CW's 'Farmer Wants a Wife' is a prime waste
Are you ready for another load of reality-TV manure?
And I mean for real this time, not as any mere metaphor.
Just don't blame the writers' strike for "Farmer Wants a Wife," a self-explanatory new reality competition debuting at 8 p.m. Wednesday on WGN Channel 9, immediately after "America's Next Top Model," where it fits in as naturally as road apples on a bridle path. The fifth network, the CW, has been planning this show since last spring, and the format has already produced TV hits in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and even down under in Australia.
If that doesn't make it the lowest common denominator, it has to be at very least the widest common denominator -- and as any farmer knows, when you're talking cow flop, width is more of an issue than depth.
Hold your nose, however, and you'll find there are more than a few hoots and knee-slappers to be had in this series, even if you're laughing at the people unfortunate enough to be in it and not with them. This is USDA Prime so-bad-it's-good Waste Watcher material; just remember it's farm waste you're dealing with here.
You've probably already guessed the basic idea for "Farmer Wants a Wife," and unless you've assumed even an iota of sophistication you're not far from being dead on. The show digs up a cornbread studmuffin of a Missouri farmer, 29-year-old Matt, who has somehow succeeded in staying single while developing six-pack abs baling hay. And there's no farmer's tan on this old boy; he rides his tractor bare-chested in the sun, ladies. In "The Dating Game" parlance, he's looking for someone "who can pull her own weight."
So the show trots in a bevy of 10 city women to be eliminated one by one until the guy gets his gal. Why the city? It turns out Matt wants a gal just like the gal who married dear old dad, and she was a "city girl," too. Of course, it also taps into the old "Green Acres"/"The Simple Life" urban-rural dynamic, as there's just nothing funnier than city slickers interacting with rubes.
"I'm going to a farm in the Midwest," gushes Josie, a Playboy "cybergirl" and (ergo) "aspiring actress" from Southern California, while shopping over the phone. "I kinda need something sexy, flashy, kinda farmery."
Josie is also a borderline psychotic with an unquenchable will to win, which soon puts her in opposition to Kanisha, a Canadian who adapts Vince Lombardi's most famous motto to the ever-so-slightly more moderate: "Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is."
There are a couple of Chicagoans -- Amanda, a cutie-pie Northwestern coed, and Ashley, a hotel sales manager -- but my money's on Brooke, a Dallas nanny who also just happens to be a virgin. I'll bet you strip steaks to Slim Jims that old farmer Matt's not going to be able to resist that package, and I thought that even before he went all twitterpated over her Texas drawl.
Yet the actual competition is simply something to hang the moronic remarks and ridiculous behavior on. Rousted by a cock-a-doodle-doo in the morning, New Yorker Christa says, "I didn't think people woke up to roosters and not alarm clocks. Like, it's for real. Roosters are real."
El Lay hottie Stephanie, meanwhile, declines to take part in a chicken roundup, because she fears having her eyes pecked out. "I just wanted to stay back and watch -- someone else's eyes get pecked out," she says. She also becomes the first one to actually step in a cow pie -- in her heels, no less.
Viewers who stumble into "Farmer Wants a Wife" on TV, however, would do well to remember: When you walk through a cow pasture, you never know what will end up on your feet. Watch at your own risk.
In the air
Remotely interesting: It's an all-suburban "Wheel of Fortune" today as it continues airing the "College Week" shows shot recently at Navy Pier. The contestants are Kelly Clinton-Cirocco of Wisconsin via Gurnee, Mark Grotto of Illinois-Chicago via Wheaton and Laura Hubert of Loyola via Mount Prospect. It's at 6:30 p.m. on WLS Channel 7. … "Hell's Kitchen" and "Kitchen Nightmares" chef Gordon Ramsay appears at the Barbara's Bookstore at Macy's, 111 N. State St., downtown, at 1 p.m. today to sign copies of his new book on "Fast Food."
James Woods' "Shark" returns at 8 p.m. today on CBS' WBBM Channel 2. … Robin Williams guest-stars on the 200th episode of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" at 9 p.m. on NBC's WMAQ Channel 5.
End of the dial: WBEZ 91.5-FM claimed four regional Edward R. Murrow Awards this month, with Cate Cahan sharing three for feature reporting, investigative reporting and use of sound. Chicago Public Radio is also getting a Sigma Delta Chi national award for its series on school overcrowding in Gage Park.
Kultur International Films is out with a couple of fine new DVD additions to its "Great Writers" series today: William Faulkner and James Joyce. The documentaries are tasteful and intelligent and sell for $20.
-- Ted Cox