‘For Love or Money 2’ Eric and his Previous ‘Meet My Folks’ Experience

When I first saw Eric on the commercials for For Love or Money 2, I thought he looked familiar and swore that he had been on a previous reality TV show. When I mentioned it to other people, nobody could verify those same thoughts. Most just thought he had one of those faces that looks familiar even if you’ve never seen him before.

Well, I don’t mean to gloat, but it turns out I was right – my memory has not yet totally gone out on me. Eric was on Meet My Folks back in February, the episode with the Scantlin family.

Eric was competing for the interest of Melena, a former Miss Missouri USA. The other two guys were another one named Eric, but who went by “Apple,” and who was the host of an extreme sports show; and Brook, a Marine. On the show, Eric didn’t give a profession, though on the For Love or Money 2 site, he is listed as a “Media Planner.”

As regular viewers of MMF know, the show delights in finding out “bad facts” about the participants, and perhaps even making them sound a little bit worse than they would have otherwise been. The first “bad fact” we found out about Eric on MMF was that he wouldn’t date girls whose behinds wouldn’t fit into the palms of his hands. Not exactly a great introduction, but, believe me, not the worst. (To compare, Apple called scoring with three girls in one day “hat tricks,” and had five of them so far.)

The second dirty little secret was that Eric is supposedly addicted to gambling. To compare, Apple flashed people over 100 times and Brook cheated on a girlfriend and then moved out to leave her with the mortgage payments. Eric really didn’t have much of a response to this one.

Later in this episode, Apple tried to frame Eric by sneaking out when everybody was asleep and dragging Eric’s shoes through the mud before making a mess on the carpet with them. When the mess was discovered, Eric didn’t simply say, “I was framed,” but instead turned on the charm. As our recapper, Andrea Shuman, said, “This is so pathetic, even I don't believe he didn't do it, and I sat through the videotape. Twice.”

His first date with Melena was ice skating, where he told her (and therefore all of us) that he was a virgin. It was not clear if he was serious or even how the matter came up.

Then, of course, there were more secrets. Eric was said to be a crybaby. Hmmm. I wonder if the producers of For Love or Money 2 knew about this when they decided to show him complaining (dare I say, whining) about his opponent in chess declaring “checkmate” loudly. The other two men had sex-related secrets – one used to strip for other men (just for money, not because he is gay) and the other liked to be dominated with a cattle prod. Compared with those, being a crybaby isn’t so bad!

Eric further scored some points on the other guys when they were all taken to a comedy club and were surprised to find out that they were the comics. The other two floundered pretty badly, but Eric managed to charm the audience (apparently, he did a better job than when trying to explain his muddy shoeprints).

When the ex-girlfriends came out, Eric once again had probably the least problems. His ex said he was incredibly cheap. The other exes talked about the guy cheating on them or his other girlfriends being porn stars.

For those of you who don’t watch MMF regularly, the idea is that the parents pick the winner. Sometimes they listen to what their child has to say, sometimes not. In this particular episode, they didn’t. Melena said she liked Brook, but Brook was the first to go. The final two gave pleas in which Eric said he was a man of honor and integrity. The daughter said she liked Apple best.

On his lie-detector test, Eric was asked if he would still date Melena if she gained 50 pounds. He said yes, but the machine said no. He was asked if he often lied to people to get what he wants and said no – which was deemed true. Had he cried in the last 30 days? Yes. True. Had he ever cheated on a girlfriend? No. Liar. Does he normally spend under $20 on a date? No – liar. And then the big one – is he a virgin? Yes. Liar. Mind you, I still have rather large doubts about the validity of the polygraph, especially when it comes to the sex-related questions like asking if he’s a virgin. Ask a twenty-something guy that and he’ll likely show all the signs that a polygraph test looks for in terms of stress. But hey, it makes for good television.

Anyway, after all was said and done, Melena’s parents once again went against her wishes and gave Eric the win. Now Eric is back on another dating show, so I think we can presume that things did not work out particularly well with Melena – who had wanted either of the two guys instead of him to begin with!

So what can we expect of Eric on this show? Well, for one thing I’m surprised that we haven’t already heard that Eric is a virgin. After all, the producers certainly made sure we knew that about Alima in the first For Love or Money. Maybe things went better between him and Melena than I thought!

We’ve already seen the somewhat plaintive side of Eric in the chess game. I expect that tonight we will perhaps see some of the more charming side, as that seems to be his basic gameplan, if his performance on MMF was any indication. Whether or not it will work, well, I have no predictions there.

So we’ll keep our eye on Eric and see if he does as well when it’s the woman choosing as he did when it was the parents. If not, I’m sure NBC has some other dating shows lined up soon, and he can try his luck on those as well.

You can click here to read Andrea Shuman’s entire recap of Eric’s Meet My Folks episode.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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