One of the easiest jobs in the world has to be the executives in charge of original programming over at the VH1 cable station. This network started out as a music video station geared to less cutting edge, older music than on its sister network MTV. Like MTV it has largely abandoned music in favor of so called reality series. What makes the job of programming such a snap is it has fallen into a well set formula. Just take someone that is kind of a celebrity, gather a bunch of prospective mates and make a game out of dating them all. The person acting as a celebrity here is Flavor Flav, born William Jonathan Drayton Jr., was a member of rap group Public Enemy back in the eighties. His fifteen minutes of fame were used up decades ago but thanks too all the I love the eighties specials on VH1 and their ‘celebrity’ take on the more mainstream series, ‘Big Brother, called ‘The Surreal Life’, Flav is back in the public eye. The series under consideration here is the third season of ‘Flavor of Love’. It would appear that Flav is rather unlucky in love. He hooked up with eighties actress Brigitte Nielsen on his season of ‘Surreal Life’ and then had a series ‘Strange Love’ that chronicled their brief romantic association. He then started ‘Flavor of Love’ in January of 2006 and found his soul mate. That didn’t last long and season two started in August of the same year and once again the winner didn’t last long as Flav’s lady. We are now up to season three which began in February of 2008. If the trend continues this relation will falter just in time for the forth season of the series, pending ratings of course.

The format is pretty much the same as the last two seasons with 21 young women gathered together to compete for the romantic attention of Flavor Flav. The one question that burns in the minds of viewers is simple. Have these contestants ever seen Flav? He basically looks like the deformed love child of Gollum. Is being on television so important that they will demean themselves in public? I have daughter who is the age of most of these young women and I offer a prayer of thanks each day that she has too much self esteem to ever consider an endeavor such as this. Hopefully these girls told their families that they were something more honorable like a crack whore to save them the embarrassment. I’m sure many are nice people and they just want a break in the entertainment industry but this is a odious way to go about fulfilling your dreams of success. One thing working in favor for the girls is the tradition of assigning them each a nickname. At least their real names are not mentioned all that much. The downside here is the names tend to be unbecoming. A prime example is a pair of twins that are referred to as ‘Thing 1’ and ‘Thing 2’, after characters in Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Cat in the Hat’. It looks like at least Flav is able to read children’s books. Others have names that reflect the horrible trend of misspelling words such as ‘Myammee’ and ‘Peechee’. Considering Flav’s often stoned out demeanor this may just be that he has to spell words phonetically.

In the previous two seasons there was at least a semblance of rules for the game. In this season it seems that the game is played by whatever pops into the heads of the producers at that moment. As always the criteria for the elimination ceremony is based on the whim of Flav. For those that are ‘fortunate’ enough to go on to the next episode they receive Flav’s trademark oversized clock to wear around their necks. One of the most common reasons given by Flav for rejecting a girl is ‘Not Feeling Her’. The translation is usually another contestant like Flav get to second base. Other reasons included excessive drunkenness. Now this one takes a lot to obtain since most of the girls are inebriated most of the time anyway. Even these girls need to be in their cups to be on the show. Another rejection was when Flav discovered that a girl was in it to advance her career not because she was in love with Flav. It is unimaginable that Flav actually thinks that they all just want his love. Kids, this is your mind after years of drug and alcohol abuse. Since one twice rejected woman from previous seasons, ‘New York’ received her own VH1 series it is only natural that some, if not all, of the contestants are thinking of their careers. Another was sent away when it was discovered that she had oral sex with a man just before starting the series. Flav demands fidelity from his women even though he has some seven children by a few mothers. I’m sure that Flav expected the contestants would all save themselves for him, yeah right.

Usually a girl who gets a clock is safe from elimination but there is a case here where the excessively drunken girl got the clock and the boot. Another girl’s ‘pimp’ called the house on her behalf and Flav just couldn’t deal with the competition. One of the girls who were eliminated was then brought back for a second chance. Each episode has some form of challenge to prove their worthiness of Flav’s affection. They are usually highly subjective, judged by Flav and not binding since his criteria for rejection is on whim. In one challenge Flav want too make sure they had the whole package so they were tested for four qualities; class, hotness, mothering and spirituality. First of all class should have eliminated most of them on during the recruitment stage of the series, they applied for it. In another episode Flav breaks the contestants into two teams and sets them out to create a restaurant for him. It was up to them to decorate the place, create the menu and prepare the food. Let’s just say that I never considered reindeer and hot wings in the same place before. This season had a larger budget and allowed for Flav to take the finalists on a trip to Paris. Besides the lauded clock winners of the challenges receive some quality time alone with Flav.

VH1 is releasing this DVD four disc set through Anchor Bay. In a rare move the series is still going with new episodes at the time of this writing. Of course all the episodes are filmed and edited way before their initial airing but this is an extremely short time between the conclusion of the series and the DVD release. For those who just need too know the so called winner here you will just have to tune in or better yet buy the DVDs. There are a lot of extras included just in case you really need another dose of penicillin, I mean the series.