This time, it's an international affair

It's every reality TV whore's dream come true. Fourteen European women, none of whom are even the slightest bit familiar with last season's runaway hit Joe Millionaire, are whisked away to an isolated estate as part of an unnamed dating game. There, the women are introduced to the main prize - 24-year-old David Smith, a Texan cowboy who recently inherited $80 million from a dead uncle and who is supposedly looking for someone with whom to share his newfound wealth.

But, of course, it wouldn't be reality television if it didn't have a catch. Not only does "Joe" have the power to evict one or two women every episode (which he does by denying them diamond necklaces or bejeweled rings at the end of the show), but, as the audience knows all too well and as these unfortunate beauties will soon find out, he isn't even rich -- he's a rodeo circuit rider, racking in a mere $11,000 a year.

And so starts the second season of Joe Millionaire: An International Affair. Looking to capitalize on the incredible ratings from their early 2003 surprise hit and to duplicate a show that they claimed could only be a one-time event, the network executives at Fox searched high and low across Europe, trying to find a cast of women who had never heard of the reality television twist. The females they managed to track down embody the "spirits" of the countries they represent, from the beautiful-yet-tactless Italian Alessia to Czech cutie Tereza. The stage seemed set for another run at Joe Millionaire's heart -- love, money, and a chance to laugh at stereotypical Europeans: it seemed like a plan for a runaway hit.

That is, until the ratings came in.

Joe Millionaire: An International Affair finished fifth in its time slot, attracting only 6.6 million viewers after the season finale of its first installment drew in over 40 million. Considering the heavy marketing campaign that Fox ran during the baseball playoffs, to call such a poor showing a disappointment would be the understatement of the rating sweeps. The network had been expecting Joe Millionaire to be its lead-in on Monday and Tuesday nights, and the fact that it crashed coming right out of the starting gate does not bode well for the upcoming television season.

And so the prognosticators at Fox have been left scrambling to explain this unexpected disappointment. Excuses have been everything from a pool of contestants that is too international (many of them have heavy accents, triggering subtitles and making it difficult for viewers to understand them) to a poorly-thought-out marketing strategy (that was run during a baseball playoff campaign that few women who are interested in dating shows would have watched) to an overall diminished interest in reality television itself. Even reality staple Survivor has been clocking in with fewer viewers in its seventh season, so it's possible that the genre has just worn itself too thin.

Viewers of the premiere might be surprised at the low ratings. The show preserved many of the quirks from the original -- a clueless, uncultured "hero" and a selection of women with dollar signs that flash across their eyeballs whenever David's fortune is mentioned -- and dropped one of its most annoying traits: Alex McLeod, the expressionless, irritating host from the first season.

The cast itself promises an interesting mix. The Italians are saucy, the Dutch are air-headed, and every single woman knows the theme song to Dallas, judging by the way they all started humming it after David's fortune was announced. The editing of the show made it more than clear that each and every one of the "contestants" thinks that Americans in general and cowboys in particular are clumsy, socially-impaired oafs, which will only make it easier for them to write off the inevitable gaffes of their clumsy, socially-impaired prize as he tries to convince them he's really as cultured as producers want him to think he is.

David, of course, is bland and almost unbearably uneducated (he even had to ask which country the Dutch come from), but the show revolves less around him than it does the conniving, self-centered women who are trying to win his heart in order to worm their way into his pocketbook. Viewers might roll their eyes at the lead man's attempts to master the intricacies of wine tasting or polite introduction, but they're really tuning in to see all the European beauties get their comeuppance in the end. Joe Millionaire is, after all, one of the few reality television programs where being completely focused on the ultimate prize is punished instead of rewarded.

And punishment will indeed come in time for those viewers faithful enough to stick out the entire season. Each woman will eventually be forced to either face humiliation in the form of rejection, or will have to choose between "love" or admitting that she was only in it for the money. Will the ratings recover? Will wholehearted greed win out in the end?