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 Reality Show competition. What's that, you say? It's been done before? Not original?
Well, how about this: the guy (Evan Marriott) isn't really rich, but he's a working-class laborer who's pretending to be rich - for the sake of the camera? Well, then you'd have Joe Millionaire.
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.
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 "The Bachelor with a twist". There was a second season - complete with new Mock Millionaire - and this time, the ladies came from all over the world (understandable, as The Reveal 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.
This series provides examples of the following:
- Alpha Bitch: 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.
- Breakout Character: The show made a minor star out of professional butler Paul Hogan, who narrated the opening titles, conducted Masterpiece Theatre-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.
- Elimination Catchphrase:
- "You must leave the chateau!" for the first two seasons.
- For the third season, those eliminated are told "For Richer or Poorer, your time at Lakeshore Manor has ended."
- Gold Digger:
- Played with. The whole premise is that the female contestants are competing with each other for the affections of a handsome millionaire, but he's not really rich. Will true love prevail? No. He and the other winner broke up afterwards.
- 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.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: In "Pool Party Paradise" from For Richer or Poorer, 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.
- Mock Millionaire: The entire point of the show.
- Non-Gameplay Elimination: 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.
- Reality Show Genre Blindness: 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 joe.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: 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.
- Transatlantic Equivalent: Channel 4 aired a British version in 2003.
