There’s a new show on Bravo about a dating service for rich men. I’ve checked it out a couple times, and it’s pretty watchable. Patti, the matchmaker, isn’t content to just set people up, she needs to fundamentally change the flawed millionaires, bringing in teams of experts, as necessary. She’s personally offended when these men can’t set aside their childish dreams and make a commitment to the first woman Patti haphazardly throws into a meet and greet party. Sometimes Patti adds one of her assistants to the mix at the last minute, in a clear panic move, blurring all boundaries personal and professional to get the requisite six women per millionaire. You never know where love will take root, Patti justifies wildly.
This week’s hapless victims were an old rocker with the last name Bodean who wasn’t in the BoDeans and an oddly formal man named Julien. Jeff needed to throw away some of his magician style clothes and shave. That’s what the emergency stylist Patti brought in had to say, tough love style. Julien had to learn about human interaction in its most basic form, as if for the first time. And it had to happen by his date with Jacqueline.
Patti set Julien up with a relationship coach, his first time in therapy, and the results were impressive. He didn’t get the girl but he did approximate a normal conversation, which was progress, and by the end of the episode he’d decided to spend some of his money and move out of his shitty place in Pasadena, the one that had led Patti to exclaim with disgust, upon driving up for their initial meeting, “this isn’t a millionaire.”
Jeff Bodean had a dream date, showing off his weird life, split uncomfortably between Los Angeles and Santa Rosa. But he didn’t call her right away after. And Patti went off on him! It wasn’t the clothes or the beard or the schedule–now she knew why he was divorced. It was because he kept pulling this shit. Jeff eyed her angrily, knowing she was right. There was real heat between them. For a brief moment, I thought love might take root.
Jack Silbert, curator