Is it any wonder people are so cynical about love?  I mean just look at how it's depicted on TV.

Television warps a lot of things, but none more so than love.  The cathode ray tube, with it's fractured light, creates a pixilated landscape severely askew from reality. Romantic love, as it is displayed on television screens across America is misleading, misrepresentational, and tragically mistaken as "the real thing."

Every evening, as millions of us turn on our televisions, flooding our living rooms, family rooms, bedrooms, dorm rooms, and kitchens with the images and ideas of the major networks and cable channels, we are bombarded with portraits of love.

A mere perusal of this season's prime-time lineup reveals just how dangerously deceptive and disappointing those surreal portraits are, and why they spin us so precariously into the whirlpool of cynicism.

The situation comedy is driven by relationships—characters we know and love, whose escapades and dilemmas last a sparse 20 minutes (not including commercials).  The plots and passions of NBC's "Will & Grace" and those six intrepid "Friends" fit ever so nicely into this prepackaged world—a world of witty, attractive, urbane people coupling and uncoupling effortlessly and devoid of all consequences.  Love to them is meaningless, changing nothing; couples can share apartments, beds, and even babies without damaging friendships or altering dynamics.  One can become quite discouraged when real-life love is not so easy or uncomplicated.

While sit-coms are too flippant in their handling of sex and love, dramas like Fox's "The O.C." take it far too seriously.  In this sexually-charged prime-time soap opera everybody's getting some—constantly! And it's always incredible, passionate, full of raw desire and heat.  "The O.C.'s" slow-motion bouts of passion are the broadcast equivalent of the Harlequin paperback.  The lives of the citizens of Orange County are utterly devoid of the mundane.  The show's creators have conveniently eliminated all the obstacles to passion, making our normal lives, with homework, jobs, children, and stress, look dreary and celibate.

Reality TV purports to capture real life—real emotions—after all, those are real people on the screen, not actors.  But most dating shows, like "The Bachelor" or "Joe Millionaire," place their everyman contestants in situations so far removed from actual everyday life that we just can't relate.  How many of us have ever taken a date horseback riding over the European countryside, or sipped wine atop the Eiffel Tower?

Two reality shows this season are trying to show a more life-like side of love, but instead of empowering the audience to greater heights of passion, they remind us just how pathetically shallow and degrading the dating pool can sometimes be.

Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé" follows the exploits of Randi, your typical, attractive, twenty-something reality show contestant.  She's been offered a quarter of a million dollars if she can convince her friends and family that she's in love with Steve, a less than attractive man with the ability to burp the alphabet and ingest a dangerous amount of alcohol.  Randi doesn't know that Steve is an actor with the assignment to ruin her life.  It's fun to watch Randi squirm, but it only reinforces the truth that all of us with flaws—be they physical or otherwise—will never succeed in the dating game.  Randi can't even pretend to love Steve for a huge amount of money.  What do the rest of us have to offer?

The second reincarnation of NBC's "Average Joe" fares little better as far as raising the nation's self esteem.  We all tuned in eager to see a truly average Joe (beer belly, wire-rimmed glasses, Howdy Doody smile, and Weird Al hairstyle) win the heart of a perfect 10.  But the Average Joes didn't win the first time, and it's not looking very promising this time around either.  When given the choice, the girls invariable rush into the deftly toned arms of the self-labeled hunks with their chiseled abs and stoic good looks.  Any pretense that personality is the most important attribute women look for is heaved callously out the window.

 There is one show, however, touting the essential attributes of a successful relationship.  The show emphasizes the hard work, commitment, trust, and mutual dependence necessary for a strong and happy marriage.  Of course, I'm speaking of "Couples' Fear Factor" the latest spin-off of the surprisingly enduring triple-dog-dare stunt and gross-out spectacular on NBC.  This time around, couples have to work together to win the day: facing their fears, dunking each other's heads in vats of worms, and eating raw pig uterus and cow stomach.

Now that's love!

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