Love For Sail: Dignity Given Away for Free

I have long made fun of Lifetime for being Bravo's poor country cousin when it comes to reality shows, and with the Tuesday, April 10th debut of Love For Sail, I will continue to tease them.  I don't know why Lifetime just can't seem to pull it all together with these shows, but they are always the lady at the party who should've taken off one accessory before leaving the house, i.e., not quite right.

The Executive VP of Programming for Lifetime Networks, Rob Sharenow, must've been sharing some crack with his brain when he said, "A generation of viewers grew up watching the scripted series The Love Boat, and, inspired by that program, Love for Sail captures the fun and adventure of what it's really like to find romance on the high seas."  First of all, the Cruise Directors Bucko and Carmen combined couldn't add up to one Julie McCoy.  And secondly, I want to share now with Rob that Love For Sail is waaayyy more like the short-lived FOX show Love Cruise from the fall of 2001 (which featured 8 men and 8 women battling for $250,000.  The original air date of Love Cruise was September 11, 2001, which is kinda like naming your diet pills Ayds), than my hallowed Love Boat.

The premise for Love For Sail is actually a good one:  Trap 10 adventurous, love-lusting, fair to middling attractive grown ups on a cruise ship with lots of booze and roll the cameras. Period.  No one has to pack their knives and go, no one has to lip synch for their life, they are not fired, and the tribe hasn't spoken.  Just show up horny and drink. That's Reality TV 101, right? And you would think that the dynamics- 4 women and 6 men looking for love port side and starboard coupled with beautiful sunsets on the water in the background and amazing ports of call (which I have never seen) would inspire us to set our DVRs to tape every Tuesday night at 10, but they don't.  Why?  Because Love For Sail doesn't give us the chance to meet any of the contestants well enough to care whether they "find love" or fall into the deep blue sea. Yeah they show us the woman who's fallen into her cups at a deliciously awkward dinner, and yeah they show us the two chicks who choose the same dude for a date and the delusional slightly demented, somewhat funny arguments that ensue about who should step aside. But ultimately we know nothing about any of them and because of that we don't relate to them; if we don't relate, we don't care. And they present 10 new people each week for us not to care about.

My best advice to Lifetime is that they need to take a page out of the MTV/ FOX/ Bravo book and get people on their shows that we either want to be friends with, party with, or have sex with- and give us a chance to get to know them over a season.  If they are adamant about bringing newbies in each week, give us dynamic women who we want to be or be friends with- not seemingly whiny, self absorbed broads who have a skewed sense of their attractiveness and/or too much plastic surgery.  No one wants to hang out with those bitches in real life or watch them on television. (Oh, and make sure the dudes are hella funny and look good with their shirts off.)