Like 50 Cinderellas going to the ball, they rode in their carriages to the TV studios.
Parading unashamedly in both wedding dresses and bikinis, they stood before their hidden prince, desperate to win his hand in marriage before the clock struck midnight and they had to hurry back to the sculleries they came from.
Aired Tuesday night on the Fox network, it was called Who Wants to Marry A Multi-Millionaire.
At the end of the mating dance, Gulf War veteran Darva Conger charged into her biggest battle by marrying California real estate tycoon, the slickly manicured Rick Rockwell.
"I'll be your friend, your lover and your partner," Conger blubbered, shaking like a leaf.
After he chose her, she offered up the two-word reply he hoped for: "I do."
According to many observers, it's not the two-word reply he should have been given.
Clinical psychologist Andrew Christensen says Conger and her discarded rivals might as well have been hookers.
"It is a sad commentary," says Christensen, of the University of California in Los Angeles. "This portrays marriage as if the only thing men are looking for is sex with a young, pretty woman and the only thing women are looking for is a guy with a bundle of money.
'LOWEST LEVEL'
"It debases marriage and love to its lowest level, genital friction, with no romance or feelings involved."
Christensen, author of Reconcilable Differences (Guildford), continues: "These two people are going to have some differences to reconcile unless they are extremely lucky."
The show disgusted therapist and Sun advice columnist Dr. Joy Browne.
Judging by her disdain, the show should have been called Boobs for Bucks.
"It was legalized prostitution," says Browne, "and it set men and women's relationships back 3,000 years.
"It was embarrassing, cheap and how could anyone like it? It showed women willing to have sex with a man for money.
"Even if the couple get along, how can you respect a person who was after your bank account? The whole thing was so stupid I'm not even happy making a serious comment on it."
Asked what would possess so many women to offer their all to an unknown suitor, Toronto sex therapist Betty Stockley replied: "Desperation."
"I get lots of beautiful women coming to see me who do not believe they're beautiful and think men just tell them they are to get into their pants," she says. "With such a sense of self-loathing, they're ready to sell themselves on TV."
As for men willing to take part in such a ritual, she wonders whether they're on a "sado-masochistical" power trip.
In the case of the groom, she was concerned that he needed help from his mother in choosing his mate.
"I wonder about his sexuality if he has to ask Mom everything," she offers.
Turning to the bride, Stockley ponders whether she's suffering "post-traumatic stress" from the 1991 Gulf War.
"She's seen a bit of action," notes Stockley, "and then gone back to an ordinary life. This may be a way of getting rid of the boredom for a while.
"There is also this ultimate-high thing. The excitement of gambling your life on TV. You have no idea who this man is and if he picks you, you could be his slave or his darling."
Stockley wonders if there was some kind of pre-nuptial agreement -- none was mentioned on the show -- remarking: "The bride can soon show him how good she is and get an agreement."
All in all, adds Stockley, "the couple have opened a Pandora's box."
Toronto psychologist David Factor also believes the motive of the 50 women, chosen from thousands who had applied, was merely money.
'READ MONEY'
"What do they have to lose?" he asks. "Even if the marriage doesn't work out, they are guaranteed money."
Factor notes how in personal columns many women advertize themselves as attractive and plead that they're looking for a man with security: "Read money."
In turn, he adds, men promote themselves in the same columns as financially secure.
"I don't know who said it," says Factor, "but it makes me think of the quote: 'A beautiful woman is like a rich man.' "
Factor says the TV show portrays just how some men and women do not need love as a prerequisite for marriage, rather living on the notion that "love will come."
"As someone else once said," he adds, "it's as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor man."
"You can't say this wasn't honest," says Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. "There are people out there who would marry a chair if it was wealthy."
She says there's a belief that relationships work on love, feelings and care, whereas most people never achieve that goal.
"The idea of a quick answer is really nice," she says. "Most people court and go through all the angst. This solves that."
On the other hand, notes Schwartz, her gut feeling is that everyone has been conned and when the circus is over, the couple will part with a pre-arranged payoff.
"Then we find out it really was Hollywood," she says.
