Let's Talk About Gigolos: America's Craziest, Raunchiest TV Show
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Have you seen Gigolos? What? You haven't? You really need to check out this Showtime soft-core reality show about a bunch of male prostitutes. It is, simply put, the craziest thing on television.
Gigolos, which airs new episodes on Thursday at midnight (well, technically it's Friday at midnight, but whatever), follows five guys in Las Vegas as they live their lives and please their entirely female clientele. There's Nick, the super straight arrogant guy with tattoos who wants to be a rapper; Vin, the gorgeous bi-racial educated one who is always talking about being a brother; Brace, the overly-tanned, bleached blond wise and wizened professional; Steven, the handsome shit-talker who is over everything; and Jimmy, the eager young pup who will try anything once.
Unlike HBO's genius cameras in a brothel series Cathouse, Gigolos doesn't even try for a second to pretend like it's real. I don't know much about the economics of hustling, but it's traditional wisdom that it's hard to make money getting women to pay for sex. In fact, we couldn't even keep one legal one employed. Sure, I would pay to sleep with most of these guys, but none of them want me as a client. They are straight, and don't you forget it! So the whole premise that there are just all these guys earning big bucks off of horny ladies is a little odd to start with.
Then it comes time for the dates. Yes, we see the guys actually go and sleep with the ladies, and more often than not, they're not exactly beauties. There's no penetration and usually only a glimpse of limp peen or dry vag, but you do see the full-on fucking, Red Shoe Diaries style. Often, as was the case last night, the tricks for an episode are staying in the same hotel or the same bland, cookie-cutter condo in Vegas. Oh, and let's not forget the time Jimmy got paid to screw a lady in her office, which looked like the most nondescript "office" porn set this side of San Fernando Valley.
When the guys aren't having sex, they're doing really silly and macho things like taking Steven shooting for his birthday, trying to get a music career off the ground, babysitting for an old college friend, trying to start a supplement line, or dealing with a weird dominatrix client who locked Jimmy's junk in a "cock cage" for three days. Basically they're a bunch of lovable idiots, which is just how I like hot guys to be.
That's what's the most befuddling about this whole program: Who, exactly, is the intended audience for this? Most porn is made for straight men, but it can't be them because they don't want to see hot guys screwing ugly ladies. It can't be straight women, because as much as they would like to see studs plowing "real women," they don't want to listen to any of the silly shenanigans that happen outside of the bedroom. They already have boyfriends and husbands behaving like jerks, they don't need gigolos. It can't be gay men because the guys are so homophobic that it's a turn off. And it can't be lesbians, because they are ideologically opposed to anything dirty and fun, except pretending to be Justin Bieber.
This thing is just a strange amalgamation of parts, prurient fun and campy schadenfreude, sexy encounters and wood-killing reality, beautiful men and the ugly truth that none of them will ever want us. I'm not sure exactly how this formula is supposed to work, but there is one thing for sure, it certainly is, and I never want it to end.