Rock of Love: Season 1

It has been a long time since Poison enjoyed hit status. I imagine it has been about the same amount of time since Poison’s former front-man Bret Michaels enjoyed any sort of cache as a desirable man. So when Bret decided to go shopping for a new life-mate, VH1 answered the call with a reality show. Rock of Love’s set up will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Bachelor; it follows the same premise and format: several girls share a home and compete for dates with one dream boat in the hopes that he will eventually fall in love and ask them to spend eternity with him. It is a beautiful premise, however, unlike The Bachelor, Rock of Love features a very high proportion of strippers and an even higher proportion of objectively unattractive people. When they all move into a Hollywood Hills mansion to fight for Bret’s affection, said mansion features a stockpile of alcohol and a stripper pole in the living room. Predictably, everyone in the house is as obscene as they are drunk. Many parts are blurred and much dialogue is bleeped. This show has all the ingredients to be awesome, so why is it so boring? Well, it may be because every one in front of the camera is a moron, though perhaps that goes without saying since these women are all chasing a hair metal singer who hasn’t had a hit since they were infants. Bret Michaels is no treat to watch either. He has three topics of conversation: being a "rock star,” making a "connection” and being turned on. None of those things are pleasant to listen to. Someone needs to invent a drinking game related to the number of hairline concealing bandanas Bret wears to make this series bearable. The discs are very thin on extra features, only containing a handful of deleted scenes, including (surprise!) an acoustic performance of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”