On Sunday night VH1 premiered America's Most Smartest Model, the latest addition to a rich history of reality programming rooted in throwing a bunch of fame-hungry people into a rented house for several weeks and making them do stupid things when they are drunk (see also: Flavor of Love, Rock of Love, I Love New York, The Surreal Life). In this case the captives are models of varied success and specialty (although lingerie seems popular) who are here to prove that pretty people aren't all dumb, or something similarly ludicrous.

The bios page for the show doesn't offer much on the contestants, but one fella, Jesse Lewis, is openly bisexual in his description. So we tuned in to see how he did and were pleased to see that he rose to the top in terms of intellect ... although in this pool you wouldn't exactly need water wings to float, if you catch my meaning.

I was actually kind of surprised that most of the male models on the show appear from their comments and behavior toward the ladies to be straight, given that fashion and general vanity seem to be tied to gay men more often than not in these shows. The jury's still out on a few of the guys, but at this point Jesse's the only one making it clear that he's queer.

In the spelling bee challenge Jesse came in second-place (behind Daniel, who's getting his doctorate in psychology) and pulled off a couple of tough words before failing out. After the spelling bee he and Daniel seemed to lock into a sort of a snit-off as to who's the smarter, which could be entertaining later on.

Things didn't go as well for Jesse in the runway challenge, though: In fact, he was the only model that the judges told to lose weight. Are the other guys impossibly fit? Yes. And are half of the girls sickly thin? Yes. Does Jesse look like just about as normal as they come, in terms of his weight and body type? Yes.

And if there's anything to learn from reality competitions, it's this: Normal is baaaaaaad...

It looks like next week Jesse's "weight issue" (as if) will pose more problems, as he has to pose nude for a photoshoot. You know, they should just book him on Celebrity Fit Club: Smart But Grotesquely Fat Model Edition now and get it over with, because that's seriously where this storyline is heading. How about getting the girls to eat something so that they don't look like death in heels? For most of them, half of their body weight is synthetic.

That actually raises what is the biggest failing of the show thus far: If this is really supposed to be about finding the smartest model, then looks and style and other non-smart-ish modelly things shouldn't come into play at all. But as soon as someone exhibits some smarts, the judges tear apart the model for something else. Jesse gets a spanking for having love handles, and Daniel gets ripped apart from having no style (despite the fact that his outfit comes from racks of clothing provided by the show).

So really, when it comes down to it this is going to be just as shallow an exercise as ever. Which at the end of the day is probably for the best anyway, right? I mean, do we really want to encourage pretty people to start thinking?