Genuine Ken Reality Show Airs on Hulu

This past fall, I told you about the online competition for the great American boyfriend hosted by GenuineKen.com. The competition featured men from around the country who were nominated to be judged based on their appearance and what a short questionnaire revealed about their personalities. If that wasn’t bad enough, the reality show that has stemmed from that competition is now an online show on Hulu that features the top eight winners of the online competition.

Somehow, the show manages to be totally offensive. The theme song contains the line “Everybody needs a Ken.” (Really? Is that what everybody needs?) And the contestants are all lauded for their athleticism and appearances. This isn’t to say that “athletic” and “nice” are mutually exclusive, but these so-called “great boyfriends” spend most of the first episode trash-talking their competition’s contributions to a talent show. These guys spent most of their camera time being both nasty and self-absorbed. Somehow those qualities don’t seem like those of the “great American boyfriend,” or even someone I’d want to spend any kind of time with.

The pilot episode alternates between revealing the contestants’ misguided assumptions about what women like and a horrible talent show—one contestant wrote a love poem…about himself and another spent much of the episode mocking another contestant’s musical abilities only to perform a song that had the judges cringing. (If we look at what these guys are being judged on, then we can’t help but conclude that all women like muscular, athletic musicians who can also do acrobatics. This is news to me.)

In spite of all of this, I was sort of entertained: this is the kind of show you love to hate, if you don’t mind constant cringing or shaking your head in disbelief that, yes, someone is really taking this seriously.