i am eagerly anticipating the two-hour finale of what i consider one of the most brilliant and underappreciated shows currently on television: joe schmo.

now, i'll admit that when i first heard about the show's premise, having some dude participate in what he thinks is a reality show which is just an elaborate scripted plot with actors, i thought it was going to be dumb and mean. but season one turned out to be an incredibly entertaining tongue-in-cheek parody of crappy-ass reality shows like survivor, big brother and paradise hotel

what i think i liked most about it was that it was at nobody's real expense. although the 'schmo' wasn't necessarily portrayed as the brightest bulb on the tree, the show certainly never made fun of him, and the editing made him out to be a down-to-earth honest guy. it was good times.

tonight, we see the end of season two, a parody of those vomit-inducing bachelor-type shows. the season started off a bit sluggishly, but picked up momentum as one of the two schmos figured it out and the producers flipped her to the actors' camp. the dialogue is full of inflammatory double-entendres, and the cast of characters is a host of stereotypical reality-show caricatures in outrageous situations that push the bounds of credibility, only demonstrating how utterly contrived 'acutal' reality shows really are.

the producers had a stroke of brilliance, though, when they cast jonathan 'street-cents' torrens (i know, everyone knows him from jonovision, but i remember him as the host of the children's consumer awareness program that i watched religiously until it got really, i mean, really, lame) as an ambiguously gay suitor. i'm sure they must have boosted their canadian viewership ten-fold with that move. not that that really means all that much.

anyway, i'm extremely bored right now in the lab and i'm cursing the fact that i still have over three hours to wait before i can indulge in what i initially thought would just be a secret guilty pleasure, but is actually, i've come to realize, completely guilt-free.