A Taste Of Flavor

VH1's New Reality Show Has Character

By: Steve Artale

Posted: 2/1/06

With reality shows being all the rage these days, everybody seems to have one. From Donald Trump to Ted Nugent, more and more celebrities seem to be jumping on the reality show bandwagon. There is no better place to find celebrities on reality shows than on VH1. Shows such as "The Surreal Life" and "Celebrity Fit Club" make up VH1's "Celebreality," reality television featuring celebrities that are a bit past their hay-day. The newest of VH1's "Celebreality" is "Flavor of Love," starring the one and only Flavor Flav.

After a failed relationship with Brigitte Nielsen (as seen on "Strange Love") Flav is looking for love and 20 single women of all shapes and sizes come to live in Flav's house in an attempt to gain his affection. From the very first episode, all of the girls are given pet names by Flav based on characteristics he sees or imagines in them, for example one of the woman is aiming to beat the world record of wearing red every day and Flavor calls her an "aphrodisiac" and names her Red Oyster. Some of the other women in the house consist of a wannabe Omarosa named New York, a voluptuous diva nicknamed Hottie and a few seemingly normal girls who seem to have a real affection for Flav.

One of the more interesting angles of the show is that the ladies all live in Flav's house with him and with each other, which leads to conflict. "Flavor of Love" is in a sense a "Real World" and "Love Connection" hybrid. The women compete in challenges in an attempt to win private dates with Flav and at the same time are forced to be around each other almost 24 hours a day. These challenges have ranged from who is the luckiest at the roulette table and who impresses Mrs. Anna Drayton, Flav's mom, the most. Ultimately, at the end of each show the results of the challenges have somewhat of a bearing on Flav's decision on who stays but mostly Flav picks "who's feeling me" as opposed to who is not. Accompanied by butler/confidant Big Rick, the former Public Enemy star chooses which girls stay by giving them a clock with their picture on it and as Flav says himself "if you don't get a clock, your time is up."

Though the contest for Flav's heart is the backbone of the show, the real strength of it lies in just how funny Flav is. Speaking to the camera in a confessional of sorts, wearing his signature horned helmet and huge clock around his neck, he speaks to the audience about what the challenges will be or how he is feeling about a certain girl. One of his funniest lines came as he was explaining the most recent challenge in which the girls had to appeal to all of his senses.

"They gotta appeal to my five senses, we got touch, smell, sight, sound, feel, and taste ... wait that's six," Flav said. "Aw ya know what I mean."

Though on the surface it seems to be another corny reality show, "Flavor of Love" has really great unexpected moments, such as a girl falling off of a stage behind a screen during the sight portion of a challenge followed by Flav bursting out laughing.

Nevertheless Flav gives her a nine out of 10, as he feels bad for laughing so hard at the poor girl. "Flavor of Love" also delivers a feeling of real to reality television as it really does seem that even though some of the things that happen may be staged, that a lot of feelings between Flavor and some of the girls are genuine and that he really does care about each and every one of them.

In all "Flavor of Love" offers laughs above all else and just hearing some of the things the enigmatic Flav comes up with makes you wonder "what does that even mean?" From his comments about "this one smells like bacon, that's a good thing" to "I was one thousandth of a millisecond away" and there is nothing like when Flav gets excited and lets out his trademark "Yeah Boyeeeeee!"
"Flavor of Love" airs new episodes on Sunday night at 10 p.m. on VH1.