Line #9 Series/JoeMillionaire


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/evan_marriott_joe_millionaire_tv_2003_photo_gc.png]]
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3	''Joe Millionaire'' is a short-lived 2003 reality show. OK, so you take a bunch of women, an attractive-looking guy (and rich to boot!), and throw them all in a house for a romantic elimination-style RealityShow competition. What's that, you say? It's been done before? Not original?
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5	Well, how about this: the guy (Evan Marriott) isn't really rich, but he's a working-class laborer who's [[MockMillionaire pretending]] to be rich - for the sake of the camera? Well, then you'd have ''Joe Millionaire''.
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7	The show was a standard ''Bachelor''-style setup - each week, Evan would send off another lady who hadn't quite earned his affection. At the end of the show, he revealed his lack of finances to his ultimate choice (they didn't last as a couple), and they were given a million dollars to split between them.
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9	''Joe Millionaire'' had an impact on the reality genre that is not to be overlooked: it was one of the earliest successful programs that could be described as "''Series/TheBachelor'' with a twist". There was a second season - complete with new MockMillionaire - and this time, the ladies came from all over the world (understandable, as TheReveal from the first season was, thanks to its popularity, common knowledge in the United States). It didn't do nearly as well ratingswise, and that was it for the franchise... at least until 2022. A third season, ''Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer'', has two bachelors serving as dual protagonists. While both are businessmen, one is a millionaire, the other isn't. While the audience is told from the start which is which, the ladies are told only that one of them is a millionaire.
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11	!!This series provides examples of the following:
12	* AlphaBitch: A contestant named Heidi was obviously groomed to be this, but she was eliminated early on. The eventual runner-up, Sarah Kozer, gradually replaced her.
13	* BreakoutCharacter: The show made a minor star out of professional butler Paul Hogan, who narrated the opening titles, conducted ''Series/MasterpieceTheatre''-inspired "fireside chats" with the viewers in each episode, and whose genial unflappability contrasted nicely with the pettiness and histrionics of the various contestants. The network and even the show itself acknowledged his popularity during its original run, and he was the only cast member to carry over to the second season. By contrast, the nominal "host", Alex [=McLeod=], appeared ''only'' in the elimination sequence (they used necklaces instead of roses), for a total of ''five minutes'' over the entire six-episode season.
14	* EliminationCatchphrase:
15	** "You must leave the chateau!" for the first two seasons.
16	** For the third season, those eliminated are told "''For Richer or Poorer'', your time at Lakeshore Manor has ended."
17	* GoldDigger:
18	** Played with. The whole premise is that the female contestants are competing with each other for the affections of a handsome millionaire, but [[MockMillionaire he's not really rich]]. Will true love prevail? [[spoiler:[[DownerEnding No. He and the other winner broke up afterwards]].]]
19	** In the third season, one of the bachelors is a millionaire and the other is not. Although the women know this, they do not know which one is which, the idea being to try to figure out which ones are really there "for the right reasons" and which are gold-diggers. It is also played with in that one of the challenges early on involves actual panning for gold and the winner, declared the literal "biggest gold digger," wins alone time with one of the guys.
20	* HoistByTheirOwnPetard: In "Pool Party Paradise" from ''For Richer or Poorer'', [[spoiler:Jennie uses a gold coin to steal away an hour of time from Steven while he's having a conversation with Whitney. However, she ends up coming across as needy and controlling and is eliminated at the end of the episode.]]
21	* MockMillionaire: The entire point of the show.
22	* NonGameplayElimination: In the premiere of ''For Richer or Poorer'', one of the women is eliminated almost immediately after Steven, the millionaire, realizes that the two of them follow each other on social media. As the whole idea of the season is that the women are not supposed to know who is the millionaire, there is no way she can stay.
23	* RealityShowGenreBlindness: This is what pretty much doomed the show's second season. There are only so many times that you have a guy pretending to be a millionaire and the girls believing it. It's why ''For Richer or Poorer'' has a twist where one of the two bachelors ''is'' a millionaire and the other is just an average [[StealthPun joe]].
24	* SequelGoesForeign: Season 2 went to Italy and cast female contestants from Europe, because everyone in the US would be Genre Savvy enough after the first one that they couldn't pull the same trick again.
25	* TransatlanticEquivalent: [[Creator/Channel4 Channel 4]] aired a British version in 2003.

Context Series / JoeMillionaire