Reality TV's 9 Worst Stock Characters

We first met this matrimonially obsessed stock character in 2000 on Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, Fox's mail-order bride meets Miss America parade. One woman, Darva Conger, beat out a gaggle of gold diggers and Barbie clones to "win" a legal, on-air wedding to a supposedly rich stranger. (Hidden from new bride Darva Conger and viewers? The fact that groom Rick Rockwell had a restraining order in his past filed by his former girlfriend, who alleged that he was violent.) Multi-Millionaire's coproducer Mike Fleiss reframed the show's "love = fat wallet + skinny chick" premise under a pretty princess gloss and sold it as the perfect fairy tale to ABC as The Bachelor in 2002. By now, 14 seasons of The Bachelor (and numerous copycat dating series such as NBC's Age of Love, Fox's Joe Millionaire, and VH1's Flavor of Love) have portrayed women as pathetic, catty, weepy losers who can never possibly be happy or successful without husbands. Why? Because "It's a lot of fun to watch girls crying," Fleiss has said. "Never underestimate the value of that." Echoing that famous NEWSWEEK cover story that claimed that women older than 40 were "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than to get married, reality TV's desperate bachelorettes moan, "I don't want to die alone!" and "You always hear those horror stories! Forty and single!"