, then you are nearing closer to the truth and C) make references to your Paradise Hotel “battle” as being akin to those depicted in the Mel Gibson vehicle, Braveheart. If you’re Dave and your features are not in as delicate of a balance as the rest of the guests’, then pretty much everything you’re going to do is wrong. Rude. Inappropriate. And, the PH favorite, “shady.”
Even Dave’s closest ally at the hotel, Charla (turning out to be the most ingrateful person alive- see below), admitted to not wanting him to touch her. Not content to let this private statement evaporate, the fun kids at the hotel made her repeat her love poem to Dave at a confessional called Pandora’s Box. Although, out loud, the Paradisees said that they felt this unfortunate information had to come to light for Dave’s sake, what they were really doing was reminding him that even his one friend didn’t want to “hook up,” making him unbelievably disposable.
In Paradise, a friend was someone whose tongue you didn’t mind having in your mouth. Dave didn’t qualify.
Before continuing, let me clarify that the other guests at Paradise Hotel were no paragons of beauty. Bodybuilder Toni’s buggy eyes often jumped in the pool before she did. In the right light, we could see that professional cheerleader Amy had the skin of a lizard. Andon was so oily that the other guests were reminded not to run in his presence for fear of slipping and cracking their heads, and Zack was such a portrait of blankness that the word “duh,” seemed not characterize not only the shape of his mouth, but his entire countenance. At best, the rest of the contestants were average to nice-looking.
But Dave, Below-Average-Looks-Dave, was the Paradise Hotel guest that never should have been. During make-out games each girl gave Dave a chaste kiss on the lips then moved onto the next guy to play tonsil hockey, until Kristin, always up for a laugh, decided that someone had to take the hit for the team. As she frenched Dave the other contestants stopped their own hooking up to shout, “Oh my god! She’s making out with Dave!” in the same squeal of amazement they would have used had the infinity pool been suddenly drained and the bar closed up for the night.
Because he was intelligent and because he and Charla became an inseparable team who always picked each other as roommates, Dave stayed. The remaining “originals” grew more and more bitter. They had fun scorning his man-boobs for the first five minutes, but now he wasn’t of any use to them and more than that, quickly becoming a threat. They made fun of his body (in a friendly way). They laughed at him when he gave a lapdance, but were turned on by each other’s lapdances. They pulled at Dave’s ears, mocked his paleness, and chuckled heartily when he uttered any talk of hooking up because this was like him asserting that he would like to be a pony.
Worst of all, though, the Paradisees knew that Dave had a crush on Charla and knew that he would never get to touch her knee, much less her chest, so they baited him. First they told him that he was a pussy for liking her when she wasn’t attracted to him. Then, toward the end of the season, they taunted him at the bar- if he was a real man, he would go into Charla’s bedroom that night, bring her some of that short-supplied alcohol, and seduce her. By this point Paradise Hotel had turned into that cruel drunk friend you have, the one who does everything in her inebriated power to make the people around her feel as uncomfortable and humiliated as possible.
What made Paradise Hotel amazing not only for a Fox summer replacement, but a reality show in general, was that by throwing one unlike being into the like cast, it rocked the expectations of the others who felt they “deserved” to be there. At the finale this was the repeated accusation: that Dave, in particular, did not deserve to win the game—on the surface because the loser guests said that he had been, yes, shady, but the truth was that the guests had all been shady. He had just looked especially shady, his profile bleeding over into others’ conversations at the bar, his smallish eyes taking details in, and his pastiness betraying the fact that he had not spent enough of the last two years tanning.
The ultimate blow came when Charla, having won $250,000, was told by Amanda that she had the option of splitting her prize money with her partner up until the end, Dave. As Charla debated going halfsies in her room, Toni, uninvited, joined her, and succeeded in convincing Charla, with steroid-like intensity, that she didn’t owe Dave a dime.
This is Dave, who partnered with the anti-social Charla from the beginning, saving her from sure eviction (she was pretty, but she didn’t like the pool enough). Dave, who had defended Charla whenever anyone uttered a bad word about her propensity for reading instead of drinking. Dave, with his unrequited crush and devotion, who had comforted Charla while she cried, who had basically acted as her whipping boy, who had masterminded her place in the final four. Dave who, Toni obviously thought, was too ugly to win anything.
The summer ended with Charla still not wanting Dave to touch her shoulders and especially not wanting him to touch her check.
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Check out Salon's amazing interview with Dave, but you'll have to watch a quick ad. It's worth it.
Charla's also insisting she's nice and her interviewer fails to grill her, but I think her actions will eventually eat at her on her death bed.
