Hawai'i sets stage for next hardly 'Average Joe'
By Gail Shister
Knight Ridder News Service
There's nothing average about "Average Joe."
Dec. 8's two-hour finale — in which beauty queen Melana Scantlin chose the hunk over the clunk — was a mondo hit for NBC.
"Average Joe: Hawaii" will feature former Miss USA contestant Larissa Meek.
"Joe" drew 17.4 million viewers, topping every other show for the night. Moreover, it had 11.3 million advertiser-friendly 18-to-49 year-olds — most for an NBC series in that slot since April 1993.
"Average Joe: Hawaii," shot on the Big Island's Kohala coast, launches Jan. 5. It has nine episodes (three more than "Joe").
No details available yet, naturally, but co-executive producer Andrew Glassman describes one "Joe" as an "awesome" ex-jock "with the ability to look at the camera and say, 'I'm a great guy. I'm a catch.' "
Hawai'i will feature former Miss USA contestant Larissa Meek and "the same basic setup" as "Joe," with "multiple new twists," says Glassman. Translation: Look for more handsome spoilers.
"Joe" averaged 12.6 million viewers over six episodes, ranking 25th on Nielsen's hit list. NBC pitched the idea to Glassman and Stuart Krasnow ("Weakest Link"), his partner on an earlier NBC dating pilot that went nowhere.
After three years at New York's WNBC, Glassman moved back to L.A., where his father, celebrity plastic surgeon Harry Glassman, and his stepmother, actress Victoria Principal, live.
Glassman worked for CNBC for the next two years. Covering the explosion of reality shows "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and "Survivor" set off bells.
"They blew everybody away," says Glassman, 36. "I started thinking, 'I'd love to give that a try.'
"There's such an urgency to watching these shows — you have to see what happens. In a weird way, there's a strong documentary aspect to them. You're tapping into people's emotions and harnessing that into these soap operas."
A sucker for sappy reality shows such as ABC's "The Bachelor," Glassman says the genre's contestants "seem to have an emotional investment that's real." Unlike Fox's "Joe" ("Millionaire"), "Average Joe" didn't misrepresent its star or contestants.
