A farmer's fresh crop of babes
TV REVIEW | Chicago women cultivated in 'Farmer Wants a Wife'
Originally filmed last summer, "Farmer Wants a Wife" gets let out of the CW's barn on Wednesday. And it's a few chickens short of a flock.
The show features Matt Neustadt, a 29-year-old farmer. College-educated, he owns 2,000 acres of land on which he grows soybeans -- hard work, although judging from his six-pack abs, Neustadt still finds time for daily stomach crunches.
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After he returned from the big city, his head full of college learnin', Neustadt found that most of the girls in the 351-person town of Portage Des Sioux, Mo., either married their high school sweethearts or were lured like moths to the bright lights of the big city.
Lest you remain unconvinced of his ruralness, he pronounces Missouri "Miz-UR-ah" and introduces the first challenge by telling the ladies that whoever wrangles the most chickens "will be walking in tall cotton."
CW producers aren't releasing the last names of any of the female contestants. Of the 10, there are a few standouts. There's a shy college student (Northwestern's Amanda, 21), a career girl (27-year-old Ashley, a senior catering sales manager for a Chicago hotel), a bitchy, backstabbing Omarosa-type (played by 25-year-old aspiring actress and Playboy cybergirl Josie) and a no-nonsense cocktail waitress (Christa, a 22-year-old from New York).
The New Yorker, it's worth mentioning, is the only one who forgoes designer heels. It will come as no surprise that at least one open-toed Manolo Blahnik ends up in a steaming pile of cow manure.
For the most part, both the Chicago contestants come off best, and that isn't just hometown pride coming through. Ashley is seen in the opening few moments of the show wondering if she's making a mistake.
"I went on it because one of my girlfriends dared me to," Ashley told the Sun-Times when asked about that moment. "It hit me when we got off the school bus [on the farm]. 'Gosh, what did I get myself into?'"
Ashley said she had her own reservations. "I didn't want it to ruin any career before it even started. It just got to the point that I realized I couldn't walk away because I didn't want to regret not doing it."
Appearing on the show may also have been the desperate measure of women sick of the real-life dating pool. "I had been out for hours with this guy," Ashley said. "We ended up at this bar. He said he was going to go to the bathroom and then he ditched me."
"Every single twentysomething has at least one horrible dating experience," added Amanda. "It's something anyone can relate to."
Producers would have you believe it's so bad that 10 girls are willing to sign up for a possible arranged marriage of the reality-TV type.
The premise of girls from the big city competing for the attention and affection of a rural farmer should have been a bit "Green Acres," but it comes off more like "Soylent Green," as some of the girls seem all too willing and capable to consume one another if it ensures a few private moments with the hunky soybean grower.
At the end of the first episode, the elimination involves an eggless chicken. Next week, the girl who doesn't get BINGO will be sent packing. It all makes the rose ceremony over on ABC's "The Bachelor" look infinitely classier.
