Singles (and even attached) females in search of a good-looking, educated male beware.
Millions of people see him each week, and he has been hailed as the universal, ideal boyfriend. Lounging on an island paradise on Fox's "Temptation Island," he is known only as "Tom," but some may recognize him as a Princeton alumnus.
Tom Ritchie '94 has become the stud of voyeur television, a libidinous mercenary, enlisted by "Big TV" to flirt with beautiful women and, ultimately, to boost ratings during sweeps months.
Other reality show characters have donned the label, "Ivy League Graduate," but Ritchie is the first Princetonian to play the role.
"Temptation Island" is the latest offspring of degenerative 'dramality' television spawned by "The Real World" and sleazed into competition by programs like "Survivor," "Big Brother" and "The Mole."
Critics have condemned the show as televised prostitution because the singles were paid to flirt with the paired cast members. The show even has drawn harsh headlines from newspapers like The Star Ledger (Newark), which called the show "The (Rear) End of Civilization As We Know It."
But Ritchie has no ethical qualms. "These were not couples who were married. They were at a stage where I think that they should be testing what their feelings are," he said in an interview. "They were merely trying to determine if what they have is a relationship they can be committed to for a lifetime."
Despite criticism, "Temptation Island's" premiere generated more interest than the first episode of its predecessor, "Survivor." According to sky-high Nielsen ratings in early January, 16 million viewers tuned-in to "Temptation Island's" debut — one million more than for the "Survivor" premiere.
During the show, Ritchie lived in an environment that included vistas of the island near Belize that are as beautiful as the hand-selected cast members and a Tiki lounge where bartenders serve cocktails from dusk until dawn. And Ritchie joined this two-week summer vacation in Hollywood's version of Eden all by chance.
Ritchie was working with friends on an Internet startup in Los Angeles when Fox was recruiting for the show. One night in early August, he was buying tickets for a show on Universal City Walk — a gaudy strip of restaurants and theaters that brighten nights with their neon signs. He was approached while walking past Hard Rock Cafe and handed a clipboard with a questionnaire. Many questionnaires and interviews later, the casting director called Ritchie to invite him to be on the show.
"I wanted to be on the show to do something completely different," Ritchie said. "Certainly the idea of having your life on camera 24 hours per day, turning your life into a soap opera, intrigued me as well."
In one episode, the singles lined up pool-side and the four attached women singled out their dates for that evening. Three of the four women chose Ritchie as their top choice for the date.
"It did feel like a little 'MTV Spring Break'-ish," said Ritchie, a history major, water polo captain and member of Ivy Club while at Princeton. "But what you're not seeing are all the relationships that develop when the cameras are not on dates. We spent a lot of time getting to know one another."
Slated to date three women, Ritchie was told to choose his date for that evening, and he paired off with Ytossie — who became mired in controversy when the producers discovered she and her boyfriend, Taheed, had a child at home.
Though producers were accused of staging the event after several newspapers easily found paternity suits involving Taheed by searching court records on Lexis-Nexis, Ritchie said all the events and emotions on the show are genuine. But he would not comment on the incident involving Taheed and Ytossie.
"The show is very real," he said, "but I have to condition that by saying that the environment is a very contrived environment. At no point did the producers give any direction to the singles to break someone up. We were told to live our lives as we would live them under these circumstances."
But constant filming occasionally turned the show from "Temptation Island" into something that seemed more like frustration island as evidenced by an aggravated Billy — one of the boyfriends — who pushed a camera away during the most recent episode, snapping, "Turn it off. This does not concern the show. This is my life."
Meanwhile, on the same episode, Ritchie and Andy's girlfriend, Shannon, were getting closer, and one preview showed them engaged in a romantic kiss. Ritchie, however, could not comment about his current relationships with other cast members.
"I wasn't going to resist a spark that occurred between us," he said. "If I met these women outside of the show and knew they were dating someone, it would not be something I would traditionally explore."
Though Ritchie said he would use the show to leap onto the screen if given the opportunity, he said he is not counting on it. Following the show's taping, Ritchie launched an on-line dating service called Luvv.com. While the virtual singles lounge is similar to the "Temptation Island" set-up, he said he started planning the site last summer.
In addition, Ritchie currently attends the University of Virginia, pursuing both an M.B.A. and a law degree. Though he said he has been involved in serious relationships in the past, he was not dating anyone when asked to be on the show.
"I've had several love interests, but, unfortunately, none of those worked out," he said. "I've been involved in relationships that I thought were going to work out at one point or another."
Despite the moral issues critics and viewers have raised about the show, "Temptation Island" continues to captivate audiences even at Princeton, where many students gather to watch the show each week. The show will go on hiatus next week for Valentine's Day because Fox officials believed it would be "unaesthetical," according to Ritchie.
The three boyfriends and girlfriends will each choose one single for their especially romantic dates, and all other singles will be expelled from the island. Though the last episode ended without the girlfriends culling the pool down to their final three, Ritchie seems a likely survivor for the show's finale in two weeks.
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