two silver wedding bands Marriage television: Fox apparently forgot what happened the last time they tried a show about arranging marriages. iStockphoto.com
 

by Linda Holmes

I realize that practically nobody watched the disastrous 2003 Fox show about arranged marriages, Married By America, and for good reason. It was atrocious, stupid, boring, and completely anticlimactic, since in the end, nobody got married. I would never have watched it myself except that I was being paid to write about it at the time.

But now, Fox is back at it, developing a show called I Married A Stranger, which is essentially the same show, but worse. Worse! Last time, your family and friends just picked the fiancé, and you had to go off and live together. It was at least up to you whether to get married.

This time, the family and friends pick the person, and you don't meet him until you're standing at the altar, where you're expected to go through with it right then.

Let's get this out of the way: it's an odious, offensive, revolting, entirely meritless idea from any point of view that respects marriage, men, women, or relationships. This, we know. This debate does not need having.

What's insane is that back in 2003, it also turned out to be bad television. I don't expect Fox to refrain from making it because it's so tacky. But you'd think they might remember that it was unbelievably dull. This was not a guilty pleasure; this was a non-pleasure.

I guess there really is no well so laden with frogs and muck that you can't go back for another sip.

categories: Television

10:23 - June 5, 2009

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