I hadn't been to the gym in a while, but yesterday I started my big comeback. Besides waking up to the grim reality that right now my mid-section actually shakes while I'm running and something needs to be done about this (corset), the experience also reminded me of how behind I am in BRAVO and VH-1's reality programming.

The only program I watch from home is Top Chef. It's even made my DVR short list in these post-Wire desperate times. (The only other shows I record these days are Saturday Night Live, which I will faithfully watch until its dying day--all you haters can step--and HBO's John Adams, a mini-series that has been piling up unwatched for weeks, like a stack of well-intentioned classic foreign film DVDs rented from Netflix. At some point I will just surrender and delete John Adams, to make room for another episode of Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed, a show I occasionally hate-watch and from which I gain nothing, apart from spiritual dead-leg.)

The remainder of my reality TV diet (gross) was consumed exclusively via the treadmill-mounted TV sets in my gym. There was a period when I actually looked forward to going to the gym, only because it allowed me to catch up on I Love New York and The (White) Rapper Show without any measure of shame, mostly because I knew the person next to me was watching TMZ TV or MTV's Date My Cock. Also, I was fast, like a pinto, and there's no shame in that.

Last night I watched the re-aired season premiere of Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker. I knew nothing about this show's existence prior to watching this episode, but it turns out "Millionaire Matchmaker" does not have a steep learning curve. This show is so calculated and awful that Bravo should consider changing its name to "Polite Applause." ("Bravo!--to Todd Levin's trenchant and masterful wordplay."- Tirelessly Opinionated Shut-In Magazine.blogspot.com) In the first two minutes of the program, Patti, the show's "star" and CEO of The Millionaires Club (does a company with four employees really require a CEO?), must have said the word "millionaire" about a dozen times. I guess she wanted to make the glamour and glitz of being a millionaire truly stick, particularly for viewers who might have otherwise overlooked the fact that her company is called The Millionaire's Club and her show is called Millionaire Matchmaker. In her efforts to blow us away, Patti addresses her clients not by name, but as millionaires—as in, "I have lunch with a millionaire today," or "I have a great match for you--he's a millionaire." Also, whenever one of her clients first appears on-screen they are accompanied by a chyron that says something like--I am not kidding--Jeff - MILLIONAIRE. It is very, very satisfying.

While Patti spends a lot of time making sure we understand she does not run an escort service, it seems she forgot to share that news with her millionaire clients before accepting their high-priced application fees. This becomes especially obvious when she interviews "Dave," a guy who sells Tiffany crystal dildoes online and has a stripper pole in the middle of his apartment. (There is a small, thin mat on the floor around the stripper pole, maybe to collect "drippings.") When Patti tells Dave that her girls will not have sex unless they're in a committed relationship, he becomes so crestfallen that his faux hawk goes kind of limp. It makes you wonder, who is worse: Dave, for being so addicted to L.A. trim that he doesn't even consider removing the eight screws holding his in-home stripper pole in place before meeting with a matchmaker; or Patti, for approving a Sex Toy entrepreneur with a "manageable" body spray addiction and a working stripper pole in his home, and then expecting him to settle down and have babies with one of her clients? The answer: Bravo.

Patti's "no sex" policy is very admirable, especially when edited together with a clip of Patti describing a petite female client as a "spinner," because her frame is so small that a dude could literally spin her around on his weenus like a helicopter. (Petey Pablo shout-out) Has anyone ever done that, by the way? Or is that like the MAXIM Magazine equivalent of the Darwin Awards? Kind of like blowing cocaine into someone's asshole? It seems like the only person who would try something like that would be one of the guys who decided to lie down in the middle of the street to bro out just like those football players in The Program, and actually survived?

Speaking of membership standards, Patti claims her female clients are glamorous, sexy and smart. She says this a lot, in fact, despite a lot of audio-visual evidence suggesting many of her female clients are either aging whores, reformed whores, or whores in their prime. In other words, women naive, deluded or just sad-faced enough to apply for membership in something called The Millionaire's Club. "You want me to go on a date with a guy who is ten years older than my dad, has never been married, and carries a card in his wallet that says 'MILLIONAIRE CLUB-PLATINUM V.I.P. PRIVILEGE MEMBER', like he's some kind of eight-year-old with make-believe business cards for organizations like 'SUPER JUSTICE FIGHTER SQUAD' and 'SUPER READERS CLUB'? Can't I just have sex with a pile of money instead?"

Of course, all of this still fails to touch upon the show's most self-deluded flaw: a million dollars is not a lot of money these days. Seriously, in L.A.? Is it that hard to find someone worth one million dollars? Guys who sell ass plugs from their home office can be millionaires. Again, are all of you children? Are you that girl in the 'Welcome to the Jungle' music video? Does the prospect of getting your hands on part of that million-dollar fortune really excite you so much that you're willing to attend a meet-and-greet at a sleazy racetrack? The guy who owns Facebook is 14 years old and he's worth 300 billion dollars, and this show has women in their late-forties who are still willing to dye their hair and get cheek implants for a middle-aged guy with a convertible--in L.A.!--and a pretty decent credit limit on his American Express Gold Card. Oh, Patti. In a world that is already too crazy and sad sometimes, you are like a prescription for cerotonin boosters. A ONE MILLION DOLLAR prescription!