The Misadventures of Miss Advised

So Bravo has gone back to the drawing board and come up with a new series that isn’t The Real Housewives of Somewhere-Better-than-where-you-live. But if the reviews are to be believed, that wasn’t such a good idea. The show follows three women who are supposedly experts in the fields of sex and relationships. It is unclear how rigorous the tests were for becoming an expert. I can only believe that they have had a lot of sex and a lot of relationships. Not necessarily at the same time.

Bravo’s explanation of the first season is as follows: These single relationship experts can’t seem to practice what they preach as Amy Laurent in New York, Emily Morse in San Francisco, and Julia Allison in Los Angeles struggle to stay afloat in the deep end of the dating pool.

For full disclosure, let me say that I have not been able to make it through a full episode (Monday nights at 10/9c on Bravo!). But I have seen some clips and short pieces during the commercials of better programming – and what I saw did not inspire me to watch what happened. In fact, it inspired me to wonder why I am still single if this is my competition.

These women more closely resemble the worst of romance book heroines than they do self-sufficient, intelligent, 30-something women. My emphasis of their age is not to imply that they are too old to find husbands, but rather that they are too old to consider marriage as the only tool for validating their existences. The reason they were chosen for this “reality” show is presumably that they have thriving careers (one is a popular radio d.j. and at least one of the others is a columnist). Why, then is finding a man the most important thing in their lives?

I fear for the people who are listening to and perhaps following their advice if this is the real story and not just fodder for a television show. It’s always been my opinion that the most attractive people are the ones that have interests outside of snagging a mate. They, at the very least, have something to talk about over dinner other than carefully curated collections of must haves that a potential mate should possess.

At their most charming they gush to the camera about their hard and fast rules of dating only to turn around and break them in their own lives. And just before I changed the channel, one of them (Julia Allison) was talking about how reasonable a 73-point checklist was for finding a man.

What I love about romance books at their best are smart and sassy heroines who find a man who is just as wonderful and they fit into each other’s lives. I don’t think a story about a woman who is out to find a man—any man—is compelling in the slightest. And it’s not good T.V. either.