Flavor of Lust 3

"Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places," might be the sub-title for VH1's show "Flavor of Love 3." As with "Rock of Love 2," this show's premise is that the star will find true love amidst a flurry of exposed breasts, mini skirts, and attention-getting tactics. Loud-mouthed self-aggrandizement and abject hero-worship make the contestants sillier and sillier each season. It's a mistake to think that the show has anything to do with love at all. That's one of the things that makes it funny.

Flavor Flav is a humorous guy, who seems to be in on the joke. Part of the fun is that he looks like a sea-monkey who needs re-hydration, while the girls are fawning all over him. Part of the fun is the absurd idea that love is based on contests of wit, skill, and exposed flesh. Did I say "wit?" There isn't much displayed. Lack of intelligence makes the show a comedy. Lack of emotional intelligence makes it a symbol for what is not working in today's dating and mating scene.

On the last episode, the mean-spirited "roast," in which the girls denigrated each other on stage, nobody came out looking good. At the end of the show, Flavor Flav announces, "One clock, two bodies left." He refers to the women as "bodies." Very appropriate. He bestows the clock on the winning "body" and the loser goes off shattered.

Nobody's relating on any level other than the most superficial. The women are willing to plunge their tongues into his mouth, rub up against him, and claim that he is their man. They are willing to say cutting and cruel things about each other to bolster their value in his eyes. It's the survival of the nastiest.

The fact that this is Flavor Flav's third attempt to find love this way is a statement in itself about the effectiveness of this method for finding a mate.