A Shot at Love II is built around the principle that true love is proven by physical action. This week, the final six contestants were asked to prove their love by choosing whether to be inked, pierced, juiced in an electric chair or walking barefoot across 1,000 shards of glass. Three contestants tattooed their proverbial hearts on their skins and were well-rewarded for this monumental show of devotion with … drum roll, please … wait for it … a date with Tila Tequila! Cue booing-effect. Who cares!
And yet this letdown could not deter the contestants from their fervent courtships. Perhaps we’re dealing with that rare group of die-hard romantics who truly believe they’re acting as knights in shining armor, to win her favor and save her from the big bad dragon of celibacy or spinsterhood. Perhaps they’ve been seduced by her golden extensions, and have donned thick rose-colored goggles distributed by Cupid himself to provide some madcap comedy. Proof in point was George, who chose to walk over cut glass and into Tila’s heart. The brave little knight agonized over the painful slivers embedded in the soft soles of his feet, until it was announced that the shards were fake. Pan camera to look of disbelief. Was the pain he felt as real as his love for Tila?
If the show were just an entertainment aside to watch these twits debase themselves in comic proportions to win her favor, then that would be enough. But there’s a pretension made by this savvy girl who proudly flaunts her bisexuality and marginalized stripper lifestyle, and makes no apologies for it — she needs to be loved, too. Okay, I can’t begrudge her love. Yet for all her modern-day trappings, she employs the backwards fairytale mechanism of proving one’s love by feats of physical prowess. Have we not learned that knights compete for the honor of the prize and not the prize itself?
If she really is indebted to this process as a means to find love, she doesn’t even stick to it. Jersey girl Lisa, who has been her best knight, winning challenge after challenge, found herself unable to fully express her love in a Cordelia-like moment. Tila expected something akin to poetry, but Lisa, a softball coach by profession, could only utter in an awkwardly tense manner that she liked her. Unsatisfied with the verbal declaration of “like,” Tila eliminated the one true knight who ran the gauntlet for her. True love lost?
It’s highly improbably that Tila believes that she will find love through this process. What we can know about her is that she’s a business ingenue and a seasoned actress. What can we expect from her TV future? I suggest a show named A Gunshot to Love.
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