For nearly eight months, the nation has engaged in a sordid love affair. Although the romance has been undoubtedly strong and faithful, it has been eccentric and abnormal as well. Conversation abruptly ends whenever ABC closes the telephone lines. Visitation rights have been suspended so the nation can ogle Regis only three times a week. No matter what the complications or the concessions, however, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" has won sweetheart status across the nation.

Last Tuesday, however, the nation's once-passionate love affair with "Millionaire" went dry as television watchers found something bigger and better--or at least richer and seemingly illegal.

Fox Network debuted their new show "Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire?", and to the dismay of everyone in America toting a conscience, it was a huge success. More than 50 women paraded across the stage and introduced themselves by name and occupation. The group was then chiseled down to 10 contestants who participated in an interview with the show's hosts and strutted down the runway in seductively skimpy bathing suits. During the show's final half-hour, the five remaining contestants donned bridal gowns and a mysterious man behind a screen--of which the audience and the contestants knew only one thing: his monetary worth--chose one extraordinarily lucky gal to be his bride.

The mastermind behind this display of onscreen prostitution? A certain Fox executive named Mike Darnell. The bride? A Suzanne-Sommers-in-her-better-days nurse from Southern California. The groom? A cool, calm and collected real estate agent who's also--you guessed it--a multi-millionaire. The wedding song? Appropriately enough, Savage Garden's ballad "I knew I loved you (before I met you)."

Fox's defense? According to Darnell in a New York Times interview, "If you looked at these people at the end of the show, you could tell it was less about the money than it was about the relationship."

Yeah right.

The multi-millionaire and the nurse's first kiss--first embrace, first sign of intimacy--was the smooch that sealed the deal. His first words to her were "You are so beautiful." I, personally, would have asked how she got to be so pathetic. National Organization for Women President Patricia Ireland said to the New York Times, "It took something like this to make the Miss America pageant look good to me. At least with the Miss America pageant, you get scholarship money and the guarantee of a yearlong run."

The ordeal reminded me a bit of a movie from the early '90s, Muriel's Wedding. Muriel, a pathetic and overweight Abba-loving Aussie, weds a handsome Olympic swimmer she does not know so that the Olympic committee can consider him an Australian for competition. One of the movie's taglines claims, "She's not just getting married, she's getting even." Muriel was ostensibly rebelling against the ridicule and banter she endured as a lonely single woman. The film evoked pity and sympathy from audiences across the globe.