Joe Millionaire, the latest epiphenomenon of the reality TV revolution, attempts to answer the riddle of whether woman are motivated by love or money by inviting twenty telegenic gold diggers to court the supposed heir of a fifty million dollar fortune and then gauging their reactions when it is revealed that he is a construction worker who lives on sustenance wages and flannel shirts. But don't let that mislead you, gentle reader, it is much, much stupider than that.

Joe Millionaire has to be one of the stupidest shows I've seen in years--dumber than the dadaist Malcolm in the Middle, the vaudevillian Jenny Jones Show and the brain-dead Man vs. Beast. These shows are all surpassingly stupid, and yet, Joe Millionaire sinks below the rest. The reason is difficult to explain. In a way, I believe that the show is made out of Stupidity in the same way that ancient philosophers postulated the earth and everything on it was made out of some primitive, fundamental element, like Fire or Water. Stupidity is the show's animating spirit and its epoxy--Stupidity is "The Force" of Joe Millionaire. It's what convinced the women to do the show in the first place and keeps them from realizing that their Prince Charming is actually Derek Zoolander. It's behind the overbearing baritone of the announcer and the utter uselessness of lobotomized co-host Alex (Trading Spaces) McLeod. It's why the show hasn't bothered to revisit the civilizing-the-noble-savage theme of its debut and why Paris seems about as romantic as Gary, Indiana.

And then there's Joe himself, Evan Marriott: A man who is preternaturally, head-slappingly, holy-shit-I-have-to-call-my-friend-to-make-sure-he-saw-that stupid. His is a dumbfounding dumbness that was best captured in an image of him smelling an empty fork during a dinner cruise with Alison while looking flummoxed, not by the entrée or its smell, but by the actual utensil. Later in the same episode, he blew his cover while on an excruciating date with Zora but decided to keep her anyway. That's not just dumb, it's dumbtastic. It's stupid beyond hope. It's why I, and the rest of the Wal-Mart shoppers, watch.