'Seducing Cindy,'
at your own risk
The drill: 24 lonely guys vie for our lady's hand
By Tom Conroy
Jan 29, 2010
Has there ever been a successful plagiarism suit in reality TV?
The reality-dating subgenre is particularly derivative. Every week, it seems, some channel premieres another smudgy Xerox of “The Bachelor,” in which an attractive person chooses from among a group of well- or ill-matched possible life partners who are sharing a mansion in the hills of Southern California.
The latest addition to the genre, “Seducing Cindy,” conforms rigorously to the template. Only reality-dating addicts could enjoy it, especially those who find “The Bachelor” too high-minded. Most viewers will alternate between boredom and mild disgust.
The star of “Seducing Cindy” is Cindy Margolis, a woman who is semifamous for having claimed to be the most downloaded woman on the internet, back when people used to actually download photos on the internet.
Since then, she has starred in a short-lived syndicated talk show and appeared twice fully nude in Playboy. Remarkably, until her Playboy appearances, all those downloaded internet photo had never shown her naughty bits.
The implication in “Seducing Cindy,” which premieres on the Fox Reality Channel this Saturday at 9 p.m., is that the 24 suitors, who range in age from 18 to 71, first became acquainted with her while they were alone.
A 19-year-old says that the first time he ever became sexually aroused was after seeing her photo in the Guinness Book of World Records. The 71-year-old says that he has one of her Playboy issues and tells the camera what he thinks is her most attractive body part.
Since it’s difficult to get self-respecting people to go on TV and talk about their love for someone they know only through still images, the bachelors as a whole are a depressing bunch. The inevitable testosterone-fueled bickering is unpleasant.
The comic high point is probably when one of the guys passes gas at the wrong moment.
Somehow Margolis, who is recently divorced and has three children, manages to pretend that she is seriously considering all of the men as possible mates. Whether the guys are too young, too old, too fat or too ugly, she greets them all with the same delighted smile. (Plastic surgery may be limiting her range of expressions.)
The producers have chosen to use a marital theme throughout. Cindy meets the suitors while wearing a white dress. She selects one guy for a private date by giving him a slice of wedding cake. And in what would be the rose ceremony on “The Bachelor,” the guys who get to stay for next week’s show remove a garter from her thigh.
Presumably, this is meant to suggest that Margolis is taking the process seriously and is actually intending to marry the winner. But her choices of who to keep in the premiere episode are based not on who will be a good husband but rather on who will be good television.
Normally, one would assume that the producers have told her who to choose, but since Margolis is listed as a creator of the show, the choices may actually be her own.
Perhaps, as a tribute to her “cyberbuddies,” Margolis is going to continue to select the most unattractive and socially awkward guys. It’s too bad another show is already using the title “The Biggest Loser.”
In any case, the biggest losers here are the viewers.
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