Joe's unfulfilling ending

The latest reality show sensation, Joe Millionaire, ended with a bang and a whimper as love won over greed, purity over promiscuity, and aloofness over bondage. America's favorite water cooler fodder came to its grand finale Monday night with the secretly poor Evan Wallace (Marriott) choosing the distant Zora over the passionate Sarah as his partner. As an added twist _ essentially a ploy to keep viewers watching the program _ FOX provided the new couple with a million dollars of their own to share.

Somewhere around 35 million viewers tuned in to the two-hour series finale, which carried a great burden on its shoulders to deliver an exciting climactic ending. Last weeks' episode was a crock, as the entire hour had practically no original footage and was devoted to showing clips of the previous dates Sarah and Zora had gone on.

Millions of viewers came away perturbed and irritated that FOX _ ingeniously if I might add _ prolonged the program another week. At the end of the penultimate episode, Paul the Butler promised a "shocking twist" in addition to Evan's fateful decision, raising the expectations even higher for the finale. By spending very little on production costs with the exception of editing recycled film, the network got an extra week of ad revenues with little effort.

Monday night's program was essentially two episodes. The first hour showed interviews with the eighteen eliminated women, during which they spoke about their reactions to the show, their competition, and Evan's dirty little secret. While there were some fun moments, including the many unhappy faces of Alison and some all-around Heidi-bashing, most of the reminiscing was boring. The producers must have had a difficult time getting the dismissed ladies to talk, as they went to the indistinguishable Katy many times for her thoughts.

The other problem with this clip show was that none of the women seemed all that upset about the "millionaire" lie. Sure, some of them felt the premise was degrading, but there was none of the "throw a drink in his face and slap him" melodrama that we viewers were expecting.

One of the contestants, Dayana, felt she was eliminated because she could not fetch a nice dress to wear to the first night ball. Her interview was followed by clips of her shaking her booty in skanky clothing, along with proud claims of being a spoiled brat (Methinks Evan had some good foresight in not picking Dayana to move on to the next round).

Hour Two capitalized on the building of expectations and lived up to them rather quickly. As Evan chose Zora to be the "winner" (although whether being with Evan is a real "win" is debatable), he soon after broke her trust by telling her the truth about his bank account. In a maneuver to prolong the tension even more, Zora was given the prerogative to take a few hours, mull over her options and choose whether or not to stay with Evan.

In the meantime, the vicious porn-star Sarah was taken aback by Evan's decision, and bewildered by his declaration that he is a construction worker making $19,000 a year. As she packed up with fellow snubbed contestant Melissa, she was more confused than angry commenting how stupid Evan looked telling a woman that he is worth next to nothing. This had to be the biggest disappointment of the evening, as many viewers, including yours truly, was hoping for a spiteful and malicious response to Evan's untruthfulness. In the end though, justice was served as the apparent gold-digging Sarah lost out to sweetheart Zora.

Part of Zora's explanation as to why she returned was that one of the qualities she disliked about Evan was his newfound inheritance. She was visibly still wary of whether or not she could trust him, as the two stood a few feet apart from each other like middle-schoolers at a Friday night dance. Her feelings are understandable, as there is still one big problem yet to be resolved: he hasn't told her that his name is actually Evan Marriott, not Evan Wallace. Regardless, as the two danced together as the credits rolled, one couldn't help but smile.

As Evan described his relationship with Zora as a "roller coaster ride with many ups and downs," similarly, the series finale had a comparable outcome. His choice of Zora was a great peak to the show and the build up to the "shocking twist" was great, too, but in the end, the twist wasn't all that special.

FOX making the new couple true millionaires was a touching idea, as Zora is also not rolling in money as a substitute teacher, but was this ending "shocking?" Hardly. While it kept true to the show's theme of the whole adventure being a "fairy tale" and "all fairy tales have good endings," the conclusion of Joe Millionaire offered an unremarkable ending that could never live up to its high expectations.